Covid diary March 2020: Handwashing, toilet paper and Schrodinger's lockdown

As I said in my previous post, I kept a “coronavirus diary” during the early months of the pandemic. I’ve always kept a diary but I wrote this alongside my normal everyday one. Partly for posterity and partly because it felt important.

I also said that we need to remember. And what I have just read in my five-year-old diary has shocked me.

You can see how gradually life became less and less normal. And then suddenly, very not-normal at all.

Covid five years on: there is no "other side"

A social distancing T shirt sold during covid in aid of Age UK, modelled by a 94-year-old woman.

Suddenly everyone is reminding me that covid was five years ago.

Well, covid started (officially) five years ago. It never finished. All that talk about “see you on the other side” turned out to be optimistic. There is no other side. There’s just now, when I’m usually the only person on the bus wearing a face mask. And when I have friends who still have to self isolate and have invited me to a Facebook group called “Still hardcore coviding”. 

So, no, there is no "after covid". But there is a "before covid", and it feels like another world. What happened five years ago divides my life, and my memories. Once, we’d measure out our lives in holidays or jobs. Now, I just finding myself saying "that was before covid".

As for “during covid”, I’m revisiting it now.

Things I have forgotten how to do

I keep thinking that life has gone back to normal after the pandemic. Then I remember there is no such thing as “after the pandemic”.

I kept the lockdown rules, all that time ago. I carried on with similar behaviour after lockdown was ended. When there were other lockdowns, I didn’t really notice the difference. I forgot that I once lived my life differently.

I became risk-averse. I kept my distance, kept away from public transport and public buildings, wore facemasks everywhere. (I still wear them, even though I know they only work when everyone does it.  Remember “I wear my mask to protect you…”?) 

I tried to remind people that just because the government tells you something it doesn’t mean it’s true. 

I got used to not going anywhere, to only meeting people out of doors, to rarely socialising.

There were things I forgot how to do.

Wear earrings.

Wear mascara.

Wear anything that isn’t the same two T-shirts.

Talk to people.

The year of melancholy thinking

The year in brief:

via GIPHY

Blah, Blah, Blah.

I was tempted to stop there. Greta Thunberg’s words say it all. Anything else is just description.

I could talk about another year of living in fear, and another year of being lied to, and a second pandemic year which is different from the first one because this time we’re not all in it together.

Fragments of time: art for lockdown

Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Derek Jarman's old home.

There’s a research thing about Covid that I take part in and every month they ask you to fill in a questionnaire about how you’re feeling. I like doing it because there’s a question about how much you trust the government to manage Covid and I can put the biggest tick ever next to “not at all” (or as big as you can when it’s an online check box).

Anyway, this month there was a question about what things you are missing. And I wanted to put the biggest tick ever next to “everything”. People. Travel. Going for a coffee or a drink. And the one that said “art and culture”. I wanted to put a big tick on that, because I grieve for it. 

Reasons to be cheerful, part 2: creative consolation

Last year – well, last month – I saw a thread on Twitter of “ten things that have brought a smile to my face in 2020”. I was going to copy the idea, but I didn’t get round to it, and now it’s January.
But there is never a bad time to say thank you for creative consolation. 

A not-normal year, and what to put in your Christmas cards

I’ve started writing my Christmas cards and some of them normally have letters in them. And I’m wondering: what can you say about this not-normal year that we are almost (and glad to be) finished with? For most of the recipients, I don’t even know whether 2020 has been relatively kind to them, as it has to me, or whether they have been more closely touched by the pandemic.

Looking back on 2020, there are a lot of things that made me anxious, depressed and angry. (Very angry. A lot.) I’m not going to write about them. You know what they are. You probably felt (and feel) much the same as I do.

So I am going to focus on the reasons to be cheerful (and a few ways to give back). I know I’ve been lucky so far. If you haven’t, I hope this isn’t too hard to read. 

Things I’ve learnt from lockdown

 

It’s late September and I really should be back at school… well, it’s early September, and I’ve got nowhere to go. But I’ve been away, and it feels like the end of summer and it feels like a time to take stock.

So, things I’ve learnt from lockdown.

I miss the sea

I think I’m officially old. I’ve started watching ‘Saga telly’. Programmes that are mainly about scenery. And if there are trains as well, that’s a bonus. (Disclaimer: nothing to do with Saga. It’s just my name for them.)

So when we found a programme called Scenic Railway Journeys, that was peak Saga telly.

Also, it has Bill Nighy doing the narration. Dead Ringers got it wrong with their running gag about Penelope Wilton having the most soothing voice in the world. It’s Bill Nighy. Also, he manages soothing AND sexy. And suave. All the positive alliterative adjectives.

I miss trains.

I miss the sea.

I miss my family.

Not a covid diary

This is the sort of thing I've been sharing on Facebook.

You probably haven’t noticed, because you’ve got your own lives, but I haven’t been here for the last three months.

I’ve been on Twitter, reporting racists. I’ve been on Facebook, joining groups for freelances who’ve lost work through the lockdown. And telling my friends, who know how shit the government is, how shit the government is.

But it didn’t feel right to be blogging. What was there to say? The small stuff is actually quite boring; the big stuff is too big to go there.