June 2020 and it’s been over three months since we’ve seen our friends who we would usually see every week. With restrictions on outdoor gatherings lifting, we could finally meet up. We were excited.
Sunday 22 June 2020
The event of the month – the summer solstice picnic in Regent’s Park on Saturday. The first return of music and dancing and socialising.
I studied the map and packed food and worried about clothes all morning. At 2.30 we set off on our bikes for the 1.5 hour ride into town. Yep – we are getting used to this. And cycling through Hyde Park on closed roads was great. London looked excited and buzzy. Lots of picnic-ers and birthday balloons and cyclists and rollerbladers. Even a game of roller hockey by the Albert Memorial as we passed.
The problem came in finding our group in Regents Park. Our instructions said “by the hub near the camels” – which we struggled with when faced with a huge open area, covered with groups of thousands of Londoners meeting up for the first time. I found T, ultra-excited (“I’ve missed this so much. It’s been lonely on my own”) and we wandered the zoo perimeter until we found and L and B putting up a gazebo. Soon we were a large group of at least 20, ignoring all Government guidelines about who can sit with whom, which would be far, far too complicated to understand, even if we cared.
Our host finds it impossible to greet people except with a kiss. Tom and I jumped away, but then compromised with a handshake (Tom) and hug (me). I put my satsumas and tea cakes on the shared food blanket, and looked awkwardly around, wondering how this socialising business was meant to work.
I spent a long time chatting to L. She and her husband have spent time filming funny videos and putting them online. She talked about her two-hour walks, finding routes from one park to another that she has never done before. Her daughter and mother live nearby, so she has kept in touch. But underneath was a huge seam of worry about the collapse of her business.
L is meticulous about her tax returns, so she has been getting 80% of her net earnings for last year (before things really took off). But that’s net earnings, and she is still repaying business loans. “We’ve coped, but we’ve had to think about things differently. We had to worry about whether we can afford to fill up the van with petrol, which we have never done before.”
By now, even Tom was talking to people. Someone produced a violin and someone else had a guitar and people were dancing barefoot on the grass. Tom and I discovered that if we put on our tango shoes, we could just about manage a pivot on the artificial strip provided for a cricket pitch. Then the bandoneon came out. “Last time we played music here we were fined”, our host said. But now the park police had given up. Tom and I ate the wraps we brought, and the shared stuff on the blanket, and soon it was 8pm and I needed to get home before it got dark.
I cycled back through an idyllic London, past crowds on Parson’s Green and Barnes Common, watching cars turn on their headlamps in the long, long summer’s evening. A minor incident on Putney Bridge when I crossed two lanes of traffic and got an angry honk. Otherwise, I was fine until I turned into our road and realised I was absolutely, totally knackered. Crawled up the stairs to bed.
My beloved’s journal continues, though how long we’ll keep up these weekly posts is uncertain. It’s a difficult time to catch the mood of. On the one hand, we are enjoying long country walks with our son and his new bubble but, on the other, friends trapped abroad and older relatives cut off from everything that defines their normal lives are all struggling.And she continues (rightly as it turns out) to worry about what winter will bring.
Sunday 14 June 2020
Just as I was finishing yesterday’s entry, I got a call from Mike. His plans had changed. Why didn’t we come over for a long walk/picnic/BBQ? So I rushed home, made cream cheese bagels and dragged Tom through the shower. We were there by 1pm, to meet Mike, Morley, G and S, leaving the house, clutching an OS map.
Mike had mentioned a footpath through meadows a few minutes walk from his door, but I hadn’t believed him. This is London – within the M25. Surely, if there was open space, people would know about it? The secret was a horrible entrance – right by the A40 roundabout – which looked like a track to a fly tip. But 100 yards later, around the corner, the meadows of Middlesex opened up. Long grass, buttercups, clover, the lot, with a very excited Morley, leaping up like a little puppy. Eventually we were balancing over a lock on the Fray, admiring long boats. S was keen to make elderflower champagne, so we picked elderflowers along the towpath, and decided which boat we would buy in a possible alternative universe.
G talked about her family. Her sister is struggling with three children at home, including a teenager chaffing at the restraints. Her stepfather is still shielding and getting get fed up. How much more of the time left to him can be spent in not singing in the choir or seeing friends? S is now installed for the duration with M & G — be careful of house guests these days because once they are in they can never leave. She talked about the good old days working in adventure training for kids (obviously not happening now) and her new job in the Post Office sorting office.
At 3.30 Mike relented to Tom’s increasingly pointed remarks about lunch, and we sat on the green in Uxbridge eating his pasta salad and my bagels. And back by more streams and reed beds and ponds, looking increasingly like Wind in the Willows, with water lilies and flag irises and a terrapin sunning itself on a rock. When we returned after 5 hours and 10 miles, I didn’t want to admit how much my legs didn’t work.
We sat in the garden eating the (melted, gooey) chocolate biscuits I had brought, while Mike made pizzas to cook in his new expensive BBQ contraption. In the end we had 3 pizzas (one burnt, one underdone and one perfect) huddled under a tarpaulin Mike had fixed to the drainpipe and windowsill, while rain poured down and lightening appeared in the sky. I stayed warm under a blanket as we got closer and closer, and life felt better and better. Truly a night to remember.
Dining al fresco in the English summer
Friday 19 June 2020
After Saturday’s excitement, it’s been a quiet week. I’ve been trying to help with V with her employment problems. V has been unable to return from India, though her manager keeps looking at Sky Scanners, to find possible fights to bring her home, routed via Delhi, Dubai, Istanbul etc. Most of these are aspirations, or phantoms. Reports in the Indian press say that no commercial flights have taken off from India. There are only been repatriation flights, organised by Governments and, because V is not a UK citizen, she has been at the very bottom of the priority list.
But it is difficult to prove that they are all phantoms. Eventually V snapped that she wasn’t going to consider a flight through Delhi, with multiple stopovers, taking up to 44 hours and liable to dump her in random airports. The risk was too great.
The manager pointed to V’s official risk assessment, which put her in the “low risk” category. The NHS (her employer) required her to consider alternative routes. And if she was not considering these (probably non-existent) alternatives, her pay would be stopped. V has now booked a place on an Air India repatriation flight and is due back next week. She faces a three-person panel to consider recouping her pay for April and May, even though she has been working from India.
Low risk? V is older than she looks. If the latest research is true, as someone with a South Asian background she has an equivalent Covid risk profile as a white woman in her eighties. How can an NHS trust assess her as low risk? I’ve been practising my employment lawyer skills and trying to write “reasonable and not really legalistic” emails on her behalf.
I stopped work at 4pm on Wednesday to wander into Richmond to re-engage with the shopping experience. There were a lot of sales, at huge discounts, for products that no-one wants any more. No worry about queues outside – the places were empty. I wandered into H&M, which had a few people, and bought a black T shirt for £5. Was this the T shirt that would make me look slim and beautiful? When I got home and tried it on, I realised it wasn’t, but it hardly seems worth the hassle of taking it back. I’ve now got the urge to splurge out of my system.
I’m now working on the basis that coronavirus goes away in the summer when everyone is outside. I shall spend the next three months having as much fun as possible. The second wave seems scheduled for October. In November, we will all be back indoors, cowering, as the economy collapses.
Every Thursday I post an excerpt from my wife’s journal written two years earlier. Two years ago this week, there were signs of life returning to normal, but also intense nervousness amongst those who thought it was too soon. The Second Wave was just a vague hypothesis for most people. My beloved’s conclusion at the end of this week’s entry was to prove prescient but, of course, we didn’t know that at the time.
Friday 12 June 2020
I’m sat at the tables in York House Gardens with a take-away flat white, pretending it’s a real café. The coffee is not a self-indulgence: it’s doing my bit for economic revival. Shop staff are working on their displays, ready to open. They gather in intense discussions about social distancing.
Just overheard in Iceland. “It’s my first time out for 12 weeks”. “Is it how you remember it?” “No. it’s all closed”. Bloody hell – 12 whole weeks of not leaving the house??
Mike had been sceptical about my plans to cycle to the Albert Memorial to see D. (“You realise that cycling in central London is one of the most dangerous things you can do, right?”). But it worked just fine: 58 minutes there and 54 minutes back. I went over Putney Bridge and along the King’s Road, a compromise between Google’s two offers of the Great West Road (too scary) and back roads (too slow).
D talked a lot about her family and her garden: important stuff. And about feeling guilty for not writing: “All this empty time and nothing to show for it.” But what do any of us have to show for our lives except healthy and happy kids and (if we are lucky) memories of a beautiful garden? We spent a long time admiring the Albert Memorial, especially the four continents – elephant, camel, bison and cow (though the cow is a bit sad). “It’s part cliche and part creativity,” D remarked. I’ve had mixed feelings about the Albert Memorial over the years: Victorian monstrosity – waste of restoration cash – central landmark – and part of the furniture of my life, after years of street hockey and skater picnics and speed skate courses. I felt a sudden rush of love for the thing, warts and all, as part of our history and lives and heritage.
My aim was to get home before rush hour. I planned to be away at 3.30, and left at 3.40, which was not quite quick enough for London traffic these days. Putney Bridge was three lanes of congested cars, with more cycles, motorbikes and e-scooters weaving in and out than I have ever seen before. Is this the future?
Lockdown is always a roller-coaster, and Tom has been going through a bad patch. A few overcast and drizzly days, coupled with an assault on 19th century history. Tom has written about the White Rajah, and the Indian Mutiny and General Havelock – all pretty much banned terms. There is discussion about renaming Havelock Street.
Saturday 13 June
The sun is out, which makes such a difference these days. We bounce from optimism in the sun to gloom in the drizzle. Right now, Richmond Riverside is picture postcard perfect, with paddle boarders out in force. You have to be optimistic to trust such a precarious contraption. Tom’s rights issues are resolved and Burke in the Land of Silver is on Amazon, ready for pre-order. Tom switched from existential despair to happy and productive with a single email.
But we still can’t trust our Government. I realise, re-reading my diaries, that by 28 February, Covid was front of mind. But I still did what the Government told me, which was to carry as normal. I went to the theatre and milongas and cafes and restaurants and took long journeys by train. We now know this was a mistake. I personally might have been part of a chain of causation that caused someone’s death. This time around, should I be more cautious than the Government? Perhaps, if things get bad, but … but. London is looking good right now and maybe it can’t spread outside in the summer.
With all this spinning around in my brain, I spend too long checking figures. By the time problems show up in the death figures, it’s too late. And you can’t trust testing figures. The most reliable figures are hospital admissions, which are going down overall, but overall won’t do. And local figures aren’t available. Last week a Minister flashed a clip of what appeared to be local graphs on The Daily Numbers, which were too small to see. But when I looked them up, they weren’t hospital admissions: they were people in hospital, which isn’t the same thing. The radio talks about R, which is a bit too close to 1 for comfort. Apparently, the latest Government idea is to stop worrying about R, and to rely on whatever stats the Test and Track scheme throw at us. We’re fucked.
Finally we are allowed to sit down for a meal with our family — provided we eat it outside. The other big news of the week was the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite (or maybe because of) the restrictions, the killing of George Floyd became something that looked as if it might actually change something.
Saturday 6 June 2020
Big event of the week: driving over to Mike’s for a BBQ (now that two households of up to 6 people can meet in a private garden). I skived off work early, took the champagne out of the freezer and piled into the car, wearing a summer dress and floppy hat. Even the drive over seemed interesting: what a lot of people these days have bushy beards. The greetings were a bit awkward – no approaching or hugging. But once we had settled into our suitably distanced seats, life seemed almost normal. We watched kites and squirrels as the sun sank behind the neighbour’s sycamore. I added two cardigans to the summer dress.
Mike served four courses, over a long, long time. Mike and G now have S staying with then, after her plans to travel the world fell apart. S had cooked lager chicken while Mike had baked a swiss roll. Conversation flowed with the Pimms, mainly about house buying, and house prices and how much mortgage to take out. We took Morley (the dog) for a walk around the park in the dark. At 10pm I noticed it was past my bedtime, but it was 12.30 before I got to bed. I’m not used to these late nights anymore.
On Thursday I was invited to a big online civil service meeting about Black Lives Matter. It was huge – up to the full 250 participants the system allows. Black civil servants talked about how they felt after watching the George Floyd video. Answer – emotional: anxious and angry and shocked. And, in lockdown, the “mask” has gone. Civil servants no longer dress up and do their hair and put on their work personas. “This is the first time I’ve shown myself at work with my natural hair”, one woman said. “I’m being my authentic self at last,” said another, “and that self is an angry black woman.” Work is less present, and children are more present. There was a lot of talk about how you explain George Floyd to your kids.
This was followed by a work meeting in which no-one had read the papers. Working from home is starting to fall apart.
I think this is the longest of my beloved’s posts so far. The rules were being relaxed but everyone was trying to work out exactly what was and wasn’t allowed. Our son stuck strictly by the letter of the law, refusing to see both of his parents at once, which did not go down well. And then, while most of the country struggled to do the right thing, came Dom Cumming’s infamous trip to Barnard Castle. The journal gives a fair idea of just how angry that made people.
Saturday 23 May 2020
Big event of the week: Mike came over. The plan was for the three of us to have a picnic in the park, I went to M&S for tubs and made a rice salad. Mike would bring a plate and cutlery and a salad of his own.
Then a phone call from Mike. He had just been given a presentation from his colonel that the Army really had to stick to the rules. Mike was responsible for disciplining any soldier who broke them. The rules say that you may only see one of your parents at a time. So he would come over, but see us sequentially, not together. Tom was cross: “I’ve spent enough time doing what this Government says. I’ve had it with rules.” If Mike felt like that, he could just see me.
So Mike took a long lunch hour from his working day and drove over. Which gave us an hour together, walking over to Orleans House Gardens, sitting on a bench and eating pastries. I took a flask of tea. We talked about his friends’ wedding plans, and the Army, and work, as conversation flowed easily. I tried not to point out the large family group having a picnic right in front of us. I was suddenly aware of how central family meals are to a sense of belonging. One parent at a time is a particularly stupid rule.
Mike and Tom then got the car started, with jump leads, and sort of forgave each other by doing manly stuff. And we drove over to Aldi to replenish our stockpile of tins, just in case our economic system lets us down.
Tom has now put a video of our tango waltz on you tube. It’s Flor de Lino (Linseed Flower) and was our attempt to be light and carefree – though, looking at it, there is a lot more tension than I’d hoped. It was good to dress up (with a beret because of lockdown hair). We went through the same dance, over and over again, and then painfully watched our faults, until we finally decide it would have to do. At least we had to concentrate and work on it.
Fred and Ginger we ain’t
I’ve now finished marking. The stragglers weren’t as good as the students who submitted on time, but they weren’t bad. I’ve decided that feedback has to be clearer, even blunter. “Do more reading”; “Write more clearly”, with examples. I’ve written more, as this seems to be the only thing the students are getting for their money.
The big question is whether I’m actually going to retire from the civil service at the end of June, or whether I will try to postpone it once again. Part-time work, and the contact work brings (if only virtual) has been essential to getting through the last few months.
Friday 29 May 2020:
“Are you noticing any difference?” J. asked on the phone yesterday, “For me it’s just the same. Work is OK, but I’m still not seeing anyone or doing anything”.
J summed up the experience of so-called lockdown easing. And explains why I’ve been bad-tempered and fractious all week. Going into lockdown, we phoned up loads of people and cackled uncontrollably at ridiculous skype meetings and no showers. But now jokes about loo paper and the work top/pyjama bottom combo aren’t funny anymore. Nor is the 60,000 death toll. Instead, there are a lot of non-conversations. “How are you? – fine. And you? – fine. What are you up to? – nothing much” etc etc.
Some stuff is coming back. I’m sitting in York House gardens with my first flat white since 14 March. Ahhh: the deep coffee bitterness and cream counterweight. I feel more positive already. And Johnson has announced that as from Monday, two households of up to 6 people can meet in a private garden, which means that we are going over to Mike’s for a BBQ on Tuesday. I’ll take my birthday champagne. A trip around the park shows that the groups of teenagers are now getting closer. I saw 3 lads put their arms around each other. Girls now gather in huddles.
Where to start on the week? Let’s go for the big story – Dominic Cummings – a lightening rod for all that frustration with arbitrary rules, uncaring Government decisions and a society which allows cleaners and estate agents into your house, but not lovers or parents. On Saturday, I woke to the news and remembered my resolution not to judge. By evening, though, I was cross. All those Government ministers gaslighting us about the rules, with not a hint of remorse. By Sunday, both Tom and I were furious: “I took a 60 mile trip to test my eyesight”? Are we meant to take this seriously?
On Bank Holiday Monday we cycled along a crowded tow path to the Ham Gate. Locked our bikes, took books, and found new places, including Sidmouth Wood. Hot, hot, hot, but plenty of shade under the oaks. It’s birthing season for deer. Didn’t see any fawns, but noticed hinds, by themselves, hiding in the long grass. Kept our distance and talked about Cummings.
Richmond Park, Late May Bank Holiday 2020
I’m worried about A. who lives alone following a stroke. I phoned him last weekend. “How are you?” “Fine”. Then “No, actually, I’m not fine.” He is drinking too much, and his flat still has bed bugs, and he can’t use his front room, and he’s stuck in the kitchen, watching TV. “I just want to drink and die. I’d kill myself but I can’t bring myself to do it.”
I phoned again yesterday, suggesting we might meet in a park, but the mechanics didn’t work. He seemed more upbeat and talked about a programme he had enjoyed. But the underlying issues remain. Pre-lockdown, A kept going by occasional meals with friends, a bit of gossip, and interest in what other people are doing. Now that’s all stopped. How many other people are sitting at home, drinking and waiting to die?
PS. I’ve just phoned D. “I’m so angry” she started. “Bloody Cummings. Rewriting the rules for one unelected adviser”. “How was your writing group?” I asked. “OK, but I haven’t done any writing. I’m too cross”. D continued: “When we first went into lockdown, I felt really calm and surprisingly happy, but that’s all gone. And it’s making me even crosser”. I’m meeting D on Friday at the Albert Memorial, God willing. We will both cycle there.
Sunday 31 May 2020
It’s a glorious day, and I’m by Richmond riverside with a flat white. It is still early enough to sit in the sun, though midday threatens to be too hot. It’s busy – cyclists, a kayak, boat hire, and a queue for take aways. Richmond Council are still playing around with one-way signs [for pedestrians] on Richmond Bridge, not wholly successfully. They are building wider pavements on Richmond Road.
I swing wildly between zen calm, irritation and outright anger. The scene in front of me is beautiful – the stuff of a thousand tourist paintings – the ripples on the water, willows, geese, a heron. How hard can it be to just relax and enjoy it? Harder than you might think.
Yesterday, Tom vetoed my plans to rollerblade (irritation). Instead he cut branches off the buddleia, which I snipped into small pieces (satisfying). And we sat out in our front garden, reading, drinking coffee and admiring our roses (isn’t this lovely?). We chatted to neighbours, now that the British prohibition on using front gardens (surely only funny foreigners have always enjoyed life on the street?) has gone. We went to Syon Park to buy bedding plants, but it was shut. Cycled on to B&Q (queues too long), Waitrose (too little choice) and Twickenham Green (too late). Irritated.
Came back to catch up on news. Still over 350 deaths a day. A lot of SAGE scientists saying it is too early to ease lockdown. But keeping lockdown going was always going to be difficult with a bored and fractious public. And now, since Cummings, it has become impossible. Angry now. If I hear another politician say “following the science”, we may be in a broken radio situation.
