It’s 9.45pm and I’m sitting in my garden listening to a blackbird perform an evening solo and watching swifts (or swallows or housemartens) sweeping in arcs through a blue sky. The crescent moon is alight and it’s not quite dusk enough for the solar powered lights to come on.

I am enjoying so much, these sunny, still and quiet ends to my days, nearly as much as I am relishing the mornings. Stepping outside at the beginning of each day, the grass damp with dew, the sun warming up a spot for me to sit. Its heat on my skin as the first rays creep into the garden, soothes my soul. The symphony of sounds that surround me offer joy. All those birds! The hungry cries from a wren’s nest just over my shoulder. The noisy squawks of a magpie family as they flap among the sycamore branches. The chittering and chirping and chirruping announces the new day.

Another sound surprises me. The hum of a thousand bees (well, maybe 30) raiding the rhododendron pollen, ripples through the still air. It’s a busy but stress-less hum. In a happy key. A ‘whistle while you work’ kind of hum. They are all about their day’s work with heavy legs under their featherlight wings. They are so busy and focussed and yet there’s a simplicity to their activity. Eat, work, rest, although I’m not sure in which order and how often they do each.

All around the world right now the pattern of life for everyone is unusual. And uncertain. No-one is unaffected. As we take tentative steps on a path, not back to normality, but onwards to who knows what, I realise how much home has been a wonderful cocoon for me and my little family. The absence of rush has been so welcome. The simple rhythm of life: eat, work, rest (with a few Zooms thrown in) has been very easy to get used to. I’m honestly a little reluctant to let that go. Actually, a lot. Reluctant to let that simplicity slip away as the demands of schedule undoubtedly begin to loudly announce themselves. Maybe I shouldn’t let go. Maybe now its time to pursue and prioritise a better balance.

Less rush, more hum.