Time flies whether you're enjoying yourself or not...

Time flies whether you’re enjoying yourself or not. It’s late March and we’re coming round to lockdown anniversaries. Time really has flown by but nobody’s been doing a great deal. Kids have just gone back to school, but have spent most of the last year at home being ‘home-schooled’, which has meant more for some than others. I’d imagine there are plenty of kids who have had no education over the past 12 months and others (right little swots) who have probably been better educated than they would have been at school.

Loads of us have been working from home. Some of us love it, others hate it and I’m somewhere in the middle. Perhaps, for me, having the best of both worlds: two or three days at home and then two days in the office, would be preferable. I need a change of scenery. I used to be a freelance journalist and I can’t say I really enjoyed it, stuck at home waiting for the phone to ring. It did ring and I did okay, but the first opportunity to take a full-time position and I jumped at the chance. I like separating work from home life and when you’re working from home that’s impossible, unless you have one of those specially designed ‘sheds’ - or just a shed - at the top of the garden. If I was a successful writer, a novelist even, then the idea of my only little ‘cave’ at the top of the garden would be wonderful. Imagine waking up at a decent hour, enjoying a long breakfast and then sauntering up to the top of the garden and just sitting there, thinking about something to write. I would have BBC Radio 3 playing constantly and I might switch channels throughout the day, sometimes tuning in to LBC and other times to BBC Radio 4. 

Recently I bought myself a digital radio. I’ve always wanted one and I finally got round to buying one, on Amazon. All shopping is done online these days and I quite enjoy it as there’s always that moment when a parcel is delivered and it turns out to be whatever I ordered a few days prior. Everybody is stuck indoors and more so at the moment as we’re still in what a lot of us refer to as ‘the second lockdown’, which started in November and is still going on now, in late March. The first lockdown saw me cycling every day. The weather was good, it was easily one of the best summers ever and I took advantage by heading off around 4pm, after finishing work, and riding to places like Westerham or Tatsfield village, often non-stop (except for the weekends). On Saturday I used to visit a place called the Velobarn, a cycle shop and a cafe rolled into one, it’s a 20-mile round trip on the bike. I would always order the same thing: a large cappuccino and a slice of coffee and walnut cake. The weather remained good late into the year and I remember sitting outside, mask on, well, mask off as I was eating cake and sipping coffee.

My eating habits have changed. I’m consuming a lot more sweet things and more cake than normal. I’ve even re-started marmalade, something I haven’t eaten in years and, to be honest, I should stop. But every morning i enjoy a marmalade sandwich. And then there’s cappuccino mousse from Waitrose, and a large cappuccino with chocolate, the aforementioned coffee and walnut cake and, well, it’s all got to stop. I put it down to comfort eating.

I’m watching a lot of movies too. Call it escapism if you like, that’s probably what it is. A week or so ago I watched EMP: 333 Days, a strange apocalyptic movie that didn’t seem that fantastical. I avoid any movies about pandemics as I’ve lived that one, still am. The thing that really gets me is the process of normalisation, the way out-of-the-ordinary things are slowly accepted and normalised by the media. I heard the Prime Minister talking the other day along the lines of ‘the next time something like this happens’ proving that he for one has already accepted that it’s going to happen again. I remember when there was a spate of acid attacks when the media started offering advice on ‘what to do if’ there’s an acid attack as if it had been accepted as normal behaviour, something to expect when you’re next out. I find it all very annoying. Let’s make that angering. There’s no reason why we should all be locked down because of a virus that could have been avoided and there’s no reason why we all need to be aware of what to do if there’s an acid attack. These things should be preventable, not accepted as part of everyday life.

I’ve had my first jab. My second is due on 10th June, but now that there’s been a lot of fuss over the Astra Zeneca vaccine along the lines of serious blood clots, I think I would be the clot if I tempted fate and had another one. But what does not having a second jab mean? How long would I have to wait before I could safely have the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine? Nobody’s asking these questions. And while it would be great to hear that there is no connection between the AZ vaccine and dangerous blood clots, it’s now a case of who to believe. Whenever Boris Johnson says anything I’m afraid I can’t trust a word of it, so if he says it’s safe, you can bet your life that it isn’t. And then there’s the various organisations that are supposed to have some clout; how can they be trusted? They all have vested interests. So there’s nowhere turn and millions of people in the same predicament: they’ve gone so far and had the first jab, then they’ve heard bad things and now they’re considering not having their second jab. I am one of those people.

And now, of course, the Duke of Edinburgh has died, aged 99, and only a few weeks from being 100 years old, at least he still gets ‘1921 to 2021’. As I write this the establishment is preparing the guns for a nationwide military salute and the BBC is talking about nothing else, repeating old footage over and over again and there’s no escape unless you switch from terrestrial television to the on demand channels like Prime or Netflix, which is what I do every night. I sit there watching one, possibly two ‘independent’ movies and they’re a bit hit and miss. But it’s all escapism: movies, mini-series, comedy, drama, music, anything to take my mind off the shit we all have to endure these days, our awful politicians mainly and the poor decisions they make on our behalf.