Creativity and Adversity
Were out walking one day
The wind in flight through the streets and trees.
Fear swirling on the pavements
Driving people apart.
They sat awhile
In a shaft of light
Creativity had spotted.
Adversity started right away,
His litany of restrictions.
Creativity sat back, nodded
and turned her mind to the treetops,
the grey clouds rushing across the sky.
After a while Adversity
declared, emphatically.
“Well that's just the way it is! “
Creativity listened to the silence that followed
and thought,
“I wonder what happens to the wind.
When it's done”.
At the end of the lane at the bottom of my street , only 100 meters away, a small but famous pub has been battling the effects of lockdowns,restrictions, tier twos and threes.
What to do when there is only disaster ahead? just two years ago the new landlord had taken over this iconic Bristol Jamaican late night drinking, music spinning pub.
I've watched as they have adapted to each twist in the 2020 viral story. First complete lockdown , looking down the barrel of doom. Then the spirits flowed a little and they moved outside onto the tarmac they convienently owned , tables and benches socially distanced , masked for shorter hours.
The summer passed and it was obvious that they were going to have to stay outside if they were going to do any business. The inside of the pub too small for social distancing and running a business.
Red gazeebos arrived, to shelter the drinkers, the community learns to coexist with an outdoor pub . Red and green festoon lights, made it look gorgeous, welcoming the folks,who needing the conviviality of others , risking high news broadcasts of death tolls and social collapse,they come despite everything, to be human.
The covid monster squeezed again, hours shortened even more, rules and restrictions ,infections rose, hospital beds filled faster than the nurses could bear and yes, it was closing down time again .
The landord's family and team of festival workers set to work, first appeared a dozen or so 50 gallon drums filled with concrete and sturdy tree branch poles, a big enough structure was created, sloping roof, louvered sides , benches from pallets lining the walls and a DJ style bar with wooden shingles. Over a month they beavered and sanded , mask wearing they built a new world for themselves and ultimately us who live nearby .
Ive just cycled past, I could feel the energy of the finishing touches, the sense of achievement flowing through the louvres, the place glowed with wood and ivy, the lights just the right shade of hope, welcome and softness, the tables arranged, the landlord sweeping the floor, pleased,calm and tired, completion approaching..
Here amidst difficult times people are arranging their lives differently, they are, if they can wonder about the wind, making accomadations with nature, in whom we flow.
