BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary

 

 BACK IN THE COVID

The Lockdown Diary

We have just enjoyed a brilliantly staged and executed performance of "The Wicker Husband" at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury.  Entertaining but surreal. Surreal because it was touch and go if we went at all, we did not socialise with our usual friends while there and we made our visit almost without touching a door or a handrail by keeping our hands up our sleeves. It might be the last time we can go out for a while apart from a final top-up, shopping expedition in the morning tomorrow to bring home supplies as well as we can given that panic buying is already well underway and shortages are evident.

 

My prompt to write this was in fact a joke gif sent to me by Stewart Benford this evening, a picture of granddad in Only Fools and Horses with a voice bubble saying “Back then in the Covid”. I realised that that is exactly what will be said, not by my generation but by our children’s children’s generation. The coronavirus, SARS-Cov 2, or Covid-19 as it is commonly called is their war, the defining event of their generation. As control of the spread of this thing begins to affect global travel, banking, employment and work methods, shopping habits and social behaviour it is clear that it will change the landscape of their worlds, their economics, their politics and their futures. Many of these changes will be permanent. Politically there are worries that populist upheaval might lead to dictatorship in the USA in all but name and that possibility genuinely exists in the UK too. It has already happened in Hungary, Brazil and Turkey. Household names will disappear and there is the potential for international relations to change in radical ways that no-one can anticipate. Brexit is underway whilst this crisis plays out and an economy already ravaged might be further blighted by a poor, or even a no, deal with the EU. Internecine warfare has destroyed the Labour party and in my view a similar process is underway in the Tory party where behind the scenes press moguls are fighting like giants and gods in a cosmic battle for power through wealth played out like some Wagnerian epic by their chosen actors on a political stage.

I decided to record my personal experiences of these disturbing and rapidly changing times in a day to day personal diary starting tomorrow of our little lives and our extended family. At least our children or perhaps their children can read this in their unpredictable future at some time and know how it was for us “Back in the Covid”.

17th March 2020

PS

Please note that by its very nature I will not routinely return to this diary to correct any grammar, English or spelling and in particular to change any content. These thoughts will be transient and day to day and will therefore have a certain ephemeral quality to them which I want to keep. I must try to preserve their nature as diary entries.. I hope to prepare an edited .pdf version eventually but even then only the English and grammar is up for correction. But first I am going to have to survive this thing!