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.
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, and we’re playing with the cat to tire her out. We might pour ourselves some whisky. We’re burning through our stores.
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.
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 laid out a birthday spread on the doorstep. The family caught up a few feet apart, and then headed home. They sang Happy Birthday to her from the street like springtime carollers.
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.
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.
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 say it, would like to come out of this with a great body, all those books that they’ve been meaning to get to finished, having perfected a new skill. I’ve bought a bike.
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 body will get soft and weak in quarantine if I’m not careful.
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 they’re closing the school except to babysit the children of key workers like nurses and doctors.
This excerpt from 24/6 by Tiffany Shlain makes the case for setting aside a day to go tech free: ditching phones and laptops and screens for the day. It’s come along just at the right time for me, as I’m generally shrinking away from tech outside of my work life more and more.
I like the way the article describes what you might need a tech-free day: a basic watch, a pen, and a little notebook containing some emergency phone numbers. Slightly idealistically it argues that the day then becomes about the basics: seeing friends, hanging out and chatting, playing games, cooking meals.