Like most of you, I feel like I\u2019m living in a sort of suspended animation. I certainly have no idea what day of the week it is since today is much the same as yesterday and the day before. Weekends used to provide a finite focus for the rest of the week\u2014things to look forward to like going to the movies on Friday evening, a party with friends on the Saturday and maybe a roast Sunday lunch with the family, but all days are now the same. Looking back, I find that whatever used to be normal, now seems completely unreal. How quickly we adapt as humans!
\nWhen things get back to the way they used to be (as one day they surely will), I am probably going to have to re-learn how to shake hands without flinching. If anybody moves closer than six feet to me, it feels like common assault. Some days it\u2019s a bit like living in a late-night science fiction movie where some awful disaster has overtaken the globe and I\u2019m the only human left alive.
\nHowever, despite all the undoubted gloom and inconvenience of being locked-down and the endless daily drip-feed of virus statistics, there are some positive things about being in locked-down isolation. Just make sure you don\u2019t keep watching the news each day because that\u2019s enough to turn you into a gibbering heap of nerves. I find myself following the daily death statistics as if they were football results.
\nNoise: Or rather, the lack of it. There\u2019s virtually no engine noise, no brake screeching and certainly no thunderous roar of motorbikes racing each other to death (sometimes literally) via Weymouth and back along the B3157 coast road. Up high in the sky, it\u2019s an unbroken swathe of blue\u2014no white contrails marking the transit of yet more holidaymakers jetting exhaustedly to far off Marmaris, Marrakesh or Magaluf. I can hear the occasional combine in the fields, but mostly it\u2019s bird song and the buzzing of bees. My ears (long accustomed to the pleasurable thunder of Jimi Hendrix or Aerosmith at full blast) can finally be awoken by the soft shrill of sparrows arguing noisily in the bush next to my bedroom or the glorious blackbird song from the garden. This is good.
\nMoney: As I\u2019m already retired, there\u2019s no great drop in income and no guilt at not earning my hourly pay. And, since we don\u2019t have small children living with us which might threaten peace and sanity, my outgoings are less than normal. Actually, very greatly less! With no restaurants or caf\u00e9s open and no coffee bars or pubs to tempt me out for a drink or a meal with mates, I have saved several hundreds of pounds this last month. Nor can I pop down the shops and pick up a spare pair of socks or a new tie\u2014neither of which do I really need\u2014and I can\u2019t poke about looking for bargains in our local Saturday market. Do I miss going out and doing non-essential stuff? No, I can\u2019t say that I do. I miss the people, but I don\u2019t really miss picking up a second-hand light blue pie dish which would probably sit at the back of the cupboard until I gave it to a charity shop in two years\u2019 time.
\nKeeping in touch: I\u2019m most grateful for new technology and the rise of WhatsApp and Zoom. I make a point of calling, talking to and\u2014now\u2014even seeing my children and grandchildren, my sisters and my favourite cousins on a regular basis. OK, so I see them only on a little screen, but it\u2019s great! I swear I never did it this much before. Back in whatever we consider to be normal times, I would often put it off and say I\u2019d call my cousin Harry tomorrow. But now, the sense of isolation has made even tenuous family links seem so much more important. I could say for sure that the act of being \u2018locked down\u2019 has made me closer to my family, which is a bit weird but true. Distance makes the heart grow fonder etc.
\nLearning new stuff: With all this extra time on hand, I could be learning Spanish, studying art and how to paint properly, re-learning how to play jazz piano or even starting to write my memoirs. But you know I probably won\u2019t. The thought is there and so is the attraction of learning a new skill, but I know I won\u2019t be doing anything that constructive. I\u2019ll continue thinking about doing it which will give me a positive feeling all day, but I probably won\u2019t actually do anything except (hopefully) finish reading the whole of War and Peace. This is something I\u2019ve always wanted to do, but again possibly never will\u2026. I\u2019ll get to the bit where Rostov is involved in the Battle of Austerlitz, and wonder if Prince Andrei\u2019s wound will be terminal. I got here about five years ago at page one hundred and something. If my forced isolation lasts another couple of months, I might get to page 300 out of 1,500. Don\u2019t worry. That won\u2019t happen because they\u2019ll have to start football again by mid-summer, so the clubs can afford to keep paying their multi thousand-a-week prima-donnas. The nation\u2019s virus statistics help put that into its proper perspective.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like most of you, I feel like I\u2019m living in a sort of suspended animation. I certainly have no idea what day of the week it is since today is much the same as yesterday and the day before. Weekends used to provide a finite focus for the rest of the week\u2014things to look forward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-4742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-laterally-speaking","tag-humphrey-walwyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}