Before and After

'We've had some cases of COVID in the parish,' the vicar of Tophill, on the other side of Hornington from Swanvale Halt, 'and they all seem to be related to a single funeral which was held in the church just before lockdown began. Trace the instances back, and everyone seemed to have been at that.' We were having a virtual Deanery meeting over Zoom, each of us bringing coffee and biscuits to our computer screens. We noted that though the Government is talking about possibly, possibly, reopening places of worship from the start of July, nobody has any real idea how that will work. We'd discussed it at a virtual Swanvale Halt PCC meeting the evening before, and while we'd begun planning how many people could realistically fit in the church building sitting 2 metres apart - possibly sixty or so - hope was expressed (if hope is the word) that the diocese 'will send out reams and reams of instructions about it.' The clergy were less sanguine. 'I think the national Church has looked at the horrific complexity of how to arrange reopening, and aren't saying anything,' suggested a colleague. Revd Tophill said their PCC 'are assuming we will never "get back to normal". This is is it, no carol services, no concerts, no school leavers' days, from now on, ever. That's the base we start from.' Tophill has an admirably courageous approach to much in Church life but I suspect this is extreme, and that the urge to recover communal events will be very strong indeed. 

On the hill later on I met Martin, an occasional congregant who works for the Mental Health Foundation. We discussed what happens next, a bit breathlessly on his side as he'd been running. 'The question now is how we convert goodwill and aspiration into action,' he said 'they have to be embodied in institutions and decisions.' The MHF is developing a way of pre-assessing policy in relation to kindness, and working on aspects of wellbeing economics.

In the evening I rang a bell out of the upstairs window which has been my way of joining in with the weekly Clap for Carers. Some people I know hate this ritual, regarding it as hypocritical and beside the point. I've thought of it as a way of levering political awareness into unwilling minds: you will struggle to make the NHS anything other than an inclusive and progressive cause. This week watching ministers take part and then having to be shamed into treating healthcare workers decently does make the point rather inescapable. But I'm relieved that signs it's coming to an end will remove the ambiguity for me.