A deathwish, a slashed wrist and a flesh-eating bug: my COVID-19 lockdown diary
May, 2020
- DAWN breaks and I am sitting in my car, finally ready to give chase. For weeks, between 5am and 5.45am the world’s loudest motorbike has been driven along the street above which I sleep, Tuesday to Saturday. The police say without a numberplate they won’t investigate. At last, thanks to a 4am crying jag by my two year old son, I am ready to obtain it. I’ve positioned my car at the top of the street, where it meets the main road, and now surprisingly full of adrenaline I stare into the wing mirror. An hour later, on the point of giving up, a single headlight appears from the estate at the bottom of the road. I start my engine.
- VERY hard during these strangest of times to reconcile the impulses of spring with the reality of plague. Rather than think about rebirth and hope, we contemplate death and suffering. As I leave the house with my son strapped to my back – a position from which he likes nothing more than tirelessly to scan the horizon for his favourite sight (any ladder) – and clutching my four-year old daughter’s hand, I think: enough. The sun shines, the birds sing and the breeze is fresh. “There is nothing either or good or bad, but thinking makes it so”, Shakespeare wrote. That’s good enough for me.
- FIFTEEN minutes later, after I object to her shouting at my daughter to get out of her way, a jogger in her fifties wearing a facemask wishes death upon me. “You monster,” she says as she comes past. “I hope it takes you. I hope you die.” “Why she was talking like that, daddy?” my daughter asks. I tell her grown ups get tired when they run and really she just wants the coronavirus to go away, as do we all. “Poor coronavirus,” Isabella says quietly.
- AT the start of lockdown, I bought a guitar. I thought I’d use the time to learn a new skill. I didn’t tell my wife and when it arrived she laughed openly. “You think you’re going to have time to spare?” Of course, she was right. Lockdown has been horribly busy. We both work and so one of us has the children in the morning and the other in the afternoon. It means we have to do a full day’s work in a half day. When it’s her turn, my wife does creative activities with the children, like making models with papier maché, or potato printing. On my watch, I try to exhaust them with long walks in the hope extreme fatigue will make them docile.
- ON a yomp in Richmond Park, a Lyme Disease hotspot, my son gets a tick on his chest. At bathtime I try to get it out with tweezers but leave some under the skin. After looking at photos of the tiny wound during a virtual consultation, a GP advises he be taken to the specialist Tick Removal Centre at Kingston Hospital. When we get there, there is of course no specialist Tick Removal Centre. Instead, the medics distract him with a blown up surgical glove and again set about his chest with tweezers, this time successfully. Uniformly, they are funny and also modest about the work they are doing and the danger they face. As we are leaving, the nurse enquires about the cuts on my wrist. I explain lockdown has not made me suicidal, the wounds are the result of being lashed by a snapped guitar string – it happened while trying to understand, by watching a YouTube tutorial, how to tune the instrument.
- I HAVEN’T been going outside on Thursdays to clap for the NHS I think because of an unarticulated – to myself, at least – fear of compelled public displays of obeisance, and also because increasingly I worry that our ever more godless society worships in the wrong places. That’s not to say I’m not incredibly grateful for everything the medics continue to do. My wife and my daughter take part in the ritual. For my daughter, it’s the highlight of her week. In fact, she looks forward to it so much I have started to threaten to forbid it when I want her to do something. Lockdown has been hard on her. “I just want to cuddle people,” she told me recently when I asked why she was crying. On Thursday evenings, in her pyjamas and with her hair brushed, she rushes around ecstatically waving while our neighbours smile and clap. “Well done everyone,” she shouts.
- IT’S now becoming increasingly clear to me that the man I’ve reported to the police is an NHS frontline hero. I chased him on his motorbike down the Lower Richmond Road and across Putney bridge until he had to stop at lights and I was able to see his numberplate clearly. Yesterday while trying frantically to use my allotted half day to meet a deadline, my phone rang. It was a policeman calling to let me know that since the bike had passed its MOT, the noise it emits is legal. As a result of investigating previous complaints about the motorbike, he said he was acquainted with the gentleman who rides it. “Is he some sort of gangster type?” I asked nervously, hoping to assess the likelihood of my being shivved in the street should I confront him. “Oh no, quite the opposite,” the policeman said. I realise immediately he’s a nurse – I’m certain of it. There can be no other explanation. Who else would leave for work during lockdown at 5:30am every morning?
- THIS Thursday, then, I will be out there with everyone else, banging saucepans together and hollering to the heavens. It’s the least I can do.