Monday
Oh frabjous day – callooh callay! Monday 17, that long-awaited day that marks our arrival at the next staging post of the roadmap out of lockdown. Swap your horses, adjust your britches, take a draught of small beer and regard with pleasure the great plains of freedom lying before you (ignore any musterings of variants you think you see on the horizon. They are not there).
My plans were arrayed. Tiny, tiny plans but that’s the scale I most happily work at. I planned to work in a cafe, have lunch indoors with a friend, go swimming in the afternoon. I managed none of them. It seemed enough to know that they were once again possible. Baby steps, tinier even than the plans.
Meanwhile, other people are booking holidays overseas (not trips abroad to see family – that’s wholly different, obviously). And not only booking but double-booking; making reservations at hotels, cottages and B&Bs in Britain that they can use if their destination country becomes a no-fly zone. Which also means that they will cancel the British one at the last minute if their preferred option remains open, thereby crapping all over small businesses across the nation. So, you know, socially anxious, neurotic and hermitic I may be, but at least I’m not doing that. At least my people, while we do no active good in the world, do very little active harm.
Tuesday
Quiet pride suffuses the air at my parents’ house as Preston, their home city, makes the news and is held up for praise for transforming its local economy by eschewing big business and pursuing a policy of “community wealth-building” for the last decade. It basically means making every effort to invest, employ and keep money circulating locally. There have been times when we’ve heard about the latest initiative from one of the many Mangans still there, circulating locally themselves, and wondered how many more weeks we had before they launched their own currency and/or seceded from Britain.
And it seems to be working, especially if you measure success in the number of Labour seats retained at the recent local elections. Preston’s council was the only red-led authority in Lancashire to keep them all. I don’t want to say that it is typical of the north to find practical, workable solutions to what are (if you regard them with the same attitude that gave rise to the popular regional saying “If we had some ham we could have ham and egg, but we’ve no eggs”) essentially simple problems, while the south runs around getting its cami-knickers in a twist about – uh – everything. So I will just leave you with Dad’s verdict as he turned the page on Proud Preston’s headline. “Grand,” he said. “Grand.”
Wednesday
Just as I was reading about the 99 Flake shortage, my sister rang with news of an even more serious problem. Mum was tachycardic, could hardly walk and 111 had told her to go to A&E. She and Mum had reached a compromise: Mum was allowed to finish the loos and rehang the nets, but now they were off to hospital regardless of the continuing, if breathless, protestations.
My mother is 78 and is basically a machine – she has never had a day’s illness in her life. “D’you think maybe it’s metal fatigue?” I asked.
It was in fact a bad reaction to some antibiotics she was on. The usual amazing work by Lewisham hospital had her back home by late afternoon. And – I’ve said this before but I will say it again, every time – all we had to worry about was her. Not whether her insurance would pay or if we’d made some mistake with the paperwork that would allow them to evade responsibility. No bills. Not going bankrupt to pay them in the future. I do not and will not ever understand why politicians of every possible stripe do not laud and defend the NHS as the human-made miracle it is.
My sister solved the 99 Flake crisis while we were waiting too. “Stick an ordinary one in,” she said. “No, don’t break it in half. What’s the point?” It’s that northern heritage again, you see. Grand.
Thursday
Multimillionaire businessman Simon Constantine discovered a forgotten 3.5-acre walled garden behind an ivy-covered wooden door in a wall on the estate he recently bought. He and his wife have cleaned it up, put in an array of different beds around a central ornamental sculpture and opened it up to the paying public. I cannot help but feel this modern version of The Secret Garden lacks a little of the original’s charm. It’s like hearing a new adventure of Milly-Molly-Mandy in which she and Little Friend Susan welcome the coming of a Tesco Express to the village, or the Railway Children’s dad being guilty after all and the Old Gentleman making a move on their mother instead. Treasure Island being bought by Elon Musk and turned into an apocalypse bunker. Modern life is rubbish.
Friday
So. Five days after the country opened up, I ventured outdoors myself. I went swimming for the first time since all our lockdowns began. No, not wild swimming. As IF. I cleave deeply to the belief that nature is for taming, people, not diving into without a care for parasites, beasties, slimy bits and the likelihood of other horrors so terrible I have not even managed to imagine them yet. Good God, what is wrong with all these hippies? Water, like the rest of nature (see also: snakes, childbirth, novel viruses in the absence of vaccines swiftly created and manufactured on an industrial scale using every bit of rational, scientific, profoundly unnatural genius and method at our disposal), wants you dead. Get yourselves to a lovely clean, clear, chlorinated pool, do some lengths, get out, get dry and get over yourselves.
Digested Week digested: Lockdown opens up the long littleness of life again.
