Families, visitors and people going about their business all gave Rhuthun/Ruthin a much needed tonic today.
It was the busiest day of the year (though there was room for more, even with the number of distancing signs having emerged this week). There was a relaxed air about the place.
Bright summer clothes and sunglasses. Suncream and ice cream. Coffee on the go. Old men looking ridiculous in shorts and too high white socks.
People were unhurried as they wandered round in the warmth.
July 2020 summertime floral displays
For a brief moment, it was possible to forget all about pestilence and second waves.
It was as if the clock had turned back to the summers before continental package holidays.
Window shoppers and architectural aficionados alike were pausing and admiring, looking up and around, strolling and stopping. The warmth brought out tables outside W & G Jones’s café to help to add to the festival feel. Rhuthun was the brief flowering of a rare & colourful plant, exotic in nature but you know won’t last. It calls to you and pulls you in while it can, to take advantage of that rarity of summer days as peering through the crack of a rarely opened door into the sunlight of a short but fruitful summer. Best to soak up the atmosphere while it’s here. Just for a fleeting moment it pulls you in.
Reality was also with us. The number of masks abroad has increased significantly. Some say that this is because covid-19 is locally stalking us. Some suggest as a result that Tesco staff are all be-masked. There was no evidence of this in Tesco itself. Others, no doubt, are following UK advice about masks in shops (even though not currently applicable in Wales).
One downside is that the promised courtyard café at Ruthin Castle is now a week overdue. It should’ve opened today but work was still ongoing.
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Coronavirus