Boarding @ Home: Day 7/84: We Need Gap Year Thinking

Josh Glancy [Sunday Times Magazine p.7] says we are precedented || adrift with mass caesurae .. It's normally a term used for breaks in verse but here we're extending it to encompass breaks in time. When Avril and I reach Boarding @ Home: Day 84/84, the end of our present commended purdah on June 15th, activities planned during those 12 weeks will have gone irretrievably for ever. We shall of course have alternate remembrance of occurrences that only happened because of the space they left available and as our circumstances dictated. This blog even! If this be so it's surely inevitable that our thoughts turn to [i] how can we occupy ourselves for the next 77 days and [ii] how will we relaunch ourselves into what different socially proximate life will be with us from June 16th?

Gap Year Hypotheses Most raconteurs thus far including Josh and myself have embarked on [i] above. It's Gap Time with the opportunity to deliver on self-promises [learning Gaelic!], myriad d-i-y or gardening if that's an option. We should reject the lure of Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time and broaden our interests and understanding of the world even if most achievements must be virtual. Do what we would otherwise not have done. What is beginning to fascinate me now is how to generate the motivation to do such things? The pace at which we lived our lives before purdah began autogenerated its own sense of urgency. There was a need to complete Task A [The Jacobite Trail] so one could be ready to address and then achieve Task B [The Clan Gathering on September 20th]. It all progressed in a socially reinforcing context. Impending f2f meetings acted as the fillip to complete and share the outcomes. Can that urgency be created virtually or are we reidentifying that we humans not only need the tactile in our lives but the social reinforcement that arises from peer groups and their pressures?

Spring is with us.... More than a few raconteurs have highlighted the oblivious determinism with which Spring proceeds. And we honour today the advent of British Summer Time, moving our clocks forward one hour to honour the immutable progress of the universe. All true but it's a short memory that forgets the caesurae of Dutch Elm or Mad Cow diseases. And Jack Frost just browned all our magnolia flowers. And there'll be autumn yet … as viewed rom The Lodge



Menu goes chicken... Julian of Dolphinstoun brought us a great chicken, Large as well. So it's a three day Chicken Fest. After Day 1 we went for amuse-bouche with half a JumboPack of sausages so Chicken Day 2 was cold; now today there's further munificence this time not Tesco but from the Baronial Gardens .. we have a Gigantic Celeriac to eat. Its debut was in today's lunchtime soup [along with chicken remainder broth]. Watch this space for future billings. Tonight Chef tells me it will be Chicken Final Day 3 joined by Tesco's mushrooms and carrots in an un-denominated curry. All this remains within WWII Cookery Guidelines of course.