The Museum of London is looking for people to suggest and donate items that symbolise Lockdown, to help future generations understand this extraordinary period.
It made me think and it would be interesting exercise to look around and see what, for me, epitomises this weirdest period in our lives.
The most obvious ones are the items to which I never gave a thought before Lockdown and now see as a normal part of life – disposable gloves, sanitising wipes, hand sanitizer bottles, some even with little clips so you can attach them to your belt to be certain of keeping them close. Cardboard boxes are emblematic of innumerable food deliveries and I would definitely include the page you find on line when looking for a Waitrose delivery slot.
Sweaty Betty Yoga pants. This is the most comfortable garment known to woman. I have lived in these for the five weeks of lockdown so far (Not the same pair!) and don’t ever want to put on anything else again – which is just as well, as I’m eating so much chocolate, I won’t be able to.
Kitchen scales. I only started cooking about 10 years ago , having been too tired after work to bother and, living in the middle of London, only too delighted to eat out.
When I did start, I decided that, if I were to do it properly, I needed the best equipment. Really, I didn’t. It was like smoking or going ski-ing, accumulating the paraphernalia was half the fun. My cooking friends thought I was mad, buying such old-fashioned scales when there are so many streamlined, digital ones on the market. They could not have imagined – and neither could I – how much pleasure I would get from using them. The weights are satisfying to hold and sit cooly in the hand, there is the thrill of watching the balance equalise – pouring in just the tiniest bit more of something to see it shudder and come to rest in a straight line. It brings back hours of playing shop as a child, tipping conkers or rose petals onto plastic scales to see which was heavier and they somehow help me understand weight by seeing a substance literally “tip the balance”. I’m cooking so much more during Lockdown, I use them almost every day and, since I’m still not a good enough cook to depart from a recipe, I actually enjoy the act of being able to stick, slavishly, to the exact number of grams required.
This is My husband’s favourite mug, which has become his substitute comfort blanket during Lockdown. I like china mugs. I like their lightness in the hand and coolness on the tongue. He likes earthenware. Says the weight and slight roughness is more masculine. He’ll drink tea from a china one but coffee has to be in this.
His “Geezer” hat. “The Writer’s” pride and joy during Lockdown is this hat. He calls it his “Geezer” hat because he reckons anyone wearing such an accessory has given in to becoming an old boy, the sort of man who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, does his own thing and lets the rest of the world go hang. He also loves it because it reminds him of Australian friends who, he says, were content to become geezers when they were only half his age. He tramps up and down the terrace in it, doing his 10,000 steps and on the day he couldn’t find it last week, he got sunstroke!
What things symbolise Lockdown for you?.
Locked down in London 
In your last blog you asked about memories of this time and what we would put in the museum to remind us.
Mine is not a physical thing, it is something that will last in my mind for ever I hope and something I wish I knew how to display.
Today, in Oz, is Anzac Day.It’s the day we remember all those brave, or foolish, men that waded ashore at Gallipoli, many of whom never got to see home again.
Usually on this day we tune in to the dawn service held at Lone Pine on Gallipoli and are always moved by the young people that are there to remember and to witness the shear impossibility of the land the troops had to try and scale. Because of Covid 19 none of the normal services performed by hundreds of RSL clubs around Australia could be performed.
Instead they asked that if anyone had a trumpet and could play Last Post at 6.03am, the time the first troops went ashore, in there street would they do so.
This morning we woke to the sound of a lone trumpeter in our street doing just that and it was a sound I will never ever forget but a sound I cannot put in any museum. To say it was spine tingling would be an understatement and to say it brought tears to the eyes would also be true. Our trumpeter wasn’t alone as others could be heard all over the suburbs. It didn’t matter that maybe not all watches read 6.03am at exactly the same moment it was the action and the paying of respect that counted.
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