London feels weird. It’s quiet. It’s way too frigging quiet. It’s so quiet I hear the bees in the flowers in the tree outside my window. There’s rarely the sound of a plane and I’ve already become a curtain twitcher, peering out at anything and everything happening on my street, only without the curtains, I have blinds. Sorry dear neighbours….
And physical distancing? Still getting used to that one when out and about. It does require a lot of jumping off the footpath into the road. In my local area, the footpaths are not narrow, but certainly not 2 metres wide. Pleased to say there’s not too much traffic about.
I’m twitchy, I’m teary, I’m anxious and I’m spending way too much time on social media and news sites. Today, first day of lockdown in the UK, I decided to follow a lot less.
So what’s there to say?
The coronavirus is shit. It’s destroying lives everywhere and I’ve been following it for weeks and weeks with my head in my hands. It’s just shit. No pretending otherwise.
I’m trying to take everything day by day. On the whole, I’m pretty good with a lot of ambiguity in my life, but this is really taking the piss.
So what’s my take on coping? In this weird world of lockdown where it seems sensible to have at least one good cry a day, I’m doing what I can to stay sane. From what I’m reading on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, this is what we’re all trying to do.
I decided to keep this ‘lockdown’ diary. It’s my way of helping me keep sane, or at least be able to check what day of the week it is.
I also wanted to pull out those weird and wonderful moments of the day, the utterly absurd, the WTF, that if I don’t write down, I’ll forget. Like last Thursday when I found two large packets of cornchips hiding at the back of an M&S top shelf. I’d wanted nachos for dinner.
Initially I saw no cornchips, and I mean none where there’s usually a good amount of stock. Then I spied with my little eye two large packets hiding at the back of the top shelf. I stood on my tippy toes, reached up and pulled them both forward. I took one and left the other. The joy I felt… completely absurd.
Day 1 includes some successes, if you can call them that –
- Dancing along to disco music while rearranging the furniture. And the rearranging, I’m going to be spending a whole lot of time indoors and needed a bit of a change;
- Finished a book! Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s, The Absolution, it’s Icelandic crime fiction. And the good news, I get to read it again in the coming weeks as my brain has been mush so wasn’t able to follow it. As of today, libraries are closed and I may find myself short of books (yep, a terrifying thought);
- A walk in my local park as my one permitted form of exercise a day. I spent most the time on the paths where there were fewer folks wandering, cycling, running, where it was possible to maintain the appropriate distance.
- Some good phone and messaging chats with family and friends.
This lockdown stuff is going to take some getting used to it. The idea I can’t just go for a walk around the block, go into my local library, do the stuff I normally do, even find what I want on the shelves in supermarkets (though I’ve been told things are much better than a few days ago), is strange. I’m finding it hard to adjust to a new reality when that reality seems to change every day. I’m certainly not complaining. I’m more than happy to do my part to #flattenthecurve.
So that’s it for Day 1. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!
Running folk who follow this blog
I’m repurposing runningonfull. This makes sense as I can no longer really run. I was doing a lot of treadmill running which was OK on my knee, but I stopped going to the gym about 3 weeks ago due to my concerns about coronavirus. All gyms of course are now closed and for how long, no way to know.
If you’re not interested in reading me rambling on about lockdown etc, and if you unsubscribe, I won’t judge 😊
Here’s to many good runs going forward.