Reconnect My Mog – by Sally Bell
April 15, 2021“Reconnecting One year on!”
It’s one year to the day, two weeks after the first lockdown started, that I first put pen to paper about our experience of Lockdown. A humorous blog written, almost in holiday mood! After all we were all going back to our lives in three weeks, or so we thought….
During this year, emotions have run high, deep rooted feelings and insecurities have been uncovered and like a kite we have been soaring on a high or crashing to the ground in fear of what lies ahead.
I’ve fought those emotions, like everyone else, presented myself to the world over zoom, FaceTime and in walking groups as the Sally everyone knew, and because of that friends and family turned to me for support, but it all changed when we got to the second lockdown, I was the one who needed help, but it was a friend who said to me you are perfectly imperfect! That changed my lockdown outlook and I realised that I couldn’t change the feelings that were ramping up inside me but I could turn them around with rays of positivity until they melted.
I started to think about how I could reconnect with the world, the virtual world wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I stopped watching the news and filling my head with negativity, took on a running challenge, started a walking group rota with people that I would normally dance with and spent more time on editing photographs and writing my book, but above all, Arthur dusted off Morgie.
Combining walking with Morgie was a dream and I realised how special he was to us both, unfortunately for Arthur, it meant that I helped clean out the garage, not a welcomed suggestion but I didn’t think we needed two lawn mower engines and old beach windbreaks that we realised went back 20 odd years. So with a nice clean garage and a gleaming car we were ready to embrace a different lockdown life, one of excitement, travel (albeit it locally) and pure exhilaration. Before I knew it the smiles replaced the tears!
The recent weather was glorious and our first day of freedom was a trip out in Morgie to Tenterden with our wonderful friend Ian. He arrived at our house with Charlie and seeing the two cars together on the drive, I felt that they too had missed one another. Setting off with the roof down, we had the most wonderful scenic drive. Seeing trees pass at speed, and feeling the sun and wind on our faces we noticed that Spring had indeed sprung! It was a glorious run.
With Sbphotoart on hold over lockdown, I dusted off my camera and took it with me. I’m glad I did because although Tenterden station was officially shut, after a quick chat to the Duty Manager, he allowed us to go in and do some work alongside the fabulous collection of old carriages.
Parking up in the high street, the aroma of coffee drew us to a quirky little teashop and the cakes were to die for, so grabbing our rug from the car we set up a little picnic on the grass and watched the world go by once again. Vintage motorbikes went through the town, the sound of laughter from people meeting up and once again it was lovely to see the joy the cars gave to other people. We didn’t rush it, we looked at one another and smiled, we had reconnected that day with our cars, life and people around us and it felt very good!
Keep safe everyone and we can’t wait to meet you again soon.
Sally Bell
