This is dead time. I feel dead. I feel like nothing but a bag of flesh and tissue and bones, all held together by skin. I’m sick of not going anywhere, not seeing anyone. I haven’t been further than the corner shop since March; I can’t drive, so if I can’t walk there, then I can’t go. My whole world could fit in four square miles.

And in those four square miles, there are bus stops with garish yellow posters and thick black fonts, and shop windows with warnings, and queues of people, some wearing masks, some not. SOCIAL DISTANCING. REMAIN 2M APART. And all I can think is: when all of this is over, these will be in museums, and in 30 years’ time, our children will look at those posters, those warnings about staying 2m apart at all times, those masks, and they will probably think how weird it was that their parents lived through that.

I remember going to an exhibition at the Wellcome Gallery back in February, perhaps a week or so before all this started in full earnest, and looking at the material artefacts from bygone eras, diseases we’ve since eradicated or controlled, treatments that we no longer use. Iron lungs and thalidomide and advertisements extolling the benefits of smoking. And I wonder, when I’m older, when all this has finally settled, what museums will say of it. What the legacy of this time will be, and how we’ll remember it, and how we’ll try and shape it into lessons to be learnt, lessons that can be shoved into a glass display cabinet and labelled ‘Covid-19 pandemic, 2020’.

I like thinking about the future, because it’s a distraction from the monotony of the present. I hate thinking about the future, because it’s such an uncertain thing, and it will either be brilliant or terrible or both.

And so many ways of saying things that I shouldn’t. ‘I feel dead.’ I’m sick of-.’ People are sick, and people are dead, and I’m not. I wonder, too, how our language will change after this. Our cultural reference points. Will things still ‘spread like a plague’, or will that be taboo? Will we remember the divide between the mask wearers and the people who thought that masks were a tool of the state, or those who stayed locked down for months and the people who went out and flouted the rules?

Sometimes, I feel like I’m forgetting how to be a person. Or maybe it’s just that it’s hard to feel like a person without a world to exist in.

It’s been just about four months since I last saw my boyfriend in person and I know we are lucky to still have jobs (even if they barely resemble are pre quarantine roles) and had a fairly limited impact to our families from Covid but there’s still an anger that has built up.

We both have friends who work in essential roles with one even being a community nurse who goes into other people’s homes, but they have been acting as though life has returned to normal. When they have a day off and the weather is nice, they’ve travelled through two counties just to get to a sandy beach. The county they do live in has lovely rivers and meadows/woods if they wanted a day out. It just feels irresponsible and for us hypocritical for someone who has seen the harm first-hand to not realise what they are doing is harmful. Sensible decisions seem to escape lots of people at the moment.

I know this is most likely only a small insight into someone working in healthcare and we know those who do are doing so much for society. That one person we know is making a joke of the sacrifices made by other NHS staff such as those who haven’t been able to see their kids or managing single-parent households throughout this.

It’s been hard being split up from loved ones and even worse when your loved one made the decision to go home to be with their family which include someone who needs to shield. It makes it feel like the strict version of lockdown continues whilst others return to normal, even for those on the front line. People need to make their individual decisions about what they are comfortable with and so if that means continuing to shield those around us who most need it then I guess that’s how it needs to be.

It’s the day after the pubs were reopened, and I am not shocked at what I see in the streets. I live in the middle of a long road with spoons at the top and another pub at the bottom owned by a local couple. Both were packed with spoons at least trying to maintain the standards set out by the government, a queue outside and a member of staff holding a clipboard taking details. However, at the other end of the street, the pub was filled way over capacity to which you would be able to social distance. It makes it seem obvious that a second spike will happen. People don’t seem to be able to self govern. People don’t walk up to a pub see that it’s full and walk away or even wait outside till someone else leaves. Self-governance I believe is topic that has not bee discussed enough by the government and members of society. It makes me scared and uninspired for what will happen to the numbers of cases and deaths. People will blame things like protests and children going back to school, but forget the scenes of people crammed on beaches and not able to just give the pub a miss.

It just makes it harder to remain positive about the whole situation

Submitted 5 July 2020

As someone tweeted the other day, “Physically, im close to July. Mentally, im still processing March.”

No words could ring more true regarding the experience of the past few months. The initial announcement of school closures was met with scenes reminiscent of the world cup in 2018, only to be dashed away when the key worker list was released the following Monday. As a teacher it felt like ninety percent of the UK workforce was announced as a key worker, leaving us pondering over the effectiveness of school closures. It should also be noted that the key worker list- emphasis on the words ‘key worker’- encompassed many roles which the government had previously disregarded as being non essential; and scarily, this included nurses.

The next few weeks are what I can only describe as a blur. This isnt meant to be cliche- its simply the only way I can describe it. With little to differentiate between weekday and weekend, I often found myself partaking in drinking games on houseparty with friends on random weekdays. House party and zoom provided somewhat of a lifeline during those early weeks, allowing much needed social interaction. There was one small issue however. Conversation. All too quickly we realised how much conversation spawns and evolves from our daily lived experiences, and with little to none of that normal input, the output was even worse.

In terms of teaching, I continued creating resources for children, and planning for our eventual return- which was rumoured to be in September. It was extraordinary being a teacher from home, and something I will miss. The flexibility, efficiency, and comfortability of being at home made it a far easier and enjoyable job.

I have a common theme with disliking the conservative party, and at the start of this year my feelings were no different. However, on that day in March when Boris came out, armed with Chris Witty and Patrick Vallance, I was willing for the first time to believe and accept- almost hopefully- the conservative way. The encouragement, coupled with scientific facts and informed decision making gave me some semblance of hope in the darkness. I look back often to that night. Mainly because the weeks following saw a rapid abandonment and shunning of the ‘science’ as it was often quoted. “The science says”…”Only when the science allows.” I wished over and over to see this science myself, to help inform my own opinions instead of blindly following a government which has- as always- preferred capital over life.

Its hard really to illustrate the lived experience of lock-down. There are many dark moments I have and will forget, and many that will follow me until the grave. I have enjoyed parts like no other, and developed a new found love for running and cycling- which if you knew me before seems laughable. These few months feel like a lifetime in themselves, and yet, we are only in July. Strangely though they have also flown by? Perhaps there is a very long German word that may capture the essence of this feeling, but I have’nt discovered it yet.

Submitted 30 June 2020