Notes from the brighter side

Iwrite this in the early evening. It is warm and the wind carries the birdsong from the hills. In the garden, I can close my eyes and listen ... it’s almost like being in an aviary.

One upside to the lockdown has been how much nature has flourished. This time last year, waking up in the morning all you could hear was traffic -- which is not a very happy sound to experience whilst in your slippers.

But if I stand outside of a morning now, a near-deafening dawn chorus hits my ears: tweety birds calling to each other, the thrum of pollinating insects, the genial hooting of owls.

When scarce other enjoyment can be derived from self-isolation, being able to hear nature reclaim its aural dominance is spiriting.

Is it just me, or do the trees seem somewhat lusher? Greener? I almost want to say fluffier. Certainly the air when walking along main roads is cleaner - the scorched-acid smell of diesel engines is less obvious.

It seems to me that as much as the intention of lockdown has been for the greater good, the lockdown itself has also been for the natural good too, as evidenced by the relish with which it seems to have re-asserted itself in our lives.

Of course, as restrictions are slowly lifted, things are likely to change. The sound of traffic, the smell of exhausts; all this will probably come back, as the world goes back to work. But ought it be exactly like the old normal? Only 9 per cent of surveyed people want things to go exactly back to the way things were before lockdown.

Among the changes people will want to see in light of lockdown, I imagine will include better childcare provision options, more workers’ rights, perhaps a limit on how many bags of icing sugar you’re allowed to buy (of all the supermarket products, I thought baking supplies would be safe from panic buying, and yet there is a hole where glacé cherries once were – very mysterious).

Coming out of lockdown, I would like a better, more embedded and reverential protection for the environment, so we may move towards the green ideal: living alongside nature, being more grateful for its existence.

Perhaps this can only be achieved by allowing nature the wriggle room lockdown has afforded it.

Although, even as the choir of songbirds is being drowned by the occasional growling of a car, I shall continue to gratefully enjoy this version of Bath where blue tits observe me walking home from the queue into the supermarket without pooing on me; or where a squirrel dances across the lawn acrobatically, as if to remind me, it’s the animals’ world, too.

I hope this is something we remember in the weeks and months ahead.