Tag: London

JULY 5 Goodbye (for now)

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Yesterday, Lockdown in London was, to all intents and purposes, over. Not for “ the writer” and me, because we will continue to wait cautiously for advances in treatment or a vaccine, so it will be a while before we are prepared to give up social distancing or eat indoors in a crowded restaurant. Our hair will remain long and unruly ‘til we can no longer stand it and we won’t be going to the cinema, boarding a ‘plane or getting drunk in the street any time soon.

Looking at the pictures of people in Soho Last night, it’s hard to imagine there won’t be a spike and we’ll all be back indoors. But perhaps there won’t, as most of the transgressors are young. Of course they think they are immortal – didn’t we all at their age? And, in this instance, the virus itself appears to endorse their world view.

Sadly, I wonder if now is the time when young and old will split apart. In the restaurants and play-spaces of Soho, my husband and I have always been able to feel we are still part of the buzz, despite being the oldest people in almost every venue we visit. We have occupied one layer of a multi- generational community and loved it. But it feels as though we may be about to be left behind. I see few people of my own age on the Soho streets at the moment. Protecting the vulnerable was an admirable aim but there was no exit strategy. Perhaps there will never be one, as the vaccine that would provide it is “by no means certain”, we are told and, not only that, but even if the most likely one on trial does succeed, it “might not work on the elderly”.

If “the writer” and I have to stay in partial lockdown for the foreseeable future, it will be do-able. We have managed since I began this Blog on March 12th. Not just “managed” but had a blissful time. (I’m well aware how vulgar and unfeeling that sounds towards the many, many people who now deal with terrible financial burdens or have had to endure miserable living conditions – and I have re-iterated how lucky we are throughout this period.) But I can’t deny we have thrived on the simplicity of Lockdown life. Normal London life is hectic and the withdrawal of everything that made it so has been a joy. “The writer” has written, I have started work again. We have over-drunk and over-eaten. Why not have cream with the strawberries, we deserve it because there’s a deadly virus out there?

Even if this isn’t the absolute end of Lockdown, it certainly feels like a tipping point.

Tod and Trisha are back from the windswept Highlands, aghast at the noise and dirt and smell of the city. We met in St. James’s Park to drink warm wine on a hot day before fleeing from the rain to shelter under the trees. And we have chatted to Amy and Peter through their cautiously opened front door.

Writing this blog has been the greatest fun. I hope you’ve had even a quarter of the pleasure reading it as I have writing it. If we are back in Lockdown or anything interesting and Covid-related happens (Or if I just can’t bear not doing this any more), I will start writing again so, if you subscribe, you will get an email whenever I post.

Until then, from https://lockeddowninlondon.com

Goodbye (for now)

July 3

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The countdown to tomorrow’s Great Unlock is under way. Soho’s roads are cleared for tables and chairs, paintwork is spruced and on every corner, restaurant staff, excited to see one another again, are being briefed and handed PPE.

We look forward to the re-opening with hope and trepidation. Hope that the restaurants in which we have enjoyed such good times will thrive once more and trepidation that drunkenness and lack of toilet facilities will drive desperate punters to urinate – and worse – in the quiet street onto which our front door opens.

For the moment, it feels as though Soho is holding its breath.

July 1

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As we near July 4th – the day of The Great Unlocking – there are sprouting on walls and any other available vertical surface in Soho, homilies? exhortations? aphorisms? I’m not sure what to call them. It seems that locked down people have an urge to give public advice – mostly fridge- magnet mawkish, occasionally witty and, sometimes intriguing. It’s surprising, given the ubiquity of social media, that this sort of thing isn’t taking place exclusively on line but maybe there’s something about the ghost – town atmosphere of boarded up restaurants and featureless streets where once was so much energy, that suggests such decoration is not vandalism but improvement. Perhaps it’s one way of re-introducing just a little life and conversation while we’re waiting for the real thing to return.

June 25

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Well, I promised no more pigeons but I have learned from a certain government we all know, that promises are made to be broken. So, I am going to introduce you to Harriet the Hawk.

I have on our terrace three, thriving, gooseberry bushes, bearing hundreds of berries ripening nicely. Imagine my surprise (as they say) when I opened the blinds a few mornings ago, glanced out at the glorious sunshine we have now come to expect – and stood rooted to the spot. Until that moment, I had thought that “eyes widening” was an uninformative literary cliche , that was until I actually felt my eyelids touch my eyebrows.

I had gone to bed safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t long before I could make my signature gooseberry fool. (I think the idea of “signature”carries the assumption that, although it is the speciality of one expert, other people might be clamouring to eat it. However, in the case of gooseberry fool, I don’t care. I’m happy to eat the lot)

Anyway, beyond the open blinds, this is what greeted me:

Looks OK, you might think. Perfectly healthy. But what you can’t see is that IT WAS THE ONLY ONE LEFT!!!!! The pigeons had plundered them all in the night.

I phone the trusty Mark,our gardener, worried about losing the tomatoes next. He suggests a bird scarer – simple, to rig up, he says, and very effective. How I managed to stop myself wondering aloud why, then, he hadn’t suggested it before the pigeons ate the gooseberries, I don’t know.

Harriet arrived yesterday- two grotty pieces of plastic that wouldn’t fool a pet budgerigar, let alone a feral pigeon, we thought. “The writer” jammed the wings onto the body , then removed them and jammed them on the right way round with the crudely painted feathers on the top. We were then presented with the dilemma of where and how to hang it. It has to move, apparently, as a plastic hawk, stationary over a load of tomato plants for six months seemingly fools no-one.

A mechanism for attaching it was the first problem. I have a belief that the wire coat hanger is the greatest aid to man and woman ever invented. I have them all over the house stretched out into long implements with the hook on the end for fishing out things kicked under the bed and dropped behind cupboards, for lowering the blinds whose cord I can’t reach, and pulling jars towards me from the back of too- high shelves. Sure enough, “the writer” had only to exert massive force to twist one into a serviceable hook.

and now, the time had come to launch Harriet:

Safely ensconced on her hook, swinging languidly in the faint breeze she refused to look anywhere other than at us instead of fixing the pigeons on the roof behind her with her plastic glare. So unconvinced was “the writer” that Harriet would fool anything, he suggested it would be just as effective to prop up a copy of Helen Macdonald’s beautiful book, H is for Hawk, on the table in front of the tomatoes, the jacket illustration knocking Harriet into a cocked hat for fearsomeness.

Anyway, we agreed to give Harriet a go, mainly on account of our reluctance to untwist the coat hanger.

And I have amazing news to report. NOT ONE PIGEON has been within at least 100 metres of our terrace. So unless they are all socially distancing to excess, Harriet is doing the job!

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As though to mock us, on our early morning walk this morning, we again encounter the Hawk Patrol, ridding Trafalgar Square of pigeons.

Eat your heart out Harriet!

June 22

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Anyone fancy a growler?

Creativity of all kinds is flourishing amid what’s left of Lockdown in London.

On our walk today we were surprised to come across groups of people outside a nearby pub, swigging what appeared to be beer from plastic milk containers.

On investigation, I discovered this was not the isolated incident I had taken it to be but an actual movement, aimed at enabling fans of craft beers, only available on draft, to drink them at home. The containers – sometimes they can be collectors’ items in earthenware or pewter – are called “growlers” because the nineteenth – century punter would carry his or her beer home from the local pub in a small, galvanised bucket and the sound of gas escaping from the lid was said to sound like a growl. Apparently, there are quite a few London pubs where you can take your growler to be refilled and The States boasts actual filling stations in some grocery stores.

This normally rather gloomily dark restaurant on Dean St.It looks inviting and cheerful in its new incarnation and is at least managing to do some takeaway business and there was evidence of creativity at an open air birthday party yesterday afternoon in the park. This party was as festive as any with guests socially distanced on a rug with cake and candles, flowers in the trees and balloons on their Boris bikes.

Soho is awash with creative ways of getting custom back into the area . It’s going to be Hell for residents for at least three months if restaurateurs succeed in getting the area pedestrianised and licensed to serve food in the street. But we have to just grin and bear it. We live here because we love Soho’s vibrancy and buzz. No matter that the Bohemianism which drew us here has now mostly transmuted into bourgeoise comfort. It’s partly our fault so I reckon we have a responsibility to resuscitate what’s left.

Let’s just pray they provide enough lavatories!

June 15 Midday

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I thought we had stopped doing what we were told by the government. It looks as though I was wrong. Today, we were told to shop, the shops threw open their doors and, lo – we shopped!

The empty streets are once again, crowded. The roads we crossed last week without

glancing left or right are once again jammed, the air is once again foul.

Of everything I saw, the strangest was the queue outside JD Sports stretching down Oxford Street. Has everyone worn out their trainers during their hour’s daily exercise?

Hamley’s
Apple Store

I wasn’t out to shop. I was out to report back to you, fellow Lockdowners, and what I have to report is that people are out buying, not in vast numbers, rarely in masks, hardly social distancing – except in shops that are carefully monitoring their entrances-and the streets don’t look that different, despite the three-month hiatus.

The only physical sign of Covid-19 were the hand sanitising – points along the pavement and the occasional sign emphasising the need for 2-metre social distancing.

But then today is only the first day of the rest of our lives.

Oxford St.

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.