Well it's been a very strange few months. Both me and Caroline and fortunate enough to have jobs that are largely possible to perform remotely, and haven't been subject to disruption from the virus. Indeed, demand for bioinformatician types seems pretty strong at the moment. Considering the numbers of people who have lost their jobs, been stuck in tiny flats with frustrated kids, been furloughed - or, rather more seriously, become ill - things could be very much worse indeed.

Nonetheless, this has meant three solid months of home working. While this journal might give the impression of carefree wandering around verdant landscapes, the reality has more generally been more along the lines of not leaving the house whatsoever for long periods (typically blocks of 3-4 days) during the week, increasingly failing to put on trousers or get up before mid-morning (yes, this is why I turn my camera off for all work calls) - and while the weather has been bad, spending 12+ hours a day on the computer, as the boundary between work and downtime starts to blur in rather unhealthy fashion. 

I've basically forgotten how to drive - my car battery's gone flat twice due to lack of use - and haven't been to the pub since the beginning of the year (in theory they opened again this weekend, but it's such a poorly justified and ill-timed decision that - despite my love of the local village pubs and feeling the need to support them, I refrained from going. Maybe next weekend when things have settled down a bit).

As a consequence of this enforced houseboundedness, we've been spending absolutely peanuts. The amount we usually expend on fuel, car maintenance, going out - and frankly, just buying lunch every day - really adds up. I'm conscious there are lots of people who would love to have this "problem" in the current climate, so I don't want to go on about it, but it certainly makes me reflective about what I could do without when things get back to "normal".

On a more practical note, it also means a tendency to buy more kit in looking forward to freer times - more on this upcoming...

A real silver lining has been giving close attention to exploring the local countryside on day rides. To an extent this is something I've been doing since the four years we moved here, but it's only really now I'm starting to investigate the history of the area. There's often a tendency in England to think of the cities and towns as being the locus of this, and to an extent that's true - nobody could wander through, say, the centre of Cambridge and not be aware of the formative influence of the university.

But southern England, at least, has no real provincial hinterland: every square mile has been worked over, built on, burnt down, farmed, owned, nationalised, bought, made public, again and again. It's ultimately one of the most heavily developed landscapes in the world. Obviously on these rides, for both aesthetic and virological reasons, I've avoided the towns. But it's become clear to me that the countryside is not only easy on the eye: every square mile has just layers and layers of history.

A lot of that history is pretty quirky - and I confess to a pretty strong bias towards the strange, unexpected and amusing. Hopefully this has been (at least mildly) entertaining. But, to get a bit more pretentious about this, I do have a earnest angle on it too. I want to rescue the idea of localism from the stodgy conservatism which has so often done rural England such a disservice.

To me, the strange stories I've dredged up about as I've learnt about the past of the countryside around me don't have to mean anything. They don't follow some sort of pattern of historical or economic inevitability, or represent some set of traditions we should maintain as prejudices. Frankly, I believe a whole lot of it to be wholly the product of unpredictable concatenations of chance. 

Neither do I think I have any kind of attachment to the land through genealogy, and I think it's a delusion to maintain this. East Anglia meant bugger all to me, other than a joke about flatness and provincialism, before I moved here - and the only reason I did was because of the draws of work and relationship practicalities. The practical reason I ended up living in East Bedfordshire rather than, say, Cambridge, is because it's so much less expensive. 

Nevertheless, I love the surrounding area with an immoderation that has surprised me.  And I think anyone, of any background, might learn to love it too (they'd appreciate it in a different way of course - but that just adds to the richness). It's these peculiar patchwork histories that can make an area dear to us, without us becoming thoughtless partisans for some region or nation.

I'm sure some objective qualities play into this - the surrounding countryside is certainly picturesque, and doubtless there are one or two places with no redeeming qualities at all (Bucharest? Milton Keynes?). But part of me feels it's possible to learn to love any local area - you just have to get to know it well enough.

So I'm hoping to look upon this period of pandemic as an opportunity - to treat the few square miles around me with the curiosity and surprise that I'd normally use on a tour further afield. Hopefully some of this comes through.