Opinion

Anita Robinson: As Covid drags on, time to stiffen the sinews and think positive

I’m considering opening up my roof-space to the public 
I’m considering opening up my roof-space to the public  I’m considering opening up my roof-space to the public 

Perhaps it escaped your notice that last Wednesday was National Stress Awareness Day – though in the current climate our stress levels are probably at a continuous high.

‘Stress’ is a rather fashionable complaint now, endemic across the generations from primary school pupils to pensioners and everybody in between, who, we are led to believe, are living in a state of nervous tension, magnifying the ordinary bumps and dips of everyday life into a syndrome.

Covid has upset the even tenor of our days. Emotions are heightened; apprehension, anxiety and dread create a downward trajectory of mood and we’re all cultivating an ineradicable furrow between our brows. It’s increasingly likely we’re in this for the long haul, so we need to adjust our emotional antennae. Time to stiffen the sinews and think positive.

Whatever became of the quiet stoicism and decent emotional reticence of previous generations? Now the norm of every competitive television game or talent show is a screaming, hugging, incoherent sobfest whether in success or failure. Lord knows, buttoning up our emotions is psychologically bad for us, but we don’t need to make public exhibitions of ourselves.

Today, repression of one’s feelings is seen as an unhealthy thing and the cult of ‘self’ enjoys an exaggerated importance. The reality is, each of us is but one tiny cog in the great wheel of the society we live in – a small but significant element whose function is important to the smooth operation of the whole. Unfortunately, not all of us are committed to playing our part. My heart goes out to university students on the cusp of adulthood, fledglings learning to fly, but deprived of the formative experiences of communal living with strangers in questionable premises, short commons, unwise choices, the joys and fears of autonomy and the best time of their lives. My sympathies too to parents of young children who’ve discovered the role of teacher is considerably tougher than they imagined.

I’m all awe and astonishment at how my friends choose to ‘improve the shining hour’ of unaccustomed leisure. What a frenzy of batch-baking, cupboard clearing, wardrobe re-organisation and garage evisceration! Much to my embarrassment and dismay, Daughter Dear has become a disciple of ‘Mrs Hinch’, the obsessive cleaner who gives her implements pet names, disinfects her dog and has written a book on how to thoroughly sanitise one’s lovely home. On my recent visit, Daughter Dear rather pointedly left a copy on my bedside table. It makes eye-watering reading. In my case, the ‘cleaning gene’ has skipped a generation. Though my expenditure on anti-bacterial wipes is excessive, my inherited crystal is cloudy and the silver dull. To me, there’s a frisson of delicious guilt at not bothering. Minimum maintenance but maximum hygiene is my mantra, leaving oodles of time for more worthy intellectual pursuits. Well, that’s the theory. Truth to tell, I’ve discovered ‘rubbish’ television. And I mean that literally.

In this conservation-conscious climate, reclamation, restoration, re-purposing and selling-on are the way to go, built on the premise that one man’s junk is another’s jewel. The schedules are full of it – ‘Money for Nothing’, ‘Find It, Fix It, Flog It’ and ‘The Repair Shop’ (with gorgeous Will, the brown-eyed wood wizard) but ‘Salvage Hunters’ is my favourite, featuring a small pugnacious man who travels the country and abroad in a white van, accompanied by his monosyllabic assistant, there for the heavy lifting. To describe some of his purchases as ‘distressed’ is an understatement, but apparently there’s a thriving market for the battered, the tattered and the broken, valued for their design, their age or their rarity.

I’m considering opening up my roof-space to the public. There’s three generations of stuff up there, little of intrinsic value, but each item telling a story or conjuring a memory of where and when it stood and the people who chose it and cared for it until either fashion or wear decreed its relegation to Limbo. As Auntie Mollie (who never threw anything away) so sagely put it, “Keep a thing for long enough….”