Dear LPG,

I recently read an article on your pages which focussed in on all those things that we older people have now had a whole year of house arrest to catch up on, but that we still have not quite got sorted. 

Through the many telephone calls I have spent the last year making, I have learned one thing and that is that my friends and I have had so much time to do so many things and we still have not done very much.  I have to say that it has me looking at my net curtains in a different way too.   I recently read an article about planning your days so that you actually get things done (►►►) and, as a result, I am now the proud owner of a diary.  I start most days with a plan and end many with a tick or two against a few of the items I list. 

But our phones have done overtime and we have all had so much more time to actually listen to what our family and friends really want to say to us.  This time last year we were all told to stay in touch while also keeping ourselves to ourselves, which is the fundamental contradiction, but we have learned well after all the practise we have had. 

Like me, I bet that most people have taken talking to each other on the phone, and via the internet, to a whole new level.  I remember learning the art of making my telephone calls last longer in a desperate attempt to have someone to talk to for more of each day at the beginning of all this.  I would ask really pointless questions to the person on the other end of the phone just to keep the conversation going, but somehow my friends and I have learned so much more about each other, and ourselves, as we have revisited those things that appear so trivial when there is so much more to think about, but that fill in the gaps that make for a much rounder understanding of who we really are. 

I recently learned about the object of online role playing games from my nephew, the history of Malta from a friend who comes from there, what really makes another friend angry and I sat through a detailed lesson on the subject of who Catboy really is, courtesy of my 4-year-old great grandson. 

The big worry is that we will all forget to make the time for those calls when we are no longer locked up and I, for one will still have a diary only half filled with achievements.  So I suggest that we all need to remember to add the names of the people we need to keep in touch with to our diaries; we need to give them time slots and not treat our personal telephone time as interruptions that stop us from getting through the other entries.  I think that we need to see those conversations as tasks which need to be entered and achieved with as equal importance as all the other things we feel we need to do. 

Perhaps it is one of the few positives that this pandemic has afforded us.  

JA, Ladywell.

LPG felt it appropriate to post this article at the beginning of National Conversation Week and offers a little information…

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