Opinion

Anita Robinson: Eleven months into pandemic and I've developed Can't Be Bothered Syndrome

Anita Robinson
Anita Robinson Anita Robinson

Almost a year now since pandemic pandemonium struck and panic has morphed into sullen resignation to the status quo.

I was so disciplined at the beginning. Up at seven as usual, fit to answer the door fully dressed with a face on by 8:30; house pristine by noon, a nutritious light lunch (no convenience foods) a leisurely perusal of the papers; then a home-cooked dinner, selective television viewing, bed at a sensible hour with a good book and uninterrupted slumber.

Oh, I was a paragon of all the virtues. Or an absolute sickener. You choose.

Eleven months down the line, where did it all go wrong? Though sound in mind and limb, but suffering a serious case of hair despair, I have developed chronic CBBS – Can’t Be Bothered Syndrome. My iron resolve has lapsed into lassitude and aimlessness. Individual days are long, nameless, dateless and shapeless, yet the weekends arrive with alarming rapidity. Knock away the social structures, the sense of purpose guaranteed by normality and the result is a speedy decline into a state of flabby inertia. It brings a new kind of understanding of people who slob about all day in their jimjams or sordid sportswear.

Falling at the first moral hurdle was the switching off of my alarm clock, reasoning that if there’s nothing to get up for, why get up? Lie there and be driven doolally by Stephen Nolan and his endless procession of politicians and pundits digging up new bones of contention and gnawing on them ad nauseam. Shouting at the radio is an inauspicious start to the day. Frowsty and cross with Boris-like bed hair, as sure as I step into the shower, the doorbell rings with a delivery of something useless I’ve impulse-ordered as a ‘comfort buy’. By the time I’m fit for human company it’s too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, so ‘brunch’ is a meal that starts with porridge and ends with cake.

Collecting the post, I notice the winter sunshine focussed like a laser beam on the hall cabinet, full of my mother’s glass and silver, one cloudy, the other tarnished. Perhaps I’ll spend an industrious couple of hours washing one and polishing the other? I’ve been promising to do this for eleven months. Alas – my schedule is already full – so, not today.

I’ve become hopelessly addicted to afternoon ‘junk’ television – a term I use literally. Antiques, restoration and recycling programmes – the latter, variations on the theme of cobbling together a coffee table out of two rusty pram wheels and a worm eaten wardrobe door. One can slump comfortably on the sofa from noon till six by judicious changing of channels.

Unfortunately, cosiness leads to involuntary ‘dropping off’. I wake two hours later, shivery and cramped, having completely wasted the day. If “sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,” I must’ve fabricated whole jumpers in a series of afternoon naps. Stricken by conscience I attempt to regain the moral high ground by writing ‘to do’ lists. Regrettably, the kitchen noticeboard is often as far as they get, since the cold logic that listing tasks doesn’t equate to doing them, hasn’t occurred to me.

To the kitchen to prepare dinner. Kitchen implements conspire to frustrate me. A tin-opener lodges fast in a can of tomatoes. Infinitely more serious is the corkscrew that remains immovable in the wine bottle. Post wineless dinner, with the guilty M&S containers buried deep in the recycling bin, the evening is devoted to making and taking calls. Since nobody’s been anywhere or done anything, conversation is predictable. “Me and mine are alright. How are you and yours? When are the hairdressers going to open? I’m like Worzel Gummidge.”

And so to bed, where, naturally, having borrowed sleep in the day I can’t sleep at night. Off to the kitchen and a large mug of hot chocolate and a little sweet something to accompany it. Bless the banana bread and brownies brigade for their generosity. It’s ten past three a.m. and I’m chirpy as a cricket. How to improve the shining hour? Thinks… I might make a start on the ‘Irish News’ piece – if only I could come up with an idea….