Coronavirus diary

[Warning: Grumpy rant] I woke up in a frigging grumpy shitty mood. I was about to say an unreasonably shitty mood, but I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about it. It’s lasted all day. It’s not about anyone. It’s not about any one thing. It’s about this new frigging reality, this new ‘normal’ that I despise. I hate the fact that I have friends of friends dying and I can’t give my friend a hug. I hate the fact that I can’t get back to Australia to see family and friends. I hate the fact I can’t go for random […]

I was thinking it was Thursday. I have no idea why. My dad called from north Queensland. We had a good chat. Another hour of walking in Dulwich Park. It’s been pretty grim today but that’s English weather. And I have never seen the park so empty. Good social distancing being practiced. On the way there, a woman was approaching me on the footpath. We both veered at the same time to walk on the road. I stepped back on the footpath. We both laughed. Between us there were a good 3 metres. In London we’re pretty good as navigating […]

The start of British Summer Time when clocks go forward an hour. There’s been sun, rain, sleet, light hail. I made the mistake this morning of spending too much time looking at the news and my Twitter feeds. I have two Twitter accounts and switch between them. A much needed nap took a couple of hours. I did get out for a walk. I left my flat. My recycling to go into the recycling bin I left on my internal stairs so I wouldn’t have to put on my shoes, take the recycling out, come back in, take my shoes […]

It’s the quiet and emptiness I can’t get used to. On weekends, my area is under a flight path. I’d be woken up by those planes overhead, annoyed. On my street there’d be traffic. If I was heading off to Dulwich Park to say hello to runners I know, there would be kids lining up outside the library soon to open – somewhere quiet to study. The park on a morning like today’s would have had kids playing football, hundreds of runners doing Parkrun, British Military Fitness teams being shouted at, kids learning to ride bikes and scooters, the café […]

Following yesterday’s post, at 7.59pm, I opened my window and started hearing claps and cheers from a few streets away. The sound swelled. At 8pm, folks on my street joined in, some stepped outside, others clapped and cheered from their windows.  All I could hear were people clapping. I clapped ferociously for a couple of minutes. My hands were numb for half an hour. The great #NHSapplause, to show appreciation for all those working in the NHS, putting themselves at very real risk to help the UK population. So yes, yesterday was a deeply peculiar day – mourning the loss […]

It’s been a strange day. My daily outing for exercise consisted of an hour’s walk through my local park. For London in Spring it has been a glorious day with bright sunshine. On days like this, even if kids were at school and most others were at work, in normal times the park would be rammed with people – dog walkers, a lot of us self-employed types, cyclists, runners, groups of mums with babies and toddlers, school groups. I’ve never seen so few people. There are no longer the groups of mums with babies meeting up for a coffee, nor […]