Editor’s Diary: Looking For The Positives

This Editor’s Diary is coming to you over a month into lockdown. How are you coping?

It’s tough, isn’t it, having the freedoms we once took for granted so curtailed?

Like many people, I am trying to stay focused on the positives of the situation. Instead of thinking about what I can’t do, I’m concentrating on the good things about life right now.

The unprecedented circumstances are giving rise to some unexpected and welcome upsides.

In my local park, for example, the grass hasn’t been cut for some weeks. I suppose that, to some people, it looks untidy.

But – miraculously — it is already studded with wildflowers, attracting dozens of bees and butterflies.

The lack of traffic has made walking along the pavements so much more pleasurable.

Small pleasures to enjoy

And is it my imagination, or are the birds singing more joyfully than ever this year? Maybe it’s just that we can hear them better without the ceaseless noise of cars whizzing past.

It’s almost as if Mother Nature is determined to help us get through this by granting us the most glorious period of spring weather I can remember for years.

I’ve also got more time for reading — and a huge pile of books waiting to be read!

So far I have been enthralled by “Girl, Woman, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo, transported to 18th-century London with Imogen Hermes Gowar’s “The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock” and become completely absorbed by the politics and pomp of Italy at the time of the Borgias in the astoundingly good “In The Name Of The Family” by Sarah Dunant.

Of course, none of that makes up for not being able to spend time with family and friends.

But I do hope that you’re managing to find some small pleasures to enjoy during lockdown, too.

For more from Angela’s Editor’s Diary, click the tag below.

Click here to read more from the rest of the “Friend” team.