Guernsey

Lockdown

Art for the Terrified continued to meet virtually during the lockdown, where members were set challenges.

Andy Walker set himself a challenge during the Covid 19 crisis. He decided to walk all the public roads in Guernsey. He completed his walks from Wednesday 25th March to Tuesday May 26th May and claims it was easier once you could do four hours of exercise! He has provided a few pictures of things he saw on his walks.

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Stella Le Noury made a ‘Frontline Hero Bear’ in crochet and sent it to the Royal Liverpool Hospital to be with her nephew, who is a consultant anaesthetist. The bear now resides in the training room at the hospital and is loved by the staff.

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Joan Rouget like many of us kept busy but also learnt to slow down and appreciate things like being lucky enough to belong to the fabulous Guernsey community. Right at the beginning she set herself a list of tasks to be done, jobs which she had been meaning to do for ages. She worked in the garden, finished decorating the spare bedroom and cleaned cupboards. On her forty minute walk she began to notice things that would have just been a blur as she whipped along in her car. She saw mother sheep with baby lambs wobbling around as they tried to take their first steps, horses chasing each other around paddocks and fields and noted, around Liberation time, that the hedges took on a ‘patriotic’ feel with red campions, blue bells and white 'stinking onions’.
True to say she missed meeting up with friends and family but reflected that at least we have not had to endure the loneliness for five years as people did during the Occupation. She celebrated Liberation day evening by playing her keyboard in the front garden and her neighbours wandered down the road and enjoyed a good old sing song of all the war time songs.
She even found time to write a poem:

To know I'll no longer be on my own
Waiting for someone to text or to 'phone
To meet with a 'person' and have a long talk
To have someone beside me when I go for a walk

To have my hair cut and have it re-styled
It's grown long and lanky and looks rather wild
To do my own shopping, now that will be bliss
No more ‘they'd not got what you wanted
So I've brought along this'

To be able to touch someone by me without having the fear
That I'm not socially distant I'm standing too near
To meet up with friends for coffee or tea
To sit on a seat and just watch the sea

To meet with my family all in the UK
To have a real, not a virtual hug every day
But the biggest joy that will make my heart swell
Is that we all got through it, we're alive and we're well.

Joy Liggett’s diary sets the scene for what happened in the beginning. Click on this link to read it. Joy Liggett's Diary

Marion Richards decided to really challenge herself by learning to play on the guitar and sing Paul McCartney’s song Blackbird. According to Wikipedia there is an interesting background story to this song with various statements regarding its inspiration. The lyrics, according to McCartney were inspired by hearing the call of a blackbird when meditating in Rishikesh, India. At a later date Paul says he wrote it in Scotland as a response to racial tensions escalating in the United States during the spring of 1968. So possibly a very relevant song for ‘today’ given the ‘Black Lives Matter’ civil rights movement.
Although Marion found the song difficult, she enjoyed the challenge. Also, it kept the creative juices going as well as an important daily mental health exercise.

Marion Richards - Blackbird