I’m at that stage of lockdown where everything is irritating me. And it’s not just that low level rumbling irritation. It’s the screaming at everyone and everything kind of irritation.
Yesterday was a good day.
But last night was one of vivid dreams. And not the good sort. It was the sort where various people in my past who have annoyed me in one way or another came to visit. Their eyes were the same. But their faces had become hideous. I knew who they were from their eyes. Gratefully I don’t have that many folks who fit into that category but enough to mean I woke up exhausted, irritated.
It’s not one of those days when I want to go out into the world. But I did. I went down to M&S for some groceries. On the way there, along Lordship Lane where the footpaths aren’t particularly wide, there was a woman walking with a pram, and her child learning to ride a bike. Only the kid on the bike was ahead of her. I had to keep ducking between parked cars to get the distance right between him and me. I had to keep stopping as there was traffic and couldn’t walk in the middle of the road as I do on side streets. The temptation to say something was great. I didn’t.
And in M&S, I don’t understand how people can’t stick to direction arrows on the floor. There was a youngish couple who seemed quite happy to meander up and down aisles, standing in the middle of them while taking time to choose what sort of bag of lettuce they wanted.
Yep, it’s one of those days.
It’s one of those days if asked how I am I say ‘fine’. For my friends outside the UK, if you ask how someone is over here, and if they say ‘fine’, it makes sense to quickly change the subject and ask nothing more. Or run away.
More political arguments. Boris Johnson, the PM, saying we’re ‘past the peak’. Care home bosses disagreeing. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, and a politician I have a huge amount of respect for, is saying while there’s progress, saying we’re ‘past the peak’ could imply that we’re past the worst of it. Where we are now is fragile and ongoing compliance is necessary.
It’s time to stop with the false reassurances. We don’t have community testing. We have no sense of what proportion of the population has been infected. While work is being done for community testing, 100,000 people will be selected randomly, that will take time.
What we do know is that in England and Wales, those living in deprived areas have double the death rates of those in affluent areas. Black and Minority Ethnic groups are disproportionately impacted in terms of rates of infection and deaths.
On the John Hopkins Covid-19 Tracker, we’ve reached the No.4 spot on number of positives, behind the US, Spain, and Italy. That could shift again over the coming weeks as testing capacity continues to ramp up.
I look forward to the day I have some distance between what I write here and the world we’re in. I don’t read back. It’s still too close and too real and too grim. But writing helps.
So after a day of irritations, and getting very little done, it’s now to settle down into an evening of friendly chats where it’s likely there will be some bitching and moaning about the state of the world, with many laughs; and a G&T or two.
So that’s it for Day 39. Stay safe, stay well, and stay home!