Apologies in advance: this column will be distressing to scientists (including those in my own family, but thankfully none of them read what I write).
The rules of the physical world seem to be abandoning us. The virus acts like no other pathogen. Two metres is entirely subjective now, expanding and contracting to meet our needs. Time is non-Newtonian, like the cornflour you’ve probably resorted to if you have small children to entertain, stiff and fluid at once. Numbers are basically meaningless: in pandemic maths, a figure such as 413 deaths – the one released on the day I am writing, an unthinkable catastrophe at another time – is encouraging, a cause for some optimism.
The old certainties are eroded, but tucked away in our isolation pods, new physical laws are emerging for this way of living. The science is in its early stages, but empirically, some important developments have been observed. As a person with absolutely no grasp of science of any kind, I am your perfect guide to these.
1. Wherever you want to be in your lockdown space, someone else urgently needs to be there. Yes, right now. In my space, that person is also always wielding a hammer. I believe it was Chekhov who said do not introduce a hammer in act 1 if you are not going to hammer like a maniac through acts 2-4 and this dramatic principle is respected here.
2. Windows. However you like them is the opposite of how your fellow inmates like them. Now your life is just a window-based war of attrition. This is how the new proverb “When a window opens, a window closes” has emerged.
3. Since we are all now ruminants, constantly grazing, we have developed an extra stomach to accommodate our preferred self-soothing lockdown snack when full of other foods. I have a cheese and onion crisp stomach now. Don’t argue with science.
4. Speaking of food, that treat item you have been looking forward to, saving, obsessing over? Someone has already eaten it. They didn’t even enjoy it! They were just filling time. They might even have left a bit, in the bin for you to find.
5. On the topic of bins, Bin Perception Syndrome, whilst not new to science, has been reportedly exacerbated during the corona crisis. The syndrome manifests in two ways: either sufferers can no longer see the bin at all, even when surrounded by flies and being excavated by an opportunistic dog, or they can see nothing but the bin, which they perceive as vast, pulsing, taking up their entire consciousness.
6. Fractions: for any attempt to watch something “as a family” or other collective isolation unit, the following proportions apply: ¼ asleep; ¼ claimed they wanted to watch but are now fiddling with their phones; ¼ never pretended they would do anything but fiddle with their phones; and ¼ loudly criticising, hating every moment, but in fact the only person with eyes actually on screen.
7. If you work solidly for eight hours, taking only two 10-minute breaks and ostentatiously mention how busy you are and how imperative it is that you must not be disturbed, the only time someone will disturb you is during those 10-minute breaks, when you will be either watching a video of a horse with a luxuriant moustache or attempting a headstand. You will not be succeeding at the headstand when interrupted: you will be flailing like a capsized turtle.
8. The apex predator in every new urban multi-prey system is the seagull. This is another excellent reason not to go outside: with no discarded KFC Zingers to feast on, they are hungrier and angrier than ever.
9. Biologists have also observed that a new, lean super-species of domestic dog is emerging thanks to frequent lengthy walks taken by pod members to get away from other pod members, using the dog as an excuse. The pod is creating a post-lockdown rod for its own back with the super-dog, which will require a minimum of four hours daily exercise.
10. Incidence of podcasting in the general population runs at 0.08%. In males aged 28-50 in lockdown it runs at 79%. They used to say you were never more than 6ft from a rat, now you’re never more than two houses from a man with opinions and a microphone.
11. All conversations follow a fixed formula that my friend has named the “coronamöbius strip”, looping and repeating infinitely. Nothing has happened to any of us (if we’re lucky), but we need to express it, yet again.
12. There is a fixed amount of morale in a lockdown space. It does not increase or decrease, simply passes between individuals within the space. The nice thing about this is that you can reframe your filthy moods as an act of altruism towards other pod members.
Follow Emma on Twitter @BelgianWaffling
.png?w=600)
