Well, with sport, entertainment, exercise and eating out all off the menu, how are we to occupy ourselves in the current crisis?
Two of the aforementioned pursuits are not applicable in my case. Guess which? Not being an outdoorsy type, I find opening the back door on a fine morning, inhaling deeply and closing it again, sufficient for good health. Like the lilies of the field, I knit not, neither do I sew, bake nor garden. As the saying goes: “Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits.”
Naturally I’m obeying all the hygiene rules. My hands have the texture of lizard skin gloves with repeated washing, my eyes constantly water with pungent disinfectants. If everybody’s using chemical products at the same rate as I am, we may well have to postpone saving the planet – which will make Greta Thunberg very cross.
The news is an endless litany of doom-laden prognostication and many favourite television programmes have been cleared from the schedules. By contrast, the radio rolls on pretty much as usual. I’m happy to report that the coronavirus has not yet stricken Ambridge (although the number of episodes has been reduced) – but it’s only a matter of time I suspect before some elderly character gets the elbow. I know who my money’s on…
I foresee the divorce rate rocketing when this is all over. Walled in with one’s nearest and dearest for an unspecified period will test the bonds of liking, let alone loving, to breaking point. Parents, used to being child-free for at least six hours a day, will get a taste of what their darlings are like in school as they gently persuade them to explore the contents of their carefully prepared lesson packs. As an ex-teacher, I wish them good luck with that one. The siren call of internet sites is too seductive and you can bet the older ones, ostensibly in their rooms to study, are doing nothing of the sort. ‘Learning at home’ will be honoured more in the breach than the observance. As someone who never did anything till the last minute, and still doesn’t, I know these things. In the absence of a teacher, I recommend parents buy a grindstone and apply their child’s nose to it.
I guarantee tensions will run high. There’ll be some spectacular rows. Too much togetherness reveals the character flaws in all of us. A parent once told me she was cut to the heart when her six year old in a passion of rage shouted: “I don’t even LIKE you mummy!”
The progressive shutting down of services is concerning. In common with many ladies of a certain vintage, my terror is that every hairdressing salon will close and my hair will turn quite gold with grief and anxiety. “You could always wear a hat” suggested a sanguine companion. Definitely not. In a hat, I resemble a mouse looking out of a starch box. Perhaps I’ll settle for self-isolation. I’m used to solitude now – indeed, often relish it. You can slipe around all day in your disabels with no face on, watch old series you’d forgotten on obscure television channels, eat chocolate, make no dinner and ignore all that needs to be done, in the absolute certainty that no-one will call. What bliss!
At the time of writing this, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, daffodils are nodding in the grass. There are fat buds on the cherry tree and there’s a blackbird with a twig in its beak, en route to building a chalet bungalow for its mate – a perfect Spring afternoon.
Indoors, the television charts sickness and death. Cameras pan along deserted streets, empty station platforms, sombre hospital corridors and lengthy queues of resigned-looking customers waiting for admittance to supermarkets. We live in sudden times. The buzz phrase on everyone’s lips is, “Stay well! Stay safe!” In a different context American songwriter Tom Lehrer put it more satirically - “Don’t drink the water! Don’t breathe the air!”
