Author: Ali April 4, 2020

‘Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start’.
Well yes, Maria, but the problem with this pandemic thing is that at the beginning, you don’t know it’s anything to proverbially lose sleep over. And then it becomes real very suddenly and you’re busy worrying and wondering about what the thing means. And then it settles down into a new normal-ish. So now maybe I can write something down.

In summary, it’s not the beginning, but we’re definitely in the early chapters because all indications are that we won’t be at the middle for quite a while and as for the end, errm…

Maybe I’ll get right back to the beginning eventually (like that bloke in Memento) but at the moment I’m 20 days into existing at home – working, sleeping, eating, and drinking – a lot of drinking – and now and again going out for food, exercise and in my case, emergency dentistry (back in the early days when root canal treatment was allowed).

I’m lucky.
I have a garden, an easy-going son living with me, and currently lots of food and enough wine to last another three weeks if I don’t revert to binge drinking as though I were a young person (I’m not). I can work from home as we’re all kitted out with laptops and headsets and Skype for business and documents in some cloud or another. That means I get paid, which is becoming more of a luxury than can be quite right in any society.

Fortuitously I’d bought about 20 litres of paint just before the thing happened, planning to decorate my lounge and the hallway, so that opened up possibilities for home-based activity like no other.

For the last – hmm I dunno - maybe eight years, my New Year’s resolutions have been the same list: finish decorating the house, get on with tidying the garden, write a will, chuck stuff out of the loft. I have no belief whatsoever in any kind of destiny, that this was meant to be, that the outcome is already ‘written’. But I can’t help thinking that if I don’t get on with this stuff in the weeks to come, I have squandered the best opportunity the universe is going to offer me. I had another resolution about getting fit. Jury’s still out on the likelihood of that one.

And because I’m lucky, I am beginning to wonder about the unlucky ones. Obviously, we can wonder about the ones who contract the virus, who gets ill, who gets so ill that they need hospitals and ventilators. But what about the others?

I am – by nature I suppose – an introvert. You wouldn’t think that if you met me as I’m also fairly sociable, but I have a rich inner life that is not that dependent on other people on a regular basis (so why are you writing this?! asks my inner cynic). How long my current state of mind carries on is interesting, but for now, I’m ok. But I know people who are not that, who derive their meaning from getting out there in amongst other people. This must be a new kind of purgatory, I suppose? Taken away from the very source of your energy and enthusiasm? And fellow introverts…doesn’t this situation just create a new kind of noise? Substitute phone calls and emails for Skype and Microsoft Teams and Zoom and Messenger on video and Facetime and Whatsapp groups and… press mute. That’s a whole other blog some time.

Bottom line though, the lead parts in this production are taken by the health service especially those in ICUs. Everyone else, to some extent, is the chorus line. Some are selling us food in supermarkets, or driving the food to the supermarkets, or driving buses that take nurses to work, or modeling the impacts and inventing anti-virals and plasma infusions and vaccines eventually. All we have to do is accept that we are not relevant to this phase of the pandemic and get used to being at home.
Ok, let’s give it a go.