There are not many butterflies on the moor yet. Meadow browns in the verges of the lane amongst the bright pale-yellow mouse-eared hawk weed flowers; and amongst the oak and birch along the top of the escarpment I saw some speckled woods fluttering in and out of sun flecks, alighting on fern fronds.

Brambles are flowering along the lane as well and I’m eyeing them up in expectation of late summer fruit that I can use to make thick dark juice, jam and jelly. When my children were small we used to gather brambles on our green lane walks and bring them home to make juice to pour over ice cream. I still do that now, even though my children have long flown the nest. It’s a simple sweet, delicious dish, hot rich deep purple and cold white vanilla, that reminds me of halcyon days, so I always eat it with an inner memory smile.

I had a chat with my son yesterday and we talked about the momentous changes that have taken place in the UK parliament. He lives in Spain now and said that he’s been discussing with an old school friend who’s staying with him about how the UK has been under the grip of austerity all their adult lives.

Like so many people he has long COVID and as a parent I just don’t know what to do. There doesn’t seem to be any way to fix it other than rest and recuperation. The poet Deryn Rees Jones has written about her experience of COVID in the poem ‘Let’s Say’:

Let’s say it was a box, an illness box. A box of wrongness and betrayal. It

felt like a grave. It was a whole world. But not exactly. Let’s say.

She developed long COVID after her illness and I could hear a breathlessness in her voice when she was being interviewed on a recent edition of the radio programme ‘Poetry Please’ in which she talks about the poems she chose and why they are important to her. She also reads her own poem ‘Summer’: “Summer is a lazy god, and all promises.”

In the run up the election there were quite a few interviews on the radio with people who had experienced bereavement during the pandemic. Absolutely heart rending. My own experience was actually not too bad. I was in quite strict isolation as I was visiting my London friend’s elderly mother and so could take no risks. The moors were close for walking, and I could chat with village friends at a suitable distance. But I’m now still dealing with the aftermath.

Does anyone have any tips or stories about how to best deal with long COVID? There doesn’t seem to be any clear advice and it also seems to have affected different people in different ways.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Here's a link for the edition of Poetry Please with Deryn Rees Jones. There are still two weeks left when you can listen to it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020j46