Tag: symbols of Lockdown

April 27

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

I asked you all to tell me what will symbolise Lockdown for you. A musician friend sent this wonderful picture of his electronic drum kit. He’s had to move it closer to his computer in order to record drum tracks so the rest of the band can play their parts. To me – a non-musician – it looks like the inside of the head of someone grappling with a very difficult decision! Boris on lifting lockdown perhaps?

The picture made me think about the sound of Lockdown. Perhaps the sound of Lockdown is actually the lack of the sounds we normally hear. There are so few ‘planes the sky is quiet, except for the occasional helicopter. One building-site of the five or six around us has kept going throughout, but, in the spaces between their drilling, we can hear birdsong and we listen for it now in the way that parched desert travellers search for water.

We have a trendy club only metres from our terrace. It boasts two outside drinking areas from which we normally endure the constant sounds of guffawing, chortling, screeching and lots of people having lots of fun after lots of booze. Funny, that something so convivial when you’re part of it, can have us behaving like Victor Meldrew when we’re trying to sip a quiet glass of Malbec on our terrace. Long Live Club Lockdown.

On Thursday nights, when we stand on our rooftop to clap the carers, we hear an echo of ghostly applause bouncing off nearby buildings but never see another soul.

The distant traffic hum is still a constant in the day . (Though where the traffic actually is these days, I can’t imagine) but, now, we hear, laid on top of it, the occasional roar of a single bike or car at night, speeding recklessly round the empty city streets.

The sound that is our accompaniment to waking, meals, tea breaks, and dinner is LBC radio. Masochistically, we can’t get enough of Covid-19 discussion and my beloved Radio Four doesn’t provide the incessant stream we both seem to crave. LBC delivers news every 15 minutes, Andrew Castle, Nick Ferrari, Shelagh Fogarty, , Ian Dale, Nigel Farrage – we’re anything but picky. Left, Right – we shout at the radio either way. Oddly, it seems to be harder to shout at the TV- perhaps there’s a feeling they can see us. So we’re quieter during BBC News At 10 followed by Newsnight. You’d think such overload would be depressing- and of course the daily death toll is just that- but the endless discussion and argument seems to produce in us an odd sort of unholy elation.

It was the same with Brexit. We listened for hour after hour and I distinctly remember wondering aloud what we would do when Brexit was “Done”.

Well, now we know.

April 24

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

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?.