A Covid-19 report from the heart of the City
The only things thriving in Tier 4 Soho are art and doughnuts.
Down the road from our apartment is a gallery featuring cherubs of varying degrees of obstreperousness:
And in the parallel street, a rather more benign display beckons the very few passers -by.
Actually, I’m not sure which is the more tempting – or the least.
If you don’t fancy either of these displays, what about this unique abstract, created only last night by “The Writer” as he tripped up the stairs carrying a glass of red wine!
It’s been hard to write for a while, mainly because things are changing so quickly . Going into Tier 4 affects “The Writer” and me hardly at all. We were having Christmas lunch on our own and will still do so – the only thing making any difference to the meal being the queues outside supermarkets and the hope that one of our kind neighbours will brave the crowds to buy us a chicken. And if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be happy with a Christmas lunch of Rogan Josh, Murgh Masala, Korma and Jalfrezi – all of which we have in the freezer.
I am back to getting up in the middle of the night to chase delivery slots as I was in the first Lockdown and, in between refreshing the “Book Delivery “page , wondering what the implications are of the accelerated spread of the new strain of this virus. For example, does it mean we should keep even further away from people than before? Or does it mean it permeates masks more easily and, most importantly of all, is the vaccine still efficient at tackling it? We listen to and watch the news constantly but I still can’t find out the answers to these questions. We are told the vaccine will still work but surely no-one be certain yet? And, if that is the case, why will it work, given that the ‘flu vaccine has to be changed every year to accommodate mutations?
Our lives seem to be standing still. All the news comes in from elsewhere: Our friends, Peter and Amy, have had their first dose of vaccine and we are envious. Not since I was six and three-quarters have I wished to be older than I am. And, in philosophical mood after a hospital visit to have more stents slid into his arteries, Tod sends this report headed “The Sadness of Covid”
Overheard at The Royal Brompton Hospital today:
“I’ve come to meet a friend’s wife. He is in the High Dependency Unit here. Can I wait for his wife here in reception. She should be here soon. She is coming to be here when they switch off her husbands life support. I have come to be here to help her … it’s going to be tough for her…”
I also learned from the Thai nurse dealing with me today that she was recently baptised and is cooking a turkey crown for Christmas.?
Life is an unending stream of such juxtapositions…
Meanwhile, helicopters buzz outside, presiding over each new wave of anti – lockdown marchers, the streets of London are emptied of life, apart from jolly knots of construction workers doffing their hard hats and taking their breaks sitting on the pavement in chatty, densely-packed groups. And I am behind 6,029,525 people on the vaccine calculator, meaning I’ll get my dose sometime in the next millennium. I don’t know whether to be elated or depressed – or just regard the calculator as the nonsense parlour game it surely is.
Looking at this laden apple tree, you may think “The Writer” and I have been venturing into the countryside, walking through charming villages, visiting the Manor House before feeding the ducks on the pond and and sipping tea from china cups accompanied by WI lemon drizzle cake served on gingham table cloths in the local teashop.(Sorry, got carried away with that last bit). It may surprise you to learn that this sight is actually in the heart of Soho, only a few hundred yards from our front door.
This extraordinary Georgian house is owned by one, David Bieda, who bought it, derelict, in 1993 and lived in it for three years without a bath or indoor lavatory and with only coal fires for heating. The original wooden panelling and shutters were the only things still in reasonable condition
The house was originally owned and lived in by John Meard Junior, Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, who worked with Sir Chrisopher Wren on the wood carvings in St. Paul’s.
Taking on its restoration wasn’t quite a leap in the dark for Bieda, as he had presided over a great deal of restoration work in and around Covent Garden as chairman of the Seven Dials Trust. But the house has 18 rooms and he surely didn’t reckon on the work taking nearly 20 years to complete, even with the grants from English Heritage and Westminster Council.
The house is unique in the area and has yielded some important pieces of architectural information. David and London archeologists were particularly excited to discover two cesspits in the house. This might not sound particularly thrilling, until you read this on his Website, “68 Dean St. A Short History“.
“ Early 18c town houses rarely had sewers and little is known about water and waste management. 68 Dean Street has now provided the first example of a complete waste + water management system of the period. The cesspit for ‘upstairs’ was discovered in the rear vault. A combined servants’ cesspit and soakaway was discovered in one of the front vaults (with a frog hibernating in it). Objects retrieved include a number of long ‘scent’ bottles probably used for washing, a make up set with make up still inside one pot, an early 19c ‘solid rouge’ and in the front an intact port or stout bottle c.1760.”
Nowadays, David lets out the house for film shoots and conducts small tours to help with its upkeep. He’s a familiar figure in Soho and we often encounter him keeping a beady eye on what’s going on. His preferred uniform in recent weeks has been a visor rather than a mask and he and my husband have an ongoing dispute as to whose social distancing is correct. A couple of weeks ago spotting us having breakfast outside a local hotel, he even nipped home for a tape measure to make sure he and “The Writer” were chatting at the correct distance.
The tree has yielded up to 80 apples in the past and, amazingly – and wonderfully – passers-by seem more inclined to smile at such an unexpected sight than to steal them. Last year, he held a Dean Street apple pie party. No chance of one this year, of course and, though he has offered us some apples, they look so beautiful on the tree, I can’t bear to accept.
And so it has finally happened – We have a vaccine. And, unless the government changes its mind, my husband and I will be high up in the third tranche of people eligible for it.
The news I had been waiting for for so long hit me oddly when it came on Monday 9th. My first response was elation, then came a flood of anxieties in its wake:
Has it been sufficiently tested?
Would the Astrozenica one be better?
Is 90% efficacy enough?
Will I not feel safe until everyone has had it?
Will the Anti-Vaxxers ruin things for the rest of us?
After the anxieties came a slight pang of what I can only call sorrow. We have enjoyed our Lockdown. As I’ve reiterated so many times in this blog, we are constantly aware that we are the lucky ones. We have enough living space – both inside and out, a comfortable lifestyle, few job/money worries and no children to be anxious about or grandchildren near enough to hug. Above all, we have enjoyed each other’s company. We have both been able to continue working without inconvenience, I have loved slopping about in tracksuit bottoms without make up, not worrying about whether my stomach will stick out in what I’ve chosen to wear for the social events we used to attend at least twice – and sometimes up to four times – a week. (Nigella Lawson has been reported as saying she will be going on the 5:2 diet after Covid – not a food diet but a socialising one – 5 days alone and only 2 in company. I don’t for a moment suppose she meant it but I find it a most attractive idea – except that maybe 2 is too many.)
We have been pretty severe in our Lockdown. For two months, the only exercise we took was walking up and down our terrace or the hallway of our apartment. Shopping was entirely on line, apart from a kind neighbour who’d help out in an emergency. and the wonderful manager of our block. For months we saw no friends and still have only done so at a rigid social distance, and only two people have been in the apartment since March. Neither of us has had a haircut, been in a vehicle or travelled anywhere for eight months. The parks have been a Godsend. We love them and inhabit them almost daily. . We have watched far too much TV and read far too few books but have enjoyed even that. We have exercised to a reasonable extent and even cooked together on occasion.
How will re-entry be? What am I looking forward to? Foremost is laughing and arguing with friends in the flesh, rather than in their Zoom cages, eating out with them in rowdy groups in restaurants all over London.
Then there’s travelling. Pre-covid, I had convinced myself I’d had enough of travelling. Security measures had made the airports too uncomfortable to bother negotiating., I insisted. (Mind you, we did make 11 foreign trips last year.) Weirdly, however, the first fantasy to enter my head when our impending freedom was announced, was of eating bacon rolls in Heathrow Airport at breakfast time, waiting to board a ‘plane. Any ‘plane to anywhere. The second was of a week in a luxurious hotel, not having to make a bed, cook, clean or bag an Ocado delivery. The rest is only friends, friends, friends.
Now we have to bide our time, patiently stick to the rules of masking, hand-washing and social distancing we have so painstakingly learned, remember what life was like before and decide which parts of it we want back and which to discard. It could be the chance to press a re-set button for those of us fortunate enough not to have lost our jobs, or a loved one, or seen our businesses go bust.
For myself, I think it will be quite a time before I feel confident enough to ditch the masks, or embrace a distant acquaintance. And it will be even longer before I will be prepared to wear a non-elasticated waistband.
Our Soho surroundings are already altered. Everywhere, communal workspaces have sprung up. They look inviting and efficiently equipped but will they become instantly redundant if everyone continues to work from home? Restaurants, cafes and shops we used to frequent have gone, construction work has continued unhindered and the landscape boasts vast new buildings filling what were empty spaces pre-Covid.
The vaccine and possible end to the dangers of Covid is a subject which will occupy all our thoughts over the coming months, I imagine, and to which I will return in this blog. In the meantime, I’d love to know how other people felt when the news was announced. Do tell me .
“The writer” and I didn’t go out for a ‘last hurrah’ last night before we’re locked down again until December 2nd but it doesn’t look as though the streets of the streets of Soho missed us!
Helicopter noise is driving me INSANE. As the cacophony of building work dies away at lunchtime on Saturdays, the helicopter racket takes over. We don’t find out what’s going on in central London the way most people do, by Googling – we find out by being subjected to hour after hour of helicopters hovering almost directly overhead and THEN Googling, in desperation to discover whether/when whatever they are watching might be over.
Last night, it was the crowds just down the street from our apartment celebrating the beginning of a Tier 2 Lockdown by gathering in large crowds, hugging, kissing and enjoying a mask-less fiesta, having decided that, since from today they would not be able to mix two households, they would mix as many as possible while they still had the opportunity.
And today, the helicopters were back – this time patrolling the anti-lockdown march virtually on our doorstep:
OK, I admit it’s not exactly Apocalypse Now but, believe me, the noise is horrendous,even from this dot in the sky.
I love the city and I love Soho and, even as I read every day that people are flocking to buy houses in the country, I know I’d rather be where the buzz is – even if at times, it’s a buzz I can’t bear.
Woken at 3am to a swishing sound accompanied by the occasional thud, I turn on the light to see “The Writer” apparently playing tennis in the bedroom. My sleeping eyes gradually open to focus on him leaping as though to retrieve a ball and stretching high into the corner of the room in a serving motion. As I drag myself into a sitting position, I hear him muttering “Damn thing” under his breath as he jumps. Waking slowly, I run through the possibilities in my mind. Maybe he’s sleep-jumping? Perhaps he’s dreaming he’s Roger Federer, or Novak Djokovic – can’t remember which one he hates – and, anyway, would he be dreaming about the one he hates or the one he likes? Perhaps he’s gone mad? Perhaps he’s decided he no longer likes the bedroom decor and he’s trying to smash it up? Perhaps he’s decided he’s not getting enough exercise during Lockdown?
It takes a while for me to register that his racquet is bright orange and another while to remember the battery-operated fly- fryer that generally sits, unused, in a forgotten cupboard. The idea is that you swipe at the offending creature and enjoy the sizzle if you hit it. (Yes, yes, I know – not at all PC)
When “The Writer” regains his breath, he assures me there is a mosquito in the room that has not only been whining in his ear but has bitten him several times on his hand. He flourishes his injured hand at me, on which I can see not a blemish.
I agree with him in what I hope is a calming voice, that of course there is a mosquito in the bedroom in mid-October – and persuade him back to bed where he lies motionless and rigid, clutching the racquet, and straining every sinew to hear the creature’s return. In the morning, he once again swears he was severely attacked in the night and, to prove it, shoves his hand – on which there continues to be not a mark – under my nose for verification. I disappoint.
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Tod and Trish returned from Scotland recently, having been far more daring than us in boarding a train to get there. Hard to believe we have not been on a single form of transport for 7 months. Perhaps we will be awarded a prize for non-existent carbon footprint.
Trish sent this wonderful pic of Tod planting Snowdrops .
And hope she told him that if he’s looking for the pot of gold, he’s in the wrong place.
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“By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away“
[Samuel Johnson on the death of Dr. Robert Levet]
When – if – we ever come out of this Lockdown, our life will have changed immeasurably. Walking down Eastcastle St. yesterday, we were shocked to see that one of our favourite restaurants has fallen victim to Covid. Ethos was a vegetarian restaurant, displaying its succulent salads on marble plinths like precious jewels in a jewellers window. There is nothing like it that we know of and, given that preparing such a variety of salads for one meal, or even many meals, is utterly beyond me, it will be greatly missed.
Hard to believe that a restaurant that was impossible to get into before Lockdown, with queues for its fabulous Sunday brunch, is no more. Its demise has made us almost as sad as the loss of Patisserie Valerie in Old Compton St., where we regularly enjoyed poached eggs on toast and luscious pastries in the atmosphere of original Bohemian Soho.
Patti Val’s, as some aficionados called it – though never us – was started in the 1920’s by the Belgian Madame Valerie and the Soho Branch was the first of what became an Empire. It was also the one wrecked by a bomb during the second world war. Undaunted, Madame Valerie just opened a new cafe nearby. This chain was not a Covid victim. What wiped out the last of the European-style cafes was described as “potentially fraudulent, accounting irregularities and therefore a potential material misstatement of the company’s accounts”.
The cafes of Europe, cosy, warm, conducive to languorous conversation and unhealthy lashings of cream have been replaced, in London at least, by American-style coffee chains, cold, efficient and, despite the occasional couch or armchair, conducive to grabbing one’s drink and leaving as soon as possible.
Harriet the plastic hawk has done her job. She ensured the pigeons kept their distance, terrified, presumably, by her fearsome swaying in the breeze. We produced a good tomato crop, watered and cherished for the first time by “The Writer, and the plants are now looking sadly dishevelled and brown. The remaining fruits are green and hard and unlikely to ripen, so that signals it’s time for one of my favourite activities: Gleaming lass jars are sterilising in the oven. (When I first made chutney, I was baffled by the debate on line as to whether it was more hygienic to bake jars in the oven or pour boiling water into them. Taking no chances with the lives of the friends who will receive them, I decided to do both).
One great thing about Lockdown is that I have the time to really look and appreciate things in a way I never used to. BL(before Lockdown), each task had to be completed in a rush in order to move on to the next. Lockdown days seem twice the length so I can actually pause to enjoy the jewel-like tomatoes glowing in the colander.
Every time I chop or peel onions, I think of our beautiful Stephen Jacobson painting of onions arranged on their plinths like a platoon awaiting inspection. Today, I actually pause before chopping to go and look at the painting, admire the weight and heft and calm of the onions, the coolness of their skins and their unruly tops neatly bandaged so as not to draw the eye of the competition judge or the painting’s viewer from the voluptuousness of their curves.
The recipe I use is by Nigel Slater, the only cookery writer I can follow. He tells the reader what the texture of a dish should be, what colour, how hard or soft, what he likes about its flavour. You can taste the dish in his prose before you make it His recipes are worth reading for the sumptuous writing and his memoir, Toast, is a treat. The only cavil I have about this chutney recipe is the huge amount of work involved for the minuscule outcome:
Yes. folks, that’s it!
And I’ve always found that simply doubling the recipe doesn’t work. I will have to make time to cook another batch before I can get to the most fun part of this project – designing the labels.
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)
Frith St., Soho
Locked down in London 