Winter Lockdown

December

My father died just before Christmas.  At home, but not alone.  My brother lives near where he did, and my sister was able to go up.  He passed quietly, painlessly in his bed, aged 91. The tiers and lockdowns meant I couldn’t go to his funeral service, but my stepmother phoned to tell me all went well.  The plan is to meet up on his birthday in July and scatter his ashes into the whirling wind.  My Christmas was spent alone at home.

January

There is no doubt about it, it is different from last time. For me, the first summer lockdown went all right.  Although there were restrictions, it was almost an adventure, being new. It seemed like a gift in a way.  A time to pause and reflect, and the weather was perfect.  Not so now. I find I am resenting the closures and the restrictions are starting to bite. In another world is visiting family and friends, going to the library or shops or cinema or café. 

We have all found new ways to connect with people safely. There is knocking on someone’s door, then standing back for a brief conversation. Waving and smiling at people but not going near when out walking. And of course, there’s Zoom.  The pandemic brought us that one into our own homes, along with all other forms of video calling.  It has become essential for everyday functioning.

Like a lot of people, I have become a TV addict, checking what’s on while I work out what to eat each day, rationing as I go. I pick programs that are escapist, such as travel, wildlife or even cooking, dramas preferably set in another era.  And films of course. I keep to a routine, but then I have been homeworking for years, so it is part of a familiar landscape. I know it is essential for my mental wellbeing to get up and dressed and exercised before venturing on daily activities.  I try to read and write most days, but it is harder somehow.  I miss the punctuation that going out brings.

It is mostly by reading that I immerse and forget the day.  Till March or when the library hopes to open again, I’ve got a copy of Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature.  When I came here, I looked around for ideas of what to do in my garden, given the limitations of a rented space with little money.  His garden at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, now saved for the nation, sang to me from the books and gardening programmes, I went through at the time.  Simple, minimalistic, using plants that would self-seed and that could survive the extreme conditions on the shingle of the exposed East Kent coast.  He took risks, planting figs and roses into beds he made for them.

I expected a book about his garden, but Modern Nature is much more. Jarman himself referred to it as a diary, but I would call it a journal.  It is written in diary form, giving pictures of his childhood, the gay world, the art/film world, health, life in London and Dungeness, which reminds me of the nearby coast.  For me, the form suits the kaleidoscope of the things he presents.  It was written in 1989 to 1990, in the time of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and it left me thinking about this one.  Then there was no social media, no information. There were whispers, telephone calls and only a few people like Jarman came out with his HIV status.

I’m old enough to remember the warning pamphlets that came through every door, warning us of acquiring AIDS through HIV infection, telling us, whether heterosexual or homosexual, to have ‘safe sex’ and avoid intimate contact, as the virus is passed through ‘body fluids’ such as blood, breast milk, semen or vaginal secretions.

There was and is a lot of stigma attached to the disease, which slowly affects the immune system, incapacitating all the defences of the body.  People who have it can infect others without knowing it -there were HIV deniers then and now.  Though Jarman was diagnosed as having HIV in 1986 he died in February 1994. Surrounded by love, hopefully.

AIDS hasn’t gone away. The World Health Organisation estimated in 2019 that 33 million people worldwide had died from the disease, there were 38 million people living with it and about 3 million people were infected annually with HIV.  It is not the death sentence it was in Jarman’s day and can be managed by lifelong anti-retroviral therapy. It estimated that 68% of adults worldwide are getting the medication.  Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected, where HIV is endemic.  To date there is no effective vaccine.

February

At the beginning of the month was Candlemas or Imbolc, when the light is celebrated, resolutions made, hopes dreamed. Snowdrops and yellow aconites have appeared. The birds have got active.  I recognise blue tits, robins, hedge sparrows, long-tailed tits, wood pigeons, a pair of doves and thrushes.

Yesterday, I got the first dose of my Astro Zeneca anti-SARSCov2-19 jab for free, only just over a year after the virus was first isolated.  That it remarkable. I feel lucky. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been waiting and watching the garden change from winter to spring.  The one thing about nature is that it goes on, almost relentlessly.  The apple tree was pruned at last, before the snow came briefly. It still looks bare, but buds should soon appear. They are on the other shrubs in the garden. Lilac, Forsythia, roses, and honeysuckle. The bluebells are up, as are the daffodils and the colchicums are flowering.

And today the plan for releasing the restrictions was announced.