Yesterday evening at 8pm I stood outside my house and clapped. I didn’t do this last week as somehow I missed the fact that it was happening.
I was early, I’m always early, I got to the gig at 7:59pm and there was already one guy, down the road, clapping away so I joined in. But within seconds there were at least 20 people I could see doing the same. Some of us were slightly sheepish at first, but with smiles and nods and thumbs up, everyone got into it for several minutes.
Like most symbolic acts, it probably did more for the participant than the notional recipients of our thanks, but it was touching. And we had a chat with our neighbour while keeping our distance and exchanged phone numbers just in case we might need them.
There were quite a lot of very surprised birds briefly disturbed by all of this. There were Woodpigeons and Jackdaws, and an alarm-calling Blackbird and a Starling, who were put to flight but I’m hoping they weren’t seriously inconvenienced. And, after all, wildlife is generally less disturbed by our millions at the moment than normally.
[registration_form]
The kids on our row made a hell of a racket, with pots and pans etc, this scared the Rooks from their nests, but it was a nice evening, so no harm done.