Lockdown

It’s now six weeks into the lockdown in England.  In the village in Suffolk where I live, I’m looking out on trees tossing out pink blossom, wrestling with the wind, surrounded by a sea of yellow rape flowers planted in the fields.  The oaks are coming into lime green leaf, before the ash this year, if that is any indication of the coming seasonal weather. Yesterday I heard my first cuckoo, and soon the swifts and swallows will arrive from Africa.

I don’t think any of us, even though we watched the crisis unfolding in Wuhan, Italy, or Spain, had any idea what it would mean to our daily lives, should a lockdown happen here.

It seemed to happen quite suddenly with the closure of schools, ‘non-essential’ shops, pubs, restaurants, cafes, followed swiftly by libraries, cinemas, theatres, and leisure centres.  In other words, any place people might gather and spread the virus.

My outpatient hospital appointments were cancelled, and my dental one. I could no longer volunteer at the local primary school and any face to face encounters with staff in the job centre I go to, were curtailed. A grille was put down in the reception area of the building it is in.  Life paused.

Suddenly food shops were stripped of everything, toilet rolls being one of the first items to go, as people went into siege mentality. For a while I couldn’t get hold of paracetamol, which I need to manage my osteoarthritis pain.  Never in my life have I seen such shortages.

While I was waiting outside the surgery for my prescription, an old lady swept into the car park in her dusty black car.  She opened the door, shook her head at the queue, got out her walking stick and went shakily to the back of the line.  Only with a lot of persuasion would she come to the front and sit on the chair outside the door. When she did, she sighed and said,

‘This is the worst I’ve ever known. It was never like this in the War you know’.  She explained that people could mingle, comfort and console.  They were not denied contact with their family and friends.

We have all learned, quite quickly, the art of social distancing.  Maybe we had that in storage; keeping a respectful distance is in us.  Also queueing, which we must now do, waiting to get into any shop, where we must keep two metres apart. A new kind of etiquette is emerging when we are dancing intently around in the supermarket, of looking into the shelves if people get too close.  Clear Perspex screens have appeared on most serving areas and checkouts. Perhaps we’ll have to wear masks soon.

We are allowed one exercise session per day.  I usually do what I always do if I can and walk round the village. I see a lot more cyclists whizzing past. There is more smiling and waving, acknowledging people at a distance, talking to people outside in gardens.  We humans are made to be sociable.  It’s times like this we are made to realise how much.

Early on, when the guidelines weren’t as clear, people travelled to places like this, which is a coastal tourist area, with numerous second homes, with the idea of locking down here, rather than their primary residencies.  This has caused a great deal of concern to locals, both from fear of contagion in what are very vulnerable populations, in nearby Aldeburgh and Southwold and that local services would be so stretched they couldn’t cope.

In ordinary times they would be welcomed, not just because the tourist trade is vital to the local economy. I think there could be something more primitive going on – fear of the stranger, the unknown or the enemy.

It isn’t clear when it will all end or how.  Enough time has gone by for me to know what I’m missing, but I’m not sure whether these things will come back as they were. No-one does.

Friday the 8^th May, is the 75^th Anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day.  It was made a Bank Holiday specially for the celebration, which when it was planned was going to be a truly British spectacular of marching bands down the Mall in London and fireworks and street parties and concerts all over, marking the end of World War 2 as it was in 1945, with rollicking and fun.  It can’t be that now.

And I sense no victory.  Not yet.