London lockdown: day 34

The thing about being a bit down and feeling weird in lockdown is that you don’t always have the energy to write about being down and and feeling weird in lockdown. It’s day 34 now and it’s getting a bit boring. You know that kind of boredom you experienced as a kid in the summer holidays (before the internet), when your parents would point out all the things you could do and you’d just lie there and be like…”But I don’t FEEL like doing THAT.” For the first couple of weeks the flat was sparkling clean, loads of DYI and home improvement was being carried out, and loads of meals were being cooked. I think it changed around the start of Easter holidays, (Good Friday was day 19), which I had totally forgotten about, meaning I was taken by surprise by the 4 days off work. On the face of it, 4 days off work when you’re working from home might not sound like a big deal, but it was actually glorious to free myself of the obligation to be sitting in one chair for 7.5 hours a day.

At that stage, I had been careful to do some form of exercise every day, and was being very stringent in not increasing our alcohol intake; if anything it was less than what we were drinking before lockdown. It was causing some tension between Jack and I…he is a freelance graphic designer and art director, and prior to this pandemic had never had more than 2 weeks off work at a time. He was in that cognitive dissonance mode between a) wanting to enjoy the time off work and party hardy and b) use the time to do productive things like develop his website, update his portfolio and be healthy.

I asked my social media bubble how they’d been managing their alcohol intake, and how they were interpreting that. I had a mixed bag – some were sticking to their usual minimal-intake ways, most parents were drinking a little more, and some admitted they were drinking a lot more than usual. One person mentioned something that peaked my interest though, and that was the concept of overfunctioning in a relationship, a term coined by who else but Brené Brown (the lady who has opened up a pop-culture dialogue about toxic shame). I looked into it, and realised I was probably doing a bit of this, not much of a surprise as I definitely go into control-freak mode when I’m anxious. It was breeding a difficult dynamic between us, and I decided to stop taking on a weird parent role and just do whatever the fuck I felt like doing.

So, flash forward a couple of weeks, and I have been my worst self. Worst as in my most slovenly, hedonistic, lazy and just bloody gross. I guess it’s a different worst self than my controlling, overfunctioning worst self. It meant that last weekend (around day 26), I had a real slump. I was in a malaise, and while going and digging about in the garden for a couple of hours made me feel OK for a bit, I was generally deep in a state of ennui. It’s translated into my work this week – in some ways I’ve felt better as I’ve been carrying out more teletherapy sessions and being in contact with clients and their families more…that’s been refreshing, no doubt about it. But for some reason I’ve found the resulting admin more difficult to do. I’ve been exhausted and finding it really difficult to pay attention. I’ve been making more stupid errors with scheduling and time keeping. Not really excusable seeing as that’s literally all I have to do. I’ve been referred to get an ADHD assessment, but I haven’t heard anything back yet. I find that being at home and trying to work without other people being productive around me is really tough. Someone I saw on Twitter this week explained that at the moment, a lot of allied health professionals are having to do their least favourite bit of their jobs all day, every day. We’re in it for the face to face connections, dynamic movements, ad hoc conversations, the last minute speed-walking around schools or hospitals to find our clients. It keeps our energy up. So why aren’t video link calls filling the gap?

I’ve seen some things online this week that have made me feel a bit better. My colleague suggested I start a work Twitter account – and that has kept me in touch with the general ‘mood’ of online SALT. More and more, people have started to comment on how EXHAUSTING they find video calls. My god, other people are finding it hard too! It is absolutely draining. I haven’t been using a headset with a microphone and I’ve been YELLING at the screen, meaning my voice has been shot. I’ve had my video on for 2.5 hour calls, meaning I’m feeling self conscious about my appearance for that whole time. I’m having to be hyper-aware of social cues from the people on the other end, and being over-animated to keep teenagers engaged in our sessions and to let them know I’m safe and friendly. I’m innovating the technology – I’m trialling it for our Department and have to train everyone on using it this week…but it’s taking it out of me.

One positive of stepping ‘down’, is that it’s allowed Jack to step up and take care of me. He’s seen the toll all this has taken on me and now that I’ve stopped trying to control him, he’s making his own decisions about things that I’ve realised were never my things to dictate anyway. I’ve learned to be more independent and to deal with my own shit…which is something I think would have taken a lot longer if this hadn’t happened. It’s ironic, but if you’re inclined to be a bit co-dependent, there’s nothing like living in lockdown to force you to see yourself as a separate person and be able to relinquish control. Ultimately, we’re only ever responsible for ourselves. I’m feeling better and getting into a fitness routine again. My anxiety is showing itself in other ways, but they’re familiar and I have strategies to deal with it.

London lockdown: day 22

We’re over three weeks in now and there are no signs of the lockdown ceasing, a decision with which I fully agree! I live in a state of cognitive dissonance; on the one hand I know that we have a daily death rate that has surpassed Italy at its worst…and I was shocked and dismayed a few weeks ago when I tried to fathom the news that around 800 people had died there in one day. Our daily death rate reported on Saturday 11th April was 917 – not including people who died in care homes or at home. On the other hand I am managing the self-isolation surprisingly well…I enjoy having meandering hours for leisurely activities, more energy to exercise, more creativity in cooking, and an investment in maximising my living space. My friends have agreed that it feels somehow wrong to celebrate the positives the enforced down-time has brought when so many people are suffering in a horribly visceral way.

Jack and I have been following the rules, only going out once a day either to shop or exercise. I’ve been wearing a dust mask bought from a hardware store when I go food shopping and I make sure both of us wash our hands when we get back home. On Thursday we went for a bit of joint exercise during my work lunch break – I jogged using the Couch to 5K app (my third run – woo!) and Jack skateboarded around Clissold Park. It was INSANELY full of people, to the point where we were actively having to dodge one other. I was reminded of how fucking annoying people can be…whole families blocked entire pathways and passive aggressively refused to move even when they saw us coming up behind them, causing us to have to say “excuse me”, and then squeeze past too close when they gave us an inch. Large signs at the park entrance instructed joggers to keep left to avoid contact, however when I approached another jogger who was incorrectly keeping to the right, she moaned “Fine, I guess I’LL move then”, which unreasonably infuriated me.

My contact with friends hasn’t exponentially increased as might have been expected…if anything I’ve realised how few people I actually want to talk to and discovered that I’m probably an introvert who has been forcing myself into manic degrees of socialisation because…I felt like I had to? Maybe it’s just the slight awkwardness of talking via video chat that puts me off. Instead of just meeting up and conversation flowing as a by-product of being in each other’s company, video calls add a different set of pragmatic standards that I haven’t as yet fully unpicked.

This will sound terrible, but for the first time in my 30s, I am acutely glad that I don’t (yet) have children. Being stuck in a flat with children whilst trying to work would be HARD. Despite generally enjoying lockdown, I am struggling with not falling into the trap of ‘over-functioning’ – feeling responsible for managing the levels of food intake, alcohol consumption, exercising, and general welfare of both Jack and myself, lest we fall into a chaotic tailspin of dysfunction. In times of anxiety, my go-to coping strategy is to exert as much control as possible, unfortunately for my partner. Luckily Jack is good at telling me when I’m encroaching on his autonomy straight away.

We’ve been working on the vege patch every day, and some of our seeds are almost ready to be ‘hardened off’, then planted outside. Exciting! I’ve also had a chance to do another linocut of an old, dried artichoke I found at the bottom of the garden; a leftover from the previous tenants.

 

London lockdown: day 15

Yesterday, Sunday 5th April, felt like another day of milestones. The temperature reached 21 degrees, the Queen delivered her address to the nation and our Prime Minister Boris Johnson got admitted to hospital with Covid19.

There was a lot of apprehension building up in official quarters about the warm weather expected on the weekend. It had been explicitly addressed in the live national update throughout the week, and people had started encouraging others on social media to ignore the sunshine and stay home. We were all reminded that to linger in public spaces would be a direct insult to the memories of the two NHS nurses who had died that week after contracting Covid-19 from their patients. Their names were Areema Nasreen and Aimee O’Rourke. Both were in their 30s. Even with this news, people flooded parks on Saturday to sunbathe – a definite ‘non-essential’ activity under the lockdown rules. In South London, Brockwell Park had to be closed, as over 3000 people (even more than usual?!), crammed in for some leisurely time in the sun. WTF.

A general air of disbelief and condemnation on various forms of media resulted in a lower turnout on Sunday. At first I felt like a middle class prick complaining about how selfish people were being (due to having some private outdoor space), but then I thought nah, you could easily go for a lovely walk for an hour or so, basking in the full glory of the sun, without parking up and getting out your fucking picnic basket in literal clusters of disease all over this park. 

I was feeling quite sensitive; I woke up in a great mood on Sunday but then the heavily black-eyelinered girl who lives upstairs with her seemingly chill boyfriend aired me when I said a cheery “hello!” out the front. They, as a couple, inexplicably  dislike Jack and I, and it hurts my feelings. When your world has become quite small it’s easy to become neurotic about these things, and I had planned out about 5 different notes to slip under their door, offering to make sure we didn’t go in the garden too much, asking them if there’s anything they want us to change, offering them an abundance of vegetables from the vege patch (which they have already approved of). In the end, I happened to walk out the front and actually inspect the rubbish that was littering the front wall-garden thingy (I don’t know how to explain it), that the landlord had mentioned was a bone of contention with the neighbours, but that Jack had sworn was not anything of our making. As I was filling the garden waste bin, I recognised the random bits of detritus as various bits of packaging from our meals over the last, say, 2 months. Basically, we cleaned it up and lo, our neighbours waved at us through the window today! I guess we were the assholes.

I was in a spontaneous Houseparty call when the Queen’s address aired at 8pm Sunday. Jack was deeply involved in some design work when I watched it later on my phone and didn’t notice when I started crying. I’m not a monarchist, but the fact that it was only the fifth time the Queen had addressed the nation really drove it home that we are living in extraordinary times. I’ve never felt more British than when she spoke of “self-discipline”, “quiet, good-humoured reserve” and “fellow-feeling,” Interesting that language more geared towards fostering discipline and adhesion to rules was used over more ‘battle’ oriented vocabulary which would incite a spirit of rebellion against the virus (and therefore maybe misdirected to local authority).

If you had ever told me the Queen would be reassuring the nation about a pandemic, I would never have believed you. The moment she mentioned speaking to the children who had been sent away during WW2 for their own safety, I was hit with a wave of emotion. Those poor children…but also, how could I be getting reassured by the same woman?! In the same lifetime. I imagine everyone in the world is having these ironically surreal moments of clarity, that are at once wholly relatable but entirely unique.

I received the news immediately after my delayed viewing of the speech that Boris Johnson had been admitted to hospital. As he had already been mildly ill with a confirmed case of the virus for around 10 days, I believed reports that he had only been admitted for routine tests. However, tonight we found out that he’s been moved to the Intensive Care Unit. There’s some chat of Russian media reporting that he is on a ventilator, which has been wholly denied by the UK. He is supposedly conscious, non-ventilated and still our Prime Minister. Not the one I voted for, but a person who symbolises so much right now. If the Queen provides us with the steady perspective of someone who has ruled for the better part of a century, then Boris John’s fate is a stark lesson in the fickleness of privilege.

 

 

 

 

 

London lockdown: day 2

Today has been brighter, literally and figuratively. I woke up to the morning sun lighting up a corner of the room, and decided to follow through on last night’s promise to myself to do some exercise. Yesterday, during what is becoming my daily prime-time news conniption, I’d realised I need to burn off some of the tense energy that inevitably comes from all of this unexpected change.

Traditionally I’ve never been into strenuous exercise due to being a) hedonistic and b) conditioned by years of embarrassingly failed physical activities  (potentially due to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, though my assessment  has been postponed to May). Strenuous being defined as anything that would break a sweat.

However! Since moving to Stoke Newington I’ve taken up reformer pilates twice a week. It’s hard…and great for hypermobility. It’s enlightened me as to how I can do exercise bordering on cardio without hurting myself. I had just started strutting around announcing that my butt was almost *too* tight when the social distancing began. So, I took advantage of the first warm, sunny day of the year and did walking-lunge lengths of the garden. I did them until my legs were shaking, then I did another twenty minutes of pilates exercises and weight exercises given to me by a Physiotherapist.

While I was doing that, Jack decided to put up the small greenhouse we bought so that we can start growing some of our own vegetables. We’ve been trying to do little bits towards setting up a mega, self-sustaining vege patch every day…and as soon as the seeds I’ve ordered arrive , we’re ready to start germinating.

Besides that, I went out to the shops (we’re allowed to leave the house once a day). It was one in, one out of the Post Office and the Pharmacy, meaning there was a significant queue outside both. The lines were mostly made up of people keeping the requisite 2 meters apart, though there were some people who clearly didn’t take it seriously and stood quite close to other people, which was a bit stressful. There was definitely a different ‘vibe’ in both places – markers on the floor at the Pharmacy indicated how far away people should stand from the counter. I was directed to go directly to one of the counters from the front door of the Post Office. I was wearing a dust mask (bought from a hardware store) and had brought my own pen to fill out the forms. The counter at the Post Office smelled like disinfectant and the Pharmacist was wearing a surgical mask.

There was a limited range of meat available at the food market I went to, but plenty of fresh fruit, veg and eggs. All of it was organic so it was scandalously expensive, but good to know it’s still out there. Last night we ordered pizza – we thought it would be better to order food rather than using the canned or frozen stuff we have.

Since a lot of my work is non-direct now, and we’re still figuring out how to roll out the phone/video client sessions, I’m finding it a little bit hard to focus for 7.5 hours in my own home. The anxiety around the wider situation hasn’t helped either, but I feel like the rhythm we’re currently in may be the one we’re working with for at least a few weeks. Tomorrow I’m going to start setting up an approach to work that allows me and my clients to make the most of the situation.

London lockdown: day 1

It’s been a while!

I thought it would be a good time to start documenting what is happening in London at the moment. Every day the Prime Minister (not the PM I chose but he’s the one we’re stuck with for now) makes a live national announcement providing an update on the Corona virus pandemic. It was only about 10 days ago that I skipped past a documentary called Pandemic on Netflix, thinking it belonged in the ‘mildly interesting but highly unlikely’ bin. I was watching shows about Doomsday ‘preppers’ and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

Now, I’m kicking myself for not going ahead and buying a laying hen a week ago, because people are panic buying them and breeders have had to put a limit on purchases (3 at a time). Tomorrow I’m working from home, delivering NHS Speech and Language Therapy assessments via Whatsapp video. Soon though, I will most likely be retrained and redeployed to assist in the hospitals, in order to combat the virus. Until then, I’ll be taking advantage of the sunshine on my breaks and digging up sections of the garden that I share with the neighbours to install two vegetable patches. Jack is going to help me construct the portable greenhouse we ordered online. Around 1000 seeds are on their way to me in the post so we can grow our own vegetables through the summer.

It sounds dramatic, but I’m intentionally avoiding hyperbole and just stating the facts. We’ve just reached a milestone in our race towards globalisation. At the turn of the new year, a novel coronavirus jumped from animal to human in Wuhan, China. It’s still not even clear what animal exactly, but it’s thought it originated in bats. Why are bats so virus-ridden?

We watched the situation get worse in China with the sort of detached concern to which we’ve become accustomed. Virus deaths and government lockdown? How unfortunate for them. Then it started spreading. Chinese (and people mistaken for being Chinese) were assaulted on London streets. People became self-conscious about coughing. Being mixed race Chinese, I became more aware of suppressing my frequent urges to cough and generally snuffle away with my allergies on public transport. At the end of January I began a new job that requires a 1.5 hour one way commute on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow. It’s my dream job and the pinnacle of my career; I could not be more happy. But I began choosing my seats strategically, positioning myself away from travellers sitting with their pieces of luggage. I’m ashamed to admit, I avoided anyone who I believed may have been travelling from China. No, I was *inconsistent* in my avoidance. Sometimes I talked myself out of it, steadfastly sitting opposite a family speaking Mandarin with enough luggage to start a new life, for the sake of not contributing to s xenophobic sentiment. On other days, I took a more selfish approach.

Only a week ago I was still half-jokingly telling my workmate to keep his cough away from me. He had been unwell (pale, clammy) for a couple of days, and then developed a hacking, uncontrollable dry cough that lasted for a couple of weeks. I asked him if he was sure he didn’t have ‘corona’, he laughed and said “nope.” I was annoyed, and kept a distance of at least a meter in meetings (because we still had meetings?!). However, I didn’t want to be ‘that guy.’ Who wants to kick up a fuss and look like an asshole in a new job, picking on someone who’s been there for years? Nightmare.

Tonight the Prime Minister announced restrictions on people’s liberty of movement the likes of which have never been seen in the UK during peacetime. A politician who, only four years ago, made a mockery of the National Health Service by standing in front of a bus promising it would receive £350,000,000 if we left the European Union (spoiler: it didn’t). Tonight he acknowledged the NHS is currently the only thing standing between British society and its disintegration.

Tonight at 8.30pm we were told that being asked politely to stay at home a.k.a. to ‘socially isolate’ was not working, and that more stringent measures were required. In a strange reversal of ideologies, Boris Johnson the right-wing libertarian (yeah I said right-wing, ‘Centre-right’ now is just ‘right’), implemented strict government intervention and regulation of social gatherings and business operations. Me, who considers myself a government intervention-loving leftie, had a borderline panic attack (still not hyperbole) at the thought of my civil liberties being taken away and being policed if I break the rules about leaving my home. I feel trapped in a cage despite being privileged and being able to a) continue working remotely and b) enjoy a flat with a garden, together with my partner.

I’m also worried about my family being so far away in Australia, and that the likelihood that I’ll be able to fly home if anything goes wrong will soon be extremely low/non-existent due to border closures. Currently quarantine is a deterrent, but also travelling via aeroplane poses a huge risk in term of contracting the disease and then spreading it onto my family. I’m worried about my Mum being 66 and still working as a nurse in the emergency department at a major hospital. My Dad continues to go to work as a truck driver (and if shit hits the fan in Australia he will likely be redeployed to deliver essential goods). I’m worried about my partner who is a heavy smoker and wheezes at night. The symptoms are essentially a severe pneumonia except instead of drowning in phlegm, your body, in its bid to save itself, triggers a devastating immune reaction and the inflammation in your lungs stops you breathing. That’s my understanding anyway.

For the first time in my #firstworldproblems ass, I’m legitimately worried about food. We’re being assured by the government that the supply chain is intact and there will be enough food if people aren’t selfish and only buy what they need…but I can’t get any slots for an online delivery. We’re being told to stay home, but we need to go to the shops. When people go, some shelves (at least), are bare. I’m ‘lucky’ in that I work for the NHS and can go during special shopping hours if needed – the supermarkets have set aside specific times for key workers to do their shopping. All businesses that are deemed ‘non-essential’ are being forced to close. We have enough to last a couple of weeks at home…but what then? McDonalds has closed completely in the UK, as well as Nando’s, Starbucks, Subway, Greggs…I would have thought that during a fucking riot I could walk into a McDonalds, get a cheeseburger and be on my way. To not have those pillars of capitalism freely available is…unsettling.

Everything is topsy turvy. We’ve been encouraged to be individualistic in our desperate bids for material wealth. The flames of populist, right-wing nationalism has been stoked since the 2008 financial crisis. Yet a global understanding of how interconnected we all are might be the one silver lining of this unprecedented chapter in history.