There was no ‘Journal of the Covid Years’ this week – the first week since February that it hasn’t appeared. The diaries covered February 2020, when the word “coronavirus” first entered our consciousness to July 2020, when we could finally go to a café and get our hair cut. That seems a sensible point to pause. From July to September, the world opened up. It was a time of picnics, socialising and plans. It became our social duty to eat as many restaurant meals as possible: “eat out to help out”.
It wasn’t over, of course, however often we assured each other than things would get better. On 13 September, we had a new rule that we could only meet six people out of doors. By October, London was placed in “Tier 2”, meaning no indoor mixing. In November we got a “circuit breaker”. And then the low point, announced on 19 December. Effectively, Christmas was cancelled. No-one in London could allow someone outside their support bubble to enter their home.
So how do we remember these experiences? Our time sense becomes mushed, in the face of ever-changing rules. What were they? Did we obey them? Our memories can’t cope with the complexities. Instead, we have a mash-up of blue skies, bird song, isolation, broken nights, changed plans and endless zoom meetings.
When the nights are longer and there is less to do, my plan is it edit the whole two years, setting the diary entries against the official “history” of what was going on. I’m trying to get hold of the complexity of the whole experience: some path between lockdown nostalgia, recalling the blue, empty days of May, and visceral anger over the restrictions.
Was my experience typical, in any way? It would have been different if I’d been on my own or with a large family. It would have been massively harder in a one-room flat, or without a job, or if I’d been shielding. Other than that, it is difficult to say. There were so many people we didn’t see – so how can we know? Someday, enterprising historians will analyse a lot of lockdown diaries to produce a social history of the period. This will be one small perspective.
Did we abide by “the rules”? Yes, by and large we tried to do the right thing. And when we didn’t know what the right thing was, we did what we were told. But not always. Don’t judge. [Ed: what we weren’t doing was having large boozy parties and pretending they were ‘work events’. So maybe we can judge a little.]
Did the UK Government get the “big calls right”? It got some calls right, particularly in 2021, over vaccination. But like all Governments, it got lots of calls wrong. We were too slow going into lockdown; we should have gone for masks earlier; the Tiers system was impossible to understand; the return to schools and universities in September 2020 was mishandled. Did it make a huge difference? Probably not. The Scottish and Welsh Governments may have been more cautious but suffered similar deaths in the end.
In retrospect, one of the biggest mistakes may have been to try to reconcile lockdowns with economic activity. In 2021, the greatest prohibitions were on seeing friends and family. It was a world in which a lover or parent could not enter your home, but an estate agent or cleaner could. The dichotomy was a false one. Why would we buy clothes, if we didn’t meet people? Why would we go to pub, without company? Social bonds and economic activity turned out to be linked.
And finally, how did the experience change us? I hesitate to answer this question – perhaps it is just too early to say. It has certainly changed our relationship to work. Work is now about tasks. It is something you do – not someone you are. Without the whole rigmarole of getting dressed up, and going to the office, and getting into an office mindset, employers have less power to get inside our heads. And I’ve slowed down and travel less. We have booked a trip to Argentina later this year, on the grounds that if we don’t go now we never will. We suspect it may be the last big intercontinental trip we ever make. The world is changing and becoming smaller.
Of course, social changes aren’t all about the pandemic. If the tide of ever-expanding globalisation turned with the Brexit referendum in 2016, the war in Ukraine is now causing a rip-current, leaving a lot of old certainties stranded on the beach.
I’ll let you know how I get on, when I’ve finished the edit. Meanwhile – please leave comments with the answers to any of these question.
‘Independence Day’, when we could finally go to a café or a hairdresser, was on 4 July, so, strictly speaking, I should have posted this extract last week. But it was such a big thing at the time that I felt it needed its own space.
Saturday 4 July 2020
This is “Independence Day” – the reopening of cafes, pubs and hairdressers. And I’m wandering around on a café crawl, to soak up the atmosphere. First, the good news. The hairdressers are heaving. The shops and cafes not so much.
“I don’t get it,” said Tom, planning a long bath as his morning’s entertainment. “Why would anyone want to go out? We’ve all learnt to eat cheaply and well at home.”
Well, I’m doing my best to save independent cafés, even if it’s just me. As I left the house, I found my feet taking me straight to Zoran’s, where the outside tables definitely needed an occupant. Zoran welcomed me as a long-lost friend and I had my first proper café cappuccino for 4 months.
Then walked into Richmond, where if there are going to be crowds, excitement, riots and superspreading, it will be later in the day. The owner of this café looked so desperate I stopped for a single espresso. It’s too windy to sit outside, so I’m just inside an open door (which at least is well ventilated). There are two other customers.
Yesterday, the shadowing didn’t happen. Slack let us down. All I got was a few blurry frozen image and occasional noises. Will try again on Monday.
Tuesday 7 July 2020
I’ve done it. I took my mask and oyster card, got the 10.30 train to Vauxhall, and walked over the bridge to my hairdresser. Back in BC land, a normal activity. But it doesn’t feel normal. London is much too empty. I’m sitting at a pavement table, looking at three other empty tables. There are people – I can see four – but the buzz has gone. It feels like a sleepy town in Mid-Wales when it isn’t market day; not one of the world’s great cities.
This isn’t bounce back. It’s barely crawl back.
The good news is that yesterday the technology worked. I shadowed another adviser on slack and have a better idea of the systems. I also learnt that there is a lot of human misery out there. One woman spent 50 minutes on the phone, crying about the noise from her neighbour, caused by loose floorboards, zero sound insulation and a large dog. But as the call unfolded it was about so much more: racism, lack of respect and flashbacks to earlier trauma.
On Sunday, Mike came over for Tom’s postponed Father’s Day treat – a skate around Bushy Park. So plenty of exercise – and after three hours, I was completely knackered. Luckily Mike stopped and bought us mango sorbet cones, which we enjoyed in the sunshine.
Afterwards, Mike entered our house for the first time, for a pizza. He waxed lyrical about the new place they are buying: a Grade II listed Wiltshire toll house, which will give them a home office each, and is a short cycle ride from their new workplace. Mike even ran through his plans to entertain us in his new house on Christmas Day. “We’ll see how it goes,” I said morosely, mentioning the possibility of a new lockdown.
Mike and G have taken their van around the South Coast – staying in Salisbury, visiting G’s family, working the South Down Way. They are positively bubbling with enthusiasm.
Friday 10 July 2020
“Have you come in specially for a haircut” the stylist asked the guy next to me. “Oh no,” came the reply, “I’m going to the bank as well.”
We’ve all slowed down. Once going into town, visiting the hairdresser and seeing D were all fitted around the edges of work. Now it’s a full and exciting day. And with the work picnic on Wednesday, it’s almost too much. On Wednesday evening, I fell asleep in front of Netflix, knackered.
My hairdresser, M., was trying hard to maintain her chat rate behind her mask. “How did you spend your lockdown?” now replaces “How was your holiday?” M. went for walks and did zoom sessions on meditating and de-toxing. Otherwise? M. shrugged. She missed her family. Her aim is to get the first plane to Slovakia and possible stay there. “I came to London for 3 months and stayed 14 years. Can I just leave?” Another shrug.
The good news is that my hair now looks great. It’s back to brown.
I wandered past the old office and paused to take photos of the empty street. Considerable effort had been put into flower-pots, even though there is no-one to appreciate them.
I met D at our erstwhile favourite café. The owner has been an NHS volunteer, helping out in a hospital, which he clearly enjoyed. Standing in his empty café, less so. “The barracks are closed. The Ministry of Justice is closed. All the offices are closed. This building is owned by the Qatari Royal Family, and I just hope they don’t really want rent”.
D and I sat at a pavement table and ate as much as we could, as we talked about our kids’ youthful optimism. The dry cleaner’s opposite had a hopeful “open” sign. No-one went near it.
Wednesday started wet – surely too wet for our work picnic in Gray’s Inn. Then at 11 am the skies cleared and I risked it. I strode and ran for the train, in 7 minutes, as I’ve done so often before. I felt very odd. No-one does that anymore. People walk slower – much slower. But I caught the (almost empty) train and had plenty of time to stroll past Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Holborn.
B. had organised the picnic. She has a scholarship from Gray’s Inn, which allows her to live there until August, in what was once a tiny room. Now that all her fellow scholars have fled the city, she has a large flat all to herself – plus the garden.
Once everyone had arrived there were 7 of us – exceeding the current guideline of 6. We promised to stay in two separate groups, which happened quite naturally: 3 researchers at one end, and 4 lawyers at the other. We had lots to say to each other, and conversation was much easier in person.
After the work stuff, we talked about universities. L’s daughter has come home from Cambridge, which has kept going pretty well. She still produces essays and has supervision on Skype. Her friend at Birmingham, though, has had no real teaching at all.
Also this week I’ve had video chats with two previous Team Manager colleagues. Both independently said how difficult it was to manage a team in lockdown. The problem is new people, when you can’t build trust through face-to-face transactions, or observe people interact with other people. “I’ve got a new lawyer”, one said, “And I just don’t know what they’re doing”. Good thing I’ve retired.
Today I’ve done more shadowing on the advice line. I only have to answer a couple of test questions. Then someone delivers an internet phone to my door and I’m told to get on with it.
So that’s all for now. I’ll be signing off with a final (for the moment) blog post next Friday (22nd) looking back over the entries so far and considering ways I might move forward. I’ll be asking you for your thoughts too.
I’m not a big one for preparing my Friday blog posts ages in advance. I generally prefer to see what I can think of to write on the day or (as now) the day before.
This week I really wasn’t sure what to talk about. There seemed to be quite a lot going on in the world and posting pretty pictures from a weekend away didn’t seem appropriate. (Not that we’ve had a weekend away as my beloved and I have both been hit with covid.) But anything based on what was going on in the wider world seemed likely to be overtaken by events before Friday. Now our Prime Minister has announced that he is (more or less) on his way out and I feel safe making the odd comment about writing about politics.
There is actually a lot of politics in many of my books but, because they are mostly set a long time ago, I don’t have to worry too much about how things might change from day to day. When Karl Marx pops up in Back Home, I know that he will be around for a while. (I loved working Marx into my plot. The idea that he and his friends used to meet for drinks and political chat in Soho in 1859 – when the book is set – always fascinated me.)
Can’t swear this is the right pub but it’s certainly close
I have written a couple of contemporary stories but they are fantasies featuring deals with the devil and vampires who dance tango. No particular problems with politics there.
But then I had to spoil it all by writing Eat the Poor. In Something Wicked, I introduced the detective odd-couple Galbraith and Pole. Galbraith is a traditional old-school Metropolitan Police detective and Pole is a vampire. The relationship seemed to work, both in terms of their forming a credible double act and allowing room for my sense of humour to tease both of them. People seemed to like them and suggested I write more. I decided not to do vampires again (Pole is enough vampire all by himself) so, after some thought, I came up with a werewolf. But if vampires dance tango (they really do) and spend a lot of time in self-improvement, what do werewolves do? Where would you come across them?
Maybe a good place to look for vampires
I ended up by having my werewolf hold down a day-job as an MP.
Maybe a good place to look for werewolves
Urban Fantasy (which is what fans call this genre) relies on having a realistic contemporary background, so my MP is an ambitious Conservative, anxious to get on in government. And that meant I had to write against the clock. The story would look a bit silly if it came out just as the Conservatives left government. And it rather relied on the party not noticing that they had a werewolf on the backbenches.
I’ve had a complaint that the whole thing is just an attack on the Conservatives, which it clearly isn’t. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek story about tracking down a mythical creature. But it works so much better with a particular approach to government in power at Number Ten. And now it looks as if that approach will be around for a few months yet.
Even once this government is gone, though, it has left a significant gift for Eat The Poor and any books like it. The idea that the House of Commons might be the site of a standoff between supernatural forces of Good and Evil once seemed to stretch the bounds of credibility. After what we’ve seen over the past week, though, nothing in my book seems impossible after all.
NEXT WEEK
Next week is the anniversary of the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore in 1857, so I’ll be writing about that. Plus, for that one day only, my book about 1857, Cawnpore, will be available FREE.
Another short entry this week as we visit my beloved’s journal entries from two years back. Next week’s will be a long one — marking ‘Independence Day’ a little late. It will also be the last of these regular posts. After Independence Day there was too much going on, too may arguments about what was and what wasn’t legal, and just too much confusion to fit neatly into weekly chunks. Tammy is thinking about writing a memoir and there may be the odd post when something leaps out at us, but for now this series is coming to an end. Enjoy the last two episodes!
Wednesday 1 July 2020
I have now officially retired, ceasing to be a civil servant and reduced to the status of a consultant, two days a week.
Yesterday I was invited to a “talk” which turned out to be the online equivalent of my retirement party. J had clearly been organising it for weeks, alongside a huge hamper from Fortnum and Masons – so big it could have contained a stripogram. As online events to, it was about as good as it gets. J is particularly able at handling this stuff, with all the technical gizmos (hands up, chat, screen share). She kept it strictly to time and involved everyone. S even dug up one of our old tango videos, which she showed to assembled colleagues.
And yet…. In some ways, it was nothing like a retirement party. No reactions, no small group chats, no shared food and drink. There is an exercise in self-help circles about imagining your own funeral. This was lovely, in that I received a great obituary. But in the absence of any real human contact, I did feel a bit like a corpse. I had to hit the F&M salted caramel biscuits and go for a walk around the park.
So today is the first day of (sort of) retirement. I watched a 45 minute lecture on universal credit, to prepare for my new role helping out on an advice line. I unpacked the hamper and went through junk, putting aside boxes of charity shop stuff, for when charity shops finally open. Tom found the dead body of one of the fox cubs lying in our garden. “We can’t take it away if it’s on private land”, the council said. So I carried it out and left it in the gutter.
Yes, I can hack this retirement idea, but right now I feel scrabbly, unfocused, apprehensive. New stuff is scary.
Friday 3 July 2020
Shadowing for advice line starts today, so I’m grabbing a quick coffee in York House Gardens. It will be on “Slack” apparently, so I’ve got a new message system to learn.
The weather changes by the minute. Brilliantly warm just now – though the rain forecast for this afternoon means I’ll probably cancel my vague plans to meet F. As with the weather, so with my mood. Good bits of yesterday – got stuff done; productive work meeting; took parcel to the post-office, coming back the long way, in an attempt to find new streets; chatted to a neighbour (“I still can’t see my grand-daughter in Cornwall: they’re bracing for a second wave”); cooked Chinese cabbage; watched crime series; and ended the day with a dance to Entros Guitares.
Actually, there were a lot of good bits. But I still feel that this easing of lockdown should provide more excitement than it is delivering.
D once said that one of the most difficult aspects of retirement is that if you want to see someone or do something you have to make the effort. And sometimes that effort is too much. At one level, I know that there are people to see, things to do. But right now I can’t quite summon the energy to organise it.
Sharpe’s Assassin is presented as a story about Sharpe freeing a spy from a fortress and then hunting down some rogue Bonapartists who would assassinate the victorious Duke of Wellington. It has enough similarities to Burke and the Pimpernel Affair (freeing a spy from a fortress) and Burke at Waterloo (hunting down rogue Bonapartists who would assassinate the Duke) to make it a ‘must-read’ as far as I was concerned.
So how do Sharpe’s exploits compare with Burke’s?
Cornwell’s creation is first and foremost a soldier and Sharpe’s adventures follow him through Wellington’s military successes from India to Waterloo. His fans love the military detail in the stories and the scenes of action, whether Sharpe is brawling with an individual or part of an army engaged in a historic battle. This story is set after Waterloo, so the possibilities for military set-pieces are limited. Even so, Sharpe’s approach to saving the spy from the fortress focuses on a brute-force military approach. Burke and Sharpe both use cunning to infiltrate the fortress, but where Burke’s approach is designed to slip out quietly with as little fighting as possible (though things don’t work out exactly as planned), Sharpe, having won past the first gate, goes for a straightforward military assault. It means Cornwell inventing an action where there wasn’t one but it does mean Sharpe can get in a small battle early in the book. Sharpe is, after all, not about subtlety. The story has him working alongside a rather foppish spy who is all about subtlety but is all-too-easily fooled by the Bonapartists. Fortunately he has Sharpe watching his back and cheerfully blasting away at the French at every opportunity.
There’s an attempt at blowing up a dinner being held by the victorious British (very similar to one of the attempts in Burke at Waterloo) and Sharpe, like Burke, foils it. Like Burke, he fails to stop the villains escaping, setting things up for the final conflict which, again, involves lots of troops in a firefight with some artillery and the odd Congreve rocket to liven things up. Burke would, I suspect, find the outcome messy, but Sharpe ends up seeing off the Frenchies and disrupting their evil plans. The Duke is saved and peace finally comes to Paris.
By the end of the book, Sharpe is living peacefully in Normandy with his lady love. Burke gets no such happy ending. The real James Burke continued to spy for Britain long after 1815 and there is no sign of an end to war for him. I suspect we may see more of Sharpe in time, too. I wonder if he will ever decide that there are problems not best solved by bloody violence. Probably not. The world needs men like Sharpe as well as men like Burke. Long may they both thrive.
The books
Amazon provides a platform that is happy to host both a famous author like Bernard Cornwell and a significantly less famous one like me. Sharpe’s Assassin is available on Kindle at £4.99 or in paperback at £4.50 (it’s on offer). It’s an interesting pricing policy and explains why traditional publishers claim that e-books aren’t doing that well. It’s because they deliberately over-price them. The paperback is a bargain though.
My own tiny publishing effort can’t afford to subsidise paperbacks so I’m afraidBurke and the Pimpernel Affairand Burke at Waterloo will both set you back £8.99. (Printing isn’t getting any cheaper.) On the other hand, I do pass on the savings that come with e-publication, so the Kindles cost just £3.99.
At these prices, why not sort out your Napoleonic spy escapade needs for the rest of the month and buy all three?
