I started off today feeling a little tired but otherwise pretty chill. Following a very long phone call last night, I put on Alien, a film I’ve not watched for perhaps a year or so. I stayed up way too late and had a late start to the day. I had coffee, much coffee, and then went for my daily bit of exercise.
I had felt relaxed until hitting Dulwich Park. There were too many people about to feel comfortable – walkers, runners, cyclists, lots of kids. I walked up past Dulwich College and went into Sydenham Woods. For the first part of the wander through the woods, where the paths were wide, it was pretty quiet. I even tried a little bit of running, just to see how my knee is following an injury that just won’t sort itself out. I hit a section of the woods where social distancing became an issue. I have never seen that part of the woods so full of people.
Heading back towards home via Dulwich Village, my level of irritation started to rise. The number of people out seemed even greater than it would have been in ‘normal’ times on a busy Sunday. At that point all I could think of is that I want to be home. Home is where I headed, chatting to a few neighbours sunning themselves on their front steps. They have gardens but the gardens are small and on my side of the road, they don’t get much in the way of sun until high summer. I’m now happily back at home with sunshine blazing through my windows, sitting on my sofa, as I type this.
I’m wondering what all this anxiety inducing social distancing might mean in the longer term.
From pretty early days in this global pandemic we now find ourselves in, I’d been watching the number of infections and deaths climb in China. Cases started popping up around the world and it was clear that not only is coronavirus not ‘just a case of mild flu’, but would hit. The first positive cases were identified in the UK in late January. And living in London, well, it’s crowded.
It was about three weeks before lockdown I stopped going to the gym. It was two weeks before lockdown I did some extra shopping. Not a huge amount, but enough in case I had to pretty much lock myself in for a few weeks if I got ill. It was before the panic hit. Around the same time I had stopped going anywhere requiring public transport including my Chinese class, except for one face to face meeting. My last trip to the library was 9 days before lockdown. I wiped the books after bringing them home.
Calls had been growing for lockdown to be put in place. The Cheltenham Festival, a festival of horse racing which attracts 10s of 1,000s of people, went ahead. Two days before lockdown, Parkrun had been cancelled nationally for the first time. That weekend, the PM, Boris Johnson, and Carrie Symonds, announced their engagement and her pregnancy. It seemed like odd timing for this announcement. Following a COBRA meeting on the Monday, lockdown was announced.
What this all means for me is that I’ve been practicing some form of social distancing for about 7 weeks now. This means, in living alone, I’ve not had anyone within a metre of me during this time. And people have only managed to get that close when I’ve not been able to get out of the way. Walks or shopping can be stressful.
I was always comfortable being on crowded buses, crowded tubes. I was always fine with walking through stations like Waterloo or Victoria at peak times. I was used to crowds. But that feels like a lifetime ago. And some form of social distancing will be in place for many months to come.
My hope is when the time comes, that I can get used to crowds again, that the thought of someone shaking my hand or giving me a hug, doesn’t fill me with horror. And my real hope, particularly for kids dealing with this, is that they don’t grow up thinking that physical proximity with friends, with grandparents, with others, is something to be feared.
Things will once again be ‘normal’, though it might be a ‘new normal’. The thought of this gives me hope.
So that’s it for Day 27. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!