Author: coronet22

June 15

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Hard to decide whether our first purchase in the real world, last night, was a comedy or a tragedy.

Having recce’d the day before, we ordered fish and chips on line from our nearest and most savoury-looking chippie on the grounds that it would be quicker and therefore hotter, by the time we ate it, than the same meal brought by Deliveroo.

We discovered from the news that, despite a 5pm curfew, the streets were still awash with protesters claiming to be guarding Churchill’s statue and the Cenotaph, both of which were guarded already by having been comprehensively boarded up.

Fearful the protesters might have headed our way, we geared ourselves up in masks and gloves and ventured into the street.

We discover that Poppies, our local chippie, has a system whereby you pay for your meal in one part of what was the restaurant and collect it from another. There is a queue outside and several young men waiting for food inside, who don’t even think of moving to put a bit of space between us.

We decide to wait for our meal, freshly prepared in the fryers, out in the street.

And that’s when the rain starts – not gentle Summer rain but a tropical downpour that leaves us dripping before the manager even manages to roll out the blinds.

Our massive Haddock arrives with an equally massive portion of chips , two cartons of mushy peas and a gherkin and we set out for home, not quite running but definitely keeping up a good pace while the carrier bag holding our food gets more sodden by the minute.

“The writer” is carrying the bag, heavy with its huge cargo, when it succumbs to the rain and the sodden bottom falls out, scattering cardboard cartons of fish and chips in the road. We gather it frantically together, run home, wahs our hands, throw off our wet clothes, towel ourselves dry, sanitise the cardboard boxes , wash our hands again and put the food on plates.

It is delicious- and, miraculously, still hot!! So ends our first purchase in person since March 12th.

June 14

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I feel we are on our own now. The government has proved ill-prepared and untrustworthy. The country is, understandably, worried about the dire economic situation, so getting back to work is the new mantra. It seems that saving lives and protecting the NHS are no longer the priority. Instead, we are exhorted – begged- to shop for unnecessary items, get children back to school and return to work, while our Prime Minister concentrates on what really matters – getting Brexit even more “done”.

We are told the “R” number is between .7 and .9 and so the gentle easing of lockdown is on track. But we have been given this same figure for more than two weeks. Has it really not moved in this time and why is it no longer being talked about every day as the grail towards which we are heading? Test and Trace, whose “world -beating” system was touted as vital before release of lockdown was safe, is not yet fully-functioning, the contact app. seems to be marooned on the Isle of Wight and the absolutely essential two-metre social distancing rule will soon be disposed of without ado.

In truth, many of us have been making up our own rules for some time. We made our own decision to lock ourselves down two weeks before it became mandatory and not to go out at all for exercise or food shopping, We made our own decision about when it was time to start going out for walks. We know at least two families who have amalgamated their households with their children’s and have been moving freely between them for weeks. When we walk in the park, we pass large clusters of people – mostly young men – lying on the grass drinking and chatting and every night we watch on the news thousands of people marching through our cities, crammed together and heedless of the consequences. We have friends who have shopped throughout, friends who have taken taxis to forbidden meetings and friends who have not set foot outside the door. This is the Covid Continuum, at one end of which are the truly cautious, among whom I number ourselves, and at the other, the utterly reckless. Most people seem to fall somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile, even we are unlocking ourselves gradually. Tonight, for the first time, we will be collecting fish and chips booked in advance at a nearby restaurant. Such excitement!

Of course, logically, there is no completely safe exit from Lockdown until we have been vaccinated or there is some new medical intervention that makes the likelihood of dying from the virus less than negligible

So, tortoise-like, we will poke our heads out from our shells, and take slow, tentative steps in the world unless – or until- a spike drives us back into the dark.

June 11

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  #someoneofsoho

We took another walk round Soho yesterday observing increasing signs of optimism. The sadly boarded up Dean St. Town House, one of our most favourite haunts, has become the site for an open air photographic Exhibition, #someoneofsoho, featuring portraits of local residents and workers by photographer Richard Piercy.

Kettners and Bistro 1 also provide a backdrop for his dramatic and insightful work.

Richard’s pharmacy, Zest, used to be one of the delights of living in Soho, as did Richard himself. Who needed a doctor when you had him as your pharmacist?

Today, his premises wouldn’t be much use for dispensing the Covid-19 vaccine we pray is on the way:

Richard moved out, put pharmacy behind him and turned what used to be his passionate hobby into a photographic career.

He says of this exhibition,

“It’s people who make places,”

A neighbourhood’s landscape may change, but it’s humanity that defines its character.

A deserted Soho due to the pandemic lockdown has only served to heighten this. I want to re-install some humanity and positivity back to an area I have been heavily involved in for 30 years. The people featured here are just a few of the many who contribute to the character and soul of this unique pocket of London.”

Richard Piercy

June 9

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I’ve decided it’s time to share with you the latest doings of my oldest friend – longest time, since primary school – not actually the oldest. In celebration of her birthday, yesterday, I present to you you ‘Cooking with Frannie” and “Woodwork with Frannie”

Happy Birthday Frannie!

https://youtu.be/bE6rROr0JSc
https://youtu.be/Y-kCNlablC4

June 5

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This, sadly, is the latest picture of our bird feeder, reposing in the rubbish on top of a mass of plastic fruit containers. Ironic that we were all just getting used to the idea of avoiding plastic at all costs and now, in the face of Covid, such ecological niceties have been completely disregarded.

These are the bags in which our big Waitrose order was delivered on Monday. In case you’re wondering why they are still sitting in a heap on the floor, they’re waiting for the 24-hour/48-hour/9-day period ( Take your pick of all the available estimates) that it will take for them to be Covid -free and safe to put away.

I had just got used to the Greenfinches flitting round our terrace and was wondering how long it would be before I could tame them to take seed from my hand – when I saw it.

I wasn’t sure I had seen it at first. Maybe it was a floater in my eye or a blackbird heading for the feeder. But then I saw another – or the same one again – scurrying back the other way . A small black mouse – definitely not a rat – that shot across the terrace and vanished into our thicket of plants.

It’s always fascinating to wonder why we have the fears we do. Unless we can ascribe a fear to a particular incident – a dog bite or a wasp sting – the things in the natural world that disturb us seem so random. For example, I think mice are sweet, cuddly creatures but “The Writer” can’t bear them anywhere in his vicinity. I’m terrified of spiders and will stand trembling outside the room in which one has taken up residence, whereas he sweeps in, bristling with machismo, and disposes of it. (I don’t care to ask how). I’m not especially frightened of snakes and was happy to tramp through the Australian desert or bush banging the ground with a stick in front of me or singing at the top of my voice. (I found the latter an excellent deterrent). We were told by rangers that the best way to deal with a poisonous snake indoors is to throw a towel over it and call the appropriate authority to dispose of it humanely. I do admit to being relieved at never having had to test that advice.

In Italy some years ago, Trisha, having been dozing barefoot under a tree, slipped her foot back inside her shoe, only to be bitten by what was later identified as a viper which ,we were told, live in trees and obviously drop down occasionally into available footwear. What followed was like a bad farce except to Trish, whose foot was blackening by the minute. All of us being of an age to have read Swallows and Amazons, Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, we decided a tourniquet was vital and lashed it round Trish’s knee as tightly as we could manage. Tod bashed the snake to death and remembered you were supposed to take it with you to the hospital. Someone else found a bottle of snake venom antidote buried on a shelf in the house, which, luckily, we didn’t use ,as we discovered later it was for horses and would probably have done a lot more harm than good. There followed a dash to Pronto Socorso at the tiny local hospital where the patients had to bring their own soap and lavatory paper. They dealt with it efficiently, warning us that tourniquets were so last decade and should never be considered and Trish – mysteriously- that she must never again eat water melon.

(As I said, this was many years ago and checking now, I can find no evidence for Italian vipers living or giving birth in trees and I may have got all sorts of other details wrong. If you read this, Trish and Tod, do let me know how you remember it).

Anyway, back to the bird feeder in the dustbin. Having seen the mouse and talked to our efficient House Manager, we were warned that bird-seed is definitely an inducement to mice and offered the choice of mouse traps or a sinister black box euphemistically called a “Mouse Bait Station” to help get rid of them. (In an apartment block it’s considered unneighbourly to let them just roam about).The idea of the bait station is that the mouse pops into the hole in the box, attracted by the smell of its favourite food, infused into a block of poison. The box has to be opened with a key so it’s safe from children and other animals.

I must say the idea of either device is upsetting. At present, I favour the crossed fingers solution, hoping that perhaps they’ll just go away now there is no bird feeder to attract them. But if “The Writer” sees the mouse again, I’m afraid it’s black box time.

June 3

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Yesterday morning I received news that brought a definite sense of Soho waking up.

A proposal headed “Save Soho” aims to designate July, August and September a “festival”, close all the streets around us and pedestrianise them so revellers can eat, drink and make merry in celebration of the restaurants re-opening.

It sounds like a great idea: Since Soho is mainly filled with restaurants nowadays – food having apparently taken over from sex – and many kinds of workplaces whose staff can work from home, it has become a complete ghost town during the pandemic. Friends in Fulham and Hampstead are beginning to meet in local cafes, to sip coffee at a safe distance from one another but there is still nothing open round here except liquor shops and The Bagel Bakery.

I start out as an enthusiast for the plan then “the writer”mentions that, if there is a spike and we remain locked down, there will be no food deliveries because of the road closures and we’ll starve. This is not a good start. Then we remember the time when Old Compton St. was pedestrianised and became an open air pub, with drunks lurching round the streets throwing up and no-one to call “Time”. And then we realise that without road access, we won’t be able to get to our garage.

Please let us try to avoid being the old, grumpy Scrooges who naysay everything. The local restaurants are where we have our best times and we do want them to thrive. There will be a compromise.

Thinking about the proposal, I suddenly want to see for myself what is going on in the streets around us.

As I walk down an empty Carnaby St. into an even emptier Regent St. the answer is -very little.

Peering through windows, I see staff in a few shops heaving boxes of stock about, readying themselves for possible opening on June 15. Otherwise, I encounter only a few aimless window-shoppers and little else. I must say, though, it is a relief to be away from the park joggers. No-one runs up and breathes in my face here.

I hadn’t realised it would be so odd to be walking in the city without being able to stop for a coffee and maybe even a pastry and I wonder why at least the prospect of doing so is important to both of us. Partly, it’s an opportunity for the impromptu. “Let’s just stop here”. So much has to be booked way ahead in London, it’s a relief to just “drop in”. It’s also the best way to enjoy the cabaret of passers-by in comfort – and of course there is the coffee – and the cake and the fact that the coffee bar was once the expression of Soho bohemianism. In the 60s, when I lived far away in North London, the 2i’s coffee bar at 59, Old Compton St. was one of my favourite Soho haunts. Skiffle was the music of choice on the tiny stage in its equally tiny basement until Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard sang there and the music scene changed.

The only thing I can’t remember about the place is what the coffee was like, mainly because I don’t like coffee and in those days it wasn’t cool to drink tea so I was the uncool kid who had to carry a teabag around to restaurants and persuade sniffy waiters to dump it in a cup, there being no pot on the premises – at least not the tea -brewing kind.

When we came to live in Soho, Bar Italia at 22 Frith St, where John Logie Baird first demonstrated how we could all become couch potatoes, was still, and remains, the area’s iconic coffee bar. It’s been there since 1949 and is still a family business

Sadly, such coffee bars – in fact most coffee bars- disappeared decades ago, only to return sanitised, respectablised, sleeked and indistinguishable in the form of Starbucks, Costa Coffee and the rest. I guess double expressos or cappuccinos didn’t cover rising rents whereas a venti salted caramel mocha frappuccino with 5 pumps of frappuccino roast, four pumps of caramel sauce, four pumps of caramel syrup with double blended extra whipped cream sounds a lot more likely to cope with those business rates.

In fact Starbucks in Carnaby St.was the only other place open on my walk, serving takeaway coffees largely drunk on the steps of The London Palladium nearby. And this, below, was the only other, sad remnant of the vibrant, buzzy social life we love so much. Good for them for keeping going.

Perhaps we shouldn’t worry about starving and rejoice in the prospect of the re-awakening of Soho.

May 31

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For the first time since this whole appalling Covid saga kicked off, I’m worried. I mean the kind of worry that buzzes constantly in the head like background music behind the ordinary tasks of the day. New loosening of Lockdown is being announced every day and I realise ,with a shock, that I’m finding the prospect of Unlockdown more difficult to handle than its opposite.

Firstly, because I have enjoyed – am enjoying – Lockdown . We are comfortable. We have access to fresh air, we have plenty to do, plenty to eat, enough to live on and no children to home school. I am well aware it’s a far cry from this for many people who are suffering badly, desperate to resume earning and cooped up in unbearable conditions , sometimes with a partner of whom they are terrified.

Unlike “The writer, I’m not a party animal. I understood what parties were for when I was single – they were for becoming not single. But, nowadays, the prospect of standing uncomfortably sipping warm white wine and having every conversation curtailed by “circulating” just when it’s getting interesting, isn’t my idea of fun. I miss dinner, breakfast or tea at a round table, with friends, laughing and arguing and bitching about or admiring others in a restaurant. But I find, reprehensibly, I’m not missing theatre, opera or galleries – just substituting with far too much TV.

Yesterday, I knew where I was. Stay in, except if I fancied a walk, sanitise every piece of cardboard or plastic, bag a food delivery slot, discuss the day’s meals, take some exercise, listen for hours to news about Dominic Cummings, shout at the TV about Dominic Cummings, and look forward to our weekly meeting with friends on Zoom. I didn’t worry, just got on with tasks.

Today, the world has suddenly become a more equivocal place. Are we morally obliged to start shopping for ourselves again? Will we be expected to invite friends round soon? How many friends? Which friends? Suppose the friends we do want to see don’t choose us as their preferred group? Will there be a spike? Will we ever board a ‘plane again? When will we feel confident enough to get on a bus or take a taxi?

A plethora of new rules was gleefully announced on Friday:

Groups of six may meet but not hug or hold babies.

Up to 6 people from 6 different households can meet in gardens and private outdoor spaces. You can see 5 people from another household on one day and 5 on another but not 3 groups of 5 friends at different times on the same day.

Food and drink can be served but not handed round.

If you use the lavatory in the house, the door should be opened and closed with a paper towel and everything should be “wiped down”.

Four-ball golf matches and tennis doubles can now be played as long as your doubles partner lives with you.

If it rains, you should stay out in the garden, use an umbrella or go home.

Try sloganising that lot Dominic Cummings! Hard to fit it on the front of the lectern, too. And try remembering it the rest of us.

To my surprise, I discover I have enjoyed living life on solid ground with fewer choices. Is this what having a religion feels like – clear rules and rituals, a comforting framework? What in the therapy business they call containment – literal containment in this case, as we are locked away indoors. Or have I just become institutionalised?

Like some of the scientists who spoke out yesterday, I feel we are being encouraged out of Lockdown too fast. Life suddenly feels more precarious.But when would be the right time?

“The writer” and I have made up our minds what we’re going to do – stay put, change nothing, wait to see if there is a spike in the next two or three weeks and, if not, think again.

May 7

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I forgot to mention that many years ago, during another mouse outbreak (Mousebreak?) we in the block voted that the most natural way ton deal with it would be to buy a house cat. A rescue cat was duly chosen and took up residence. The idea was that he would live in the common parts – the stairwell, to be exact – and that he would begin his new life as a rodent operative.

For some reason that now escapes me, someone named him Cashew and his new quarters were equipped for comfort and hygiene. We all enjoyed bumping into Cashew on his and our travels round the building and we all took him into our apartments from time to time so he could leave his scent behind to deter other visitors.

We grew to love our resident. His quarters on the third floor were extended downstairs to include a playground. His feeding rota grew ever more complex and we became mystified by the number of times he would be missing during the day when the appointed feeder turned up.

The mystery remained unsolved until the manager of a nearby hotel phoned to say that a black and white cat seemed to have discovered that their honeymoon suite was not always occupied and was to be found most afternoons curled up on the velvet counterpane of the super-King size bed.

It turned out that Cashew, having been invited into one of the apartments closest to the hotel, would climb out of their window, make his way into the hotel and scout around for the most comfortable accommodation, returning home for dinner or when he felt like a change of scene.

Cashew lived happily like this with all of us for several years – until one of our residents fell in love – with Cashew.

The cat’s disappearances grew longer and longer. Now he would be away for the whole weekend, then for a week at a time, then for a month. No, the hotel manager said, he wasn’t honeymooning this time, hadn’t been for ages.

Cashew had been catnapped by the handsomest man in the block, taken to live in his glitteringly white, minimalist apartment and fed on the tastiest of morsels.

None of us said anything as he retired from work and lay around admiring his paws. How could we insist he went back to the stairwell?

Remembering that Cashew had originally moved in to mouse-hunt, I texted his “owner” this week and asked if he could please walk Cashew around the building for a while to see whether he would spot any mice. “Oh no, sorry”, came the reply, “People would pet him and he might be a vector for the virus.” And, besides, I think he’s a bit past it now. He’s become very lazy”.

Instead of the cat, he sent me a ‘photo. I see what he means. Does this look like a hunter to you?

April 29

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There has been a curious, almost magical, change in our kitchen: the stove stays clean for days, the floor is devoid of scuff marks for hours and the sink is swilled and polished after use.

A couple of weeks ago, I developed excruciating pain in both wrists and thumbs, so bad I had to book an appointment with the wonderful physio who restores me to vertical every time my back goes, dealt with a wrecked knee following a fall in Oxford St. when I was sneered at by passers-by for being obviously drunk, and has cured many other, smaller mishaps.

There is something of a contradiction in terms ‘seeing’ a physio on Zoom, not least because she operates so sensitively by touch, the one sense unavailable. By dint of comprehensive questioning, she diagnosed RSI from chopping vegetables for soup and wielding various cleaning implements. (She also made me feel better by showing alarm and surprise when I recounted my activities, enquiring whether it is really necessary to polish mirrors at the moment).

Anyway, she prescribed a variety of exercises including a virtual gym for my thumb involving pulling against rubber bands on other fingers of the same hand.

Unfortunately, I attacked the exercises with the same mad gusto I do most physical things – a footballer-type groin strain from over-enthusiastic Zumba-ing being the most recent damage. A few days ago, I was in such severe pain I had to order a wrist and thumb brace, reluctantly helping to add yet more millions to Jeff Bezos’s Amazon fortune.

The brace holds my thumb and wrist rigid, a position that defies chopping, hoovering, mirror-polishing and more or less everything else. “The writer” has taken this on the chin and is now doing everything in the house including cooking and cleaning.

Hence the magical transformation of the kitchen. When I was cleaning, our breakfast porridge, made by the writer even then, was allowed to drop onto the stainless steel cooker during stirring, remaining there in hard gobbets til I cleaned it off. Now, I watch him stirring gently, concentrating hard so not a spurt is allowed to escape the pan. Oil is barely used nowadays, not for health reasons but in case it trespasses on a worktop. Biscuits require a plate instead of being eaten on the move and carelessly crumbled onto the floor, the table and the terrace.

I confess – only to you,- that my wrist is starting to feel a bit better but I find I’m oddly reluctant to admit it.

May 26

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Last day of pigeons – I promise

But you have to see this magnificent bird feeder:

Stephen writes: We found the dropped seed attracted rats so I concocted this Heath Robinson contraption from the old bird table and some plumbing bits. All the seed now drops on to the beach and the ducks come to Hoover it up.  The pigeons still manage to plop themselves on the miniature table and wolf down the food.

What Stephen says about rats alarms me. I saw a mouse on our terrace last night-undeterred by the dullness of our bog -standard feeder. Do so hope I’m not going to have to take it down.