Dr Kristopher Lovell

I keep waking up, hoping that, to quote Biggie, ‘it was all a dream’. Instead Greggs is still shut. I hate eating at home. People are meant to enjoy their parents cooking. I struggle to. My girlfriend thinks I’ve got thinner, which isn’t the plan! I just want to be able to get on the train and go browsing in the city. Have time to myself in the noise. I went for a 5 hour walk yesterday into the countryside. It was glorious, just myself, the wind, the trees, the sun. I saw a hare, and heard a woodpecker. I used to find pagan notions of nature as a deity as strange, but as I get older I feel tangible connections forming between myself and the earth. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza himself postulated ‘Deus sive Natura’ – God or Nature. Today though I’m back in the house, with my mum. I hate my MA I’m chained to; on a good day I feel like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, lashed to the side of a breaching whale, dead arms waving at the onslaught of masturbatory academia. I just want to be able to roam, to not worry about the next sodding video call, or feel guilty about wanting a meal deal. But my moaning feels illegitimate; I have not lost anyone close, I have had good fortune thus far. That said a family member did pass away from Covid a few weeks ago, goodbye via Ipad etc. I felt very displaced at the time. I just want Greggs to reopen. I want to be able to eat again.