#journal
Self-isolation
I've been placed into self-isolation, it's been three days now. A friend of mine who I saw last week got a test after some very low level symptoms and he tested positive. He feels horribly guilty for the cluster of people around him who are now in self-isolation, which goes to show how much of this situation has been laid on the consciences of individual people, wrongly. I've been doing okay so far. We've been playing Mario Odyssey and Ticket To Ride, and we baked a load of bread. I've never baked a loaf of bread before, even through the...
Tired on waking
I woke up today and I was really, really tired. It's the end of the first week in a new role at work. I lay in bed until an uncharacteristic noon and having just gotten up, everything feels like far too much effort. If I'm tired or unhappy I can usually carry it around with me as I get on with things but I feel very under it today. I hope it's not COVID-19 fatigue (the clinical kind, not the morale kind).
Round two
The numbers are up again (the bad ones, the COVID-19 ones) and the daily cases are actually above where they ever got in the first wave. The response has been slower, patchier; nobody's ready to jump straight into a full national lockdown again. It feels like it could be coming, though. I've mixed feeling about how ready for that I am. We have this new home: spaces to work and to rest that are separate from one another. We have a garden, although autumn's washing in and that the garden is becoming less of a crucial assett over time. I...
Swimming in pools and lochs
We've had a lot of peace. We're spending a lot of evenings in the pool, where only twenty people are allowed at a time and only swimming in a clockwise loop. We've been taking sick days when we feel worn out. I've been reading a little more. Emma has planted the raised bed at the end of the garden with bulbs that are supposed to sleep over the winter and erupt in spring. She forgot to check they were the right way up, but faith and bad statistics tell us about half of them will grow okay. Tom got back...
A seal
We've been on the coast of North Devon. Today the younger ones struck off from a larger group of trundling adults and children to get into the sea (we were standing on the headland and the water looked so calm and blue that Emma couldn't think of anything other than finding somewhere to get into that sea). We found a small rocky beach at the end of a crumbling single-track road. Emma and I went ahead in one car and wondered whether the others had lost their nerve on the way down. That was until we saw the others walking...
Gym and jolof
I woke up early and lay in bed for a while knowing Emma wanted a big lie in to catch up on sleep from a bad week. Eventually I got up and booked a slot at the gym and cycled there. I’ve been running less and going to the gym more, is that a more vain balance of exercise? Jay Rayner was back at the gym, and this time James Nesbitt was there too. I’ve told a couple of people this and I know that there’s nothing to care about but I still feel like I should do something with...
Back to office
I might be getting back to work in the office soon. I always used to value the physical and mental separation of work and life. I think I still do and I’m looking forward to having it back for two days a week, which is the plan at first. A lot has changed since I left the office, though. I am much more invested in my home. For one, it’s gotten much bigger and can therefore accommodate work mode more easily. I also have gotten to like sitting in my own garden as I break for lunch and the flexibility...
Good for nothing
Some days are good for nothing. It's Friday and I've left work early but I haven't been able to concentrate all day anyway. I feel unhappy and all I can think is I should go to the gym or play the piano or practice my Spanish or draw something or... Instead I'm going to flit between things, getting agitated at nothing.
Tom arrives
It's been a good week. We came back from Scotland and spent a week relaxing at home around my birthday. Then Tom arrived in Heathrow having run the gauntlet of the travel restrictions imposed by the Indian government, UK government, and the various airlines. He's been decompressing here for a week or so, and making us incredible amounts of food and drink in the meantime. It's good to have your habits disrupted. Yesterday Tom and some friends spent most of the day in our garden. There's a project to build a raised bed at the end of the garden, but...
Kingdom sounds
Yesterday I watched a whole season of Kingdom on Netflix. It's a big budget zombie show set in 16th century Korea. It being a Korean language show, there are English subtitles. However the subtitles not only translate dialogue but describe other sounds. Here is a non-exhaustive list of those subtitles.
New life in the high street
We’re coming back to the world in floods of normalcy at the moment. One of my best friends was back in town on Thursday, and he came over for dinner and a drink. He was able to see our new home, I was able to cook for him, we were able to sit in our living room together and chat. We kept up chatting until just before midnight. We were all just so thankful to be able to have the kind of conversations you have with your friends in person when you’re relaxed. Then on Saturday morning I walked down...
Time in the park
I've been meeting my manager in the park every week during lockdown. He lived in a neighbourhood nearby and we both missed seeing people from work face-to-face, so it made sense. Plus the weather's been good for the most part so it's been nice to sit and have our catch up in the sun with either a coffee or a beer. Today I cycled there from the new house; it's about fifteen minutes away. On the way back from the meeting I was sitting in a bike lane behind a mother on bike with her toddler in a seat mounted...
Thirty degrees
It’s thirty degrees outside and we’re all, including the cat, feeling languid. The internet is down for much of South London, which adds to the general sense of stolid malaise. The past few days have been much more active. I’ve been buzzing around the house trying to make it a home bit by bit. It’s a tightrope doing the practicalities while basking in the glow of our fresh, new space. Try to sit in the airy new lounge without a care like you never could before, but also get that shoe rack and cutlery drawer insert ordered. When is the...
New house peace
This morning I woke up in my own house to sunlight. I got up and took a shower, the water pressure was great. I sat at the kitchen table and listened to the news, and then practiced my Spanish for a while. I hung out some washing to dry. Nobody came along. I had forgotten how it feels to start your day quietly and at your own pace. The weekend was an endless blur of stress and back strain, but we’re in here now, a home of our own. It is the greatest thing. We’ll have lunch in the garden...
George Floyd march
The Black Lives Matter protests have become the story of the day. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities all over the world have been demonstrating for over a week. We joined the end of a march in Brixton first, hearing about it from a friend who saw it pass through Kennington and cycling out to join the fray. It was the first crowd I’d been in in months. It made the fact that people were shouting in one voice even more striking. A man stood over the crowd with a megaphone and thanked them for assembling, spoke about the...
Floyd protests from afar
We’ve picked a new house. It’s going to be a house! It’ll have a garden and stairs and space for the cat, space for us to work and relax. We’re leaving in three weeks unless some recalcitrant property manager or landlord gets in the way. Outside, COVID-19 measures had begun to relax and things had begun drifting slowly toward normal. Then a few days ago the US exploded with protests against police violence in response to the murder of a man named George Floyd by a policeman in Minnesota. All over the country the authorities have responded with a police...
Looking at Stoke Newington
We’re getting ready to leave the house. The idea of moving out of this place and into one of our own, already a firm intention before lockdown began, has become a serious one again. Subtly depersonalised pictures of the room we’ve spent so much time in have been taken, and posted online. We are responsible for reviewing applications for our replacements. Young professional, woman, 27, media. Smiley headshot, second photo featuring Aperol Spritz. In the meantime I’m sitting in the armchair. I’m watching the kitten bound around with a mouse toy in her mouth, jumping over Emma who’s dozing in...
Wild horses
The restrictions on movement were lifted a bit. We’re allowed to sit down in the parks rather than hurry through them on the purpose of exercise. Almost immediately, tiny groups in sunglasses and with beers in hand have appeared. We are also allowed to drive a little way for our recreation. Emma drove us down to the cliffs in Sussex. We packed food and water into a rucksack, and rued that we couldn’t stop in for a preparation pint in the last town before the walk. We passed a dozen idyllic pubs in the glorious countryside. On the walker’s trail...
Wait and see
In some other countries they’ve been re-opening society, slowly. Here things are fraying; many are talking about making decisions for their own mental wellbeing all government advice besides. On Sunday we said, “We’ll see what the Prime Minister says tomorrow.” “…If we don’t do it by those dates, and if the alert level won’t allow it, we will simply wait and go on until we have got it right.” “We will come back from this devilish illness.” Today is Monday. We still can’t go and see our families or touch our friends. It’s sunny outside, with a strong breeze. I...
Walk directly into the sea
We slept unhappily and woke up wary aliens to one another. I shuffled downstairs for breakfast and coffee but there wasn't any milk. I'm known to shower first thing every morning, with stubborn regularity, but today I masochistically let the discomfort and sadness of yesterday fester on my skin and in yesterday's clothes, which I slipped back on to lay on the bed. The cat curled up against me as I started reading, creature next to stone golem. At midday we resolved to drive over to Richmond Park to run around it. Tying my shoes and looking out the window...
Supermarket dash
All week we’ve been building up to a big trip to the supermarket — the real, have-to-drive-there megastore. The others wanted the Big Shop experience; Emma wanted to give the car some use, save it from sitting unused and rusting for the duration of the spring. Some of them have also grown tired of the tight loop of stocking the kitchen just-about with grocery box deliveries and trips to the (still beloved, by me) corner shop. So today we went. The roads are still plentifully stocked with crazy city driving. There was a brief respite over Blackheath, which feels incongruously...
Shortages
Dried pasta, soap, and toilet roll are high value items. There is much hand-wringing and shaming about who goes to the shops when and to buy how much (particularly the old and the medical front line). There is also hand-wringing about lovers trying to reunite before travel restrictions get fiercer. People are guiltily cycling around London and slinking into one another’s kitchens and bedrooms. The NHS are taking volunteers for logistics workers, who will drive medicine and equipment around, drop patients off at home when they’re discharged. There’s a growing pool of people at a loose end, despite the fact...
Bubbles in the street
During the eight o’ clock cheer, somebody was blowing bubbles that drifted down the street. I hung out the bedroom window and took more care to try and see the other people in the windows than usual. The girl who sits at her laptop in the bay window opposite was smiling and slapping at her window. Two figures in white stood at a pair of windows on the third floor opposite. Another anonymous man could be partially seen behind venetian blinds. Today it culminated in singing Happy Birthday for somebody on the street. Louie & Ella are playing in here,...
New Normal
It’s my friend’s birthday today. He’s with his parents in their house on the the side of a hill in the Peak District. He’s quite content up there I imagine: he has his girlfriend, their dog, his vegetable patch (don’t we all). My birthday is at the end of July, and I think I’d sulk a bit if the current restrictions are still in place. I’d like to see some friends. I’d like to go to dinner. Some places are discussing their ‘exit strategies’, how they’ll emerge from their hunkered-down positions. Much is made of the fact we’ll never go...
A quiet birthday
It’s Easter Sunday. We ran 10k, to the river and back; it was sunny and the paths up the banks were quiet. The residential streets were even quieter, though every house was full up with its residents. These’s no simple phrase to describe a street that is quiet in the sense of traffic coming and going, but packed with everybody who lives there being at home at once. Yesterday we celebrated a birthday by cooking and eating a lot of food, drinking, playing games, and getting high. The birthday girl’s parents surprised her by knocking on the door after having...
Care package
The Prime Minister was moved into intensive care last night. They’re trying to downplay the seriousness of his condition. They’re emphasising that he hasn’t been intubated. Today some artist friends of ours, who we bought lots of art from at a show a few weeks ago, dropped off a parcel on our doorstep. It was a nice package of beautiful objects and warm wishes presented in the chaotic and pleasing way artistic people are seemingly able to carelessly toss together. It also contained some Easter chocolate, which brought home that we’ll be under these conditions for another of those calendar...
Enter Talisker
The bike and the cat have both arrived. They’ve shut the local park, a preemptive action ahead of a hot and sunny weekend. The endless internal and external dialogue about what is okay and not okay to do to stay happy continues. The cat gives some respite. Our minds can be filled with fretful thoughts about her instead of about the virus. The death toll is climbing quickly here, as in other places, but it feels much less visible now. We are in a kind of stasis now that the conditions of how we should live have been established. Birthdays...
USNS Comfort
The hospital ship the USNS Comfort docked in New York Harbour a few hours ago. From the news images it looks like something from the Second World War: a long, narrow, white thing covered in lifeboats and bearing the red cross. Presumably it’s painted like that to stop enemy bombers from firing at it in wartime. Everybody keeps comparing this to wartime. I’m filling my time with exercise, reading, and work — and to some extent it’s working. I’m taking pleasure in the small things. I don’t have it the worst out of anyone. Lots of people, thought they’d never...
Things closing down
Emma’s gone up to the Midlands to collect the car so that we might have some means of getting away from London without breaking social distancing. I was anxious when she left, I don’t want her to be stuck outside of London if the government suddenly announce stricter travel measures. They’ve already started shutting down the trains bit by bit. Yesterday they shut the pubs and restaurants, and the gyms too. This morning I tried to do a workout at home and I’m still going to go for a run. Cycling around deserted streets appeals too. I feel like my...
Back from India
We got back from seeing Tom in India on Monday, and ever since then the world has gotten increasingly strange. Though it isn’t completely enforced, we’re all supposed to stay home and work from home to limit the spread of the virus. All the bars and restaurants are empty, people aren’t going to them and so instead they’re all online chatting away in the evenings. It’s like getting back home from school and everybody jumping straight onto MSN. Apart from today, every day this week the Prime Minister has come on TV and announced some restriction measure. Yesterday they announced...