Easter Sunday
Easter Sunday and I'm a shepherd. It’s early morning and I'm standing at the top of the field looking out over the small valley to the farms and hills beyond. I'm being a shepherd but only have one lamb.
The white church sits on the side of the hill, its short silver spire shining in the morning sun and the bells start to ring. Then the percussion starts, a rattling of metal plates. I've been in the bell tower and seen the bright yellow headset the ringer has to wear to protect his ears. I say 'his' because it's probably Costel, a tall, gentle fellow who once allowed us to join him on his cart, towed by his horse as he ferried the church chorister the 40 minute ride back to his nearby village after the morning service. We hadn't attended. We rarely do. We might have done today because it's Easter and that's what you do. Believer or not, one goes to meet fellow villagers and their families, religion being the kind of glue which holds the village together. But today we won't be going. Nobody will be going. Nobody is allowed to go anywhere except for 'essential travel' in these pandemic days. And religion is apparently non essential. So I just stand here in the field as the sun slowly rises and contemplate.
The bells are quiet now. All I hear is the sound of the village waking up. The clank of buckets being dunked in wells, the incessant chirping of a hundred birds, cockerels crowing and squawking, dogs yawning and barking and most likely doing the downward dog. Max does, every time I greet him in the morning. So does Pingu. I sometimes join in, the three of us indulging in our morning yoga.
- Hey! Don't eat my hat, Zizi!
I'm tapping this out on the notes app on my phone when Zizi the lamb climbs on my back and goes for my straw hat. Until then she'd been happily biting the bright yellow heads off dandelions, something I couldn't help thinking made me slightly sad at the termination of their short lives, no longer opening wide in the daylight, no longer adding to the striking yellow carpet beneath the blossom laden plum and cherry orchard. Zizi had no such qualms...
ST 19/4/20
