3 x 3 things I asked myself during lockdown

Really? Can I? I’m aware I tend to use wine to relax in the evenings too much but a bit of me is getting tired of the headaches and forgetting the end of films we watched on TV last night. Now might be the right time — because it is such a very unusual time — to do something unusual: re-set my relationship with wine. (Note to husband: please stop topping up our white wine supply every time you go to the supermarket.)

Lockdown could be a game-changer for a lot of people in that it gives them the chance to realise how their jobs in the Before Time made them feel, compared with how they feel now. How many people will get the creeping suspicion that if their work environment is blighted by issues such as toxic co-workers, workplace bullying, or poor management, they may want to make a change?

I think the British secretly see queuing as one of the pillars of civilisation, but customs vary. This is why, living in mainland Europe years ago, I was confused by the fact that while I would arrive at a bus stop and form an orderly queue of one, most people would turn up, nonchalantly saunter up and down as though out for a Sunday stroll, and then once the bus arrived, make a dash for it, elbowing each other out of the way in the process. But I won’t miss the extended two-metre distancing rule outside supermarkets and one-in-one-out policy that makes an already boring job (grocery shopping) even more tedious.

As I stand on the doorstep, self-consciously but whole-heartedly clapping all those people who are on the frontline, exchanging embarrassed smiles with neighbours I hardly know, I reflect this is currently the nearest I get to a social life. A reminder we may be socially distant, but we’re socially distant together.

I’ve heard of digital detoxes, but right now I find social media a flippin’ lifeline, like Morse code signals, coming dim and distant through the ether: physical proof there are others alive out there, and that we’ll meet again. In a sense these days we are all like 1960s teenagers, listening to pirate radio stations under the bedclothes for evidence there is a life beyond our parents’ suburbia and the BBC Home Service.

Film and reading allow me to escape into another world for a while, either via comfort viewing/reading which calms me by reminding me of a more tranquil time, or slightly edgier content showing people in dark days displaying personal ingenuity and stoicism, which in cases like these I sincerely hope is infectious.

If my current way of life feels like walking down a narrow tunnel, my noticeboard offers pinholes into a bigger, brighter world: splashes of colour through art postcards, reminders of past travel (the ABBA museum in Stockholm, a comedy night out in London), and pointers for future days out in the fresh air (the White Horse at Uffington – ancient hill figure, not the pub) when all this is behind us.

I mean it. There’s so much I can’t control at the moment that ticking off what transactions have gone through, taking the remainder off the bottom-line figure on the statement, and seeing it balances exactly with the amount I have in my own records, gives me some sense of control. Plus gratifying I’m spending much less by not going to work every day. (I blame the vending machine.)

I know it sounds superficial but now I’m not rushing out the door in the morning to a job I’ve slowed down the whole beauty routine and am trying out new ideas I’ve discovered on YouTube videos. Some subtle situational shift means I’m treating it more as self-cherishing rather than covering up to face the world.

A reminder that whatever is happening outside, I can change. I just need to make a start.