14th September 2020 – Celebrating in Lockdown

I write this on the weekend before lockdown 2.0, due to come into affect week commencing week commencing September 14th 2020. I write following a weekend of celebrations for mine and a friends’ birthday, where – perhaps unwisely – we chose to celebrate together with our friends at a local bar. The venue we chose is an outdoor venue, which we’re lucky to have in the city, as it meant that – presumably through some creative interpretation of government policy – they could accomodate our party, just shy of 30 in attendance.

“Businesses and venues following COVID-19 Secure guidelines can host larger groups. This is also the case for events in public outdoor spaces that are organised by businesses, charitable or political organisations, and public bodies, provided they take reasonable steps to mitigate the risk of transmission, in line with COVID-19 Secure guidance and including completion of a risk assessment. Any other gathering in an outdoor space must not be any larger than 30 people.” – Guidance for providers of outdoor facilities on the phased return of sport and recreation in England (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-phased-return-of-sport-and-recreation/guidance-for-providers-of-outdoor-facilities-on-the-phased-return-of-sport-and-recreation, 2020)

A degree of care in choosing the venue was taken, as we wanted to make sure the venue was one we frequented regularly, the owners were trusted and whose care for their customers seemed legit in these unusual circumstances. A healthy dose of cynacism for government policy was also present, with the some of the key players such as the Prime Minister, his Ministers and Advisors all having been caught out at one point or the other bending or breaking their own government’s rules. With our Government simultaneously making it law punishable by a minimum fine of £100, to gather in groups greater than 6, whilst also threatening to ignore International Law in their handling of leaving the European Union, I would be lying if there wasn’t a certain satisfaction in getting in one last hurrah before the rules tigthen up again.

We’re fortunate here in Cambridge for having some of the lower cases of Covid-19 reported in the country. That said I made it clear that if anyone didn’t want to attend owing to Covid concerns, I’d be totally cool with it. Anyone pushing peer pressure in a pandemic – not cool. A few people opted out, and that’s fine, but the majority were comfortable in joining on the day. Fortunately I have fairly sensible group of people to call my friends, and I really appreciated them joining me in a celebration, in a year that has given little to look forward to.

13 September
I thought I would get used to working from home but I haven’t. I haven’t heard the words “new normal” for a long time either, which I imagine is because most people seem to have decided to just go back to behaving how they did before. Crowds in streets, shops and bars, parties with grandparents and extended family, kids back to school…

And yet mental health is at an all time low for a lot of people. Anxiety is spiking, depression is deepening, and even some of those who are throwing caution (and social distancing) to the wind are in turmoil about the uncertainty of the future.

Seeing local lockdowns seeming to creep around the country, slowly spreading outwards is fuelling those fears. Like I said, I haven’t got used to working from home. I hate it. The loneliness and the lack of support from colleagues, the mounting pressure and stress of supporting mental health for people who have lost their support networks, who relied on routine and structure and don’t have it… and the prospect of further lockdown here really makes me feel cold inside.

Not that I want things to return to “normal” as it was. This is an opportunity to change, and grow. To build local networks and communities, and to change the way we work and live. It just doesn’t feel like we’re moving that way. Half of us are sitting static, unsure of what to do, whilst the other half drag us back (seemingly to the 1950s in some cases…)

This is what it is to live through history.

Call me “Captain Foresight”, but I knew the proverbial shit would hit the proverbial fan back in February. I remember buying a bottle of hand sanitiser for my bag along with an extra bottle of Carex in Wilko – and an extra tin per food shop, too – “just in case”. I remember the number of people wearing masks on campus rising a bit. I remember reading that thrilling novel called “the news” reporting on the mass deaths in Italy at the time like some kind of plague-zombie-plot. I don’t get why the government didn’t. We’re now one of the worst hit nations in Europe – and not for a lack of foresight.

I was more than fine with the first lockdown. “Flatten the curve”, or as the Prime Ringmaster of the United Kingdom dubbed it, “Squash the sombrero”. Fine by me – too little too late, even! Deaths and cases were kicking off. I was – still am – anxious about “Eat out to help out”, about my upcoming return to university, about offices and kids returning to school.

But the current talks of “lockdown 2” – curfews, reducing the number of people who can meet to 6… they don’t add up in the slightest. As I said to a friend – over instant messaging, of course – “What the fuck’s a curfew going to do?? Is the virus fucking nocturnal?”

Nevermind the fact that the government is hellbent on keeping pubs open like the “Nothing to see here!” scene from Naked Gun, or sending people into offices and schools like some kind of Covid-era General Melchett – which is apparently not the cause of the current rises, which are instead apparently all “the young not obeying lockdown”. To me all the actions from now are clearly not driven by any protection of people but of business. The drive to send people back to offices is to keep Pret and office rents afloat, clear as glass.

I’ve been saying for months that it’s no coincidence the worst hit countries in the world are often the ones under the control of right-wing populists – of Trump, of Boris, of Bolsonaro, of Modi. “Elect a clown, get a circus”, so the saying goes. But now it’s very clear the circus tent’s crashing down, and it’s going to kill people.

10 September 2020

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.