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What we’ve lost

2020 has been an odd year to celebrate momentous occasions. And, ironically, there seems to be more momentous occasions in my immediate realm this year than years past. Thirtieth and sixtieth birthdays, a birth, two weddings, a ten year wedding anniversary, thankfully no funerals…

Major crises like pandemics, wars and environmental disasters demand resilience of individuals and communities: they require adjustment, reconfiguration, compromise and loss, on a massive scale.

Changes made by very ordinary citizens have the capacity to facilitate the preservation of life. In this pandemic, change has meant mask-wearing, social distancing, working from home and limited travel. In wars it has meant curfews, blackouts, food rationing. In my experience, the required modifications have been uncomfortable but entirely doable because the situation is so critical.

Having never previously lived through a global event of this kind – one which completely disrupts ‘normality’ for an extended period of time – I’d never really thought about the continuation of life on these terms. In the context of a pandemic, the civic duty to preserve life significantly suppresses the continuation of life. They are in opposition to each other.

In a post from early August I marvelled at how adaptable humans are, and indeed it is true. But three months further along, the reality of this long-term game is more tangible. It has become more necessary to acknowledge anxiety, disappointment and frustration to safe-guard my endurance – also known as the reliable human need to vent, the need to have ones grievances heard before getting on with things. Reconfiguring birthdays, weddings, anniversaries… a spring, a summer, an autumn… indefinitely postponing a visit to see my mum on the other side of the world… It has all been doable but, like every other crisis bystander in the history of time, we won’t ever get back what we’ve lost during this period of partially suspended liberty. At the same time, we are extremely fortunate to be bystanders and not victims. A pandemic is an extraordinary thing to have lived through.

The other day I started to wonder what shape life will take as the pandemic eases (returning to ‘normal’ is not desirable). I suspect that change will happen slowly. As a consequence, it may be harder to register our increasing freedoms and be grateful for them. An idea: it seems pedantic to log every pandemic policy change as it arises, but I will try it as a way of making myself more aware of the current status and what I have to be grateful for, when it finally arrives.

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Pandemic policy update

Today’s national pandemic policy, in place since 14 October

Status: Partial Lockdown

• work from home if possible
• masks to be worn in indoor spaces
• limit travel
• maximum of 3 visitors to your home in one day
• no more than 4 people can form a group outside the home
• retail stores closed by 8pm
• no alcohol sold after 8pm
• all food and drinks establishments are closed, takeaways excepted
• museums, zoos, amusement parks by staggered appointment

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Sous les pavés, la plage!

All of the tube and train advertisements have been pulled.

‘Non-essential’ workers are house-bound, their roaming eyes aloft dark, fleshy pillows no longer held hostage for the duration of the commute by the proposition of hair plugs, a new mattress, dinner on demand.

Marketing budgets have been halted, or diverted from the public to domestic sphere, as the economy tanks and businesses scramble to compress fiscal haemorrhaging.

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London and beyond

On Wednesday MR picked up 50 rolls of processed film from as far back as March 2018. Nightly, we have made our way through a chunk of the contact sheets – each grabbing one and following the frames from top left to bottom right, rotating the sheet as necessary. The studious silence is broken occasionally with ‘oh yeh, this’, ‘this one is great’, ‘where is this??!’. On reaching sheets end we swap. Read becomes unread becomes read. The stack is in no given order, transporting us from London to The Lakes to New York to Uluru, back to London, to Sydney, to Paris. After exhausting our memory store, we start packing.

In a kind of temporal tumble turn we’re projected into the past and then launched into an unknown future.

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A sunshine state of mind

As I turned home on my regular loop walk this morning, I took up the invitation of a park bench drenched in sunshine and the soothing sonics of a nearby fountain. Eyes closed, ears full, it dawned on me that this was the first time I’d paused and truly rested in the last month.

Fixed to the bench a small brass plaque reads:

In memory of Pearl and Jack Attfield who lived in Lee Green and enjoyed this park for over 70 years.

In a month we’ll be gone from this place that has made a comfortable home for five years. I’m grateful that a modern lifetime isn’t confined to a sub 10km radius, but amidst the instability of this life on the move, I need more pauses.

Note to self: Sunshine is the cure (A lesson learned late in life – being raised in The Sunshine State, oblivious to the fact that sunshine wasn’t a given.)

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A 30th birthday in the City of Light

This year MR turned 30. Despite being European by birth he had never been to Paris , so it has been a floating idea of mine for awhile to take him as a surprise, knowing that he would love it.

Somewhere in the summer lockdown restrictions were lifted and ‘travel corridors’ were proposed between European countries with low case counts. I wasn’t sure how long these would last but booked train tickets and a hotel and crossed my fingers. Naturally, a week before we were due to travel, France was added to the UK’s quarantine list. After MR unwrapped the Paris guidebook I’d given him (the trip ‘unveiling’) we weighed up whether to proceed or postpone and finally opted to go.

No regrets. The trip was a little stifled – Paris restrictions mandated masks in indoor and outdoor spaces, and quite a few businesses were closed – but on the upside we were treated to a near empty city.

Day one we tackled the tourist landmarks, the Arc de Triomphe and La tour Eiffel, with an unanticipated stop at Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées where MR bought a dress shirt for our marriage ceremony. Late afternoon we headed back to our luxe room at the Hôtel des Grands Boulevards armed with Carrefour bites to form a makeshift private dinner on our courtyard-facing balcony. The buzz of the open-roofed restaurant below was welcome company.

Day two we wandered Le Marais, first revelling and later struggling in the 32°c heat. After a rest in our hotel we set out toward the lively streets of Canal Saint-Martin for dinner, eventually finding an outdoor table at Le Verre Volé where we sat ’til late drinking natural wine in the balmy evening air.

Day three MR led us to the Musée de l’Orangerie to be overwhelmed by Monet’s Nymphéas. The temperature had cooled and the weather was dreamy. Crossing the Seine, we stopped at Les Antiquaires for breakfast on the terrace before heading on to Le Bon Marché in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. At Hermès MR picked out a tie, generously gifted by AJ and CJ, for our marriage ceremony. After refilling on melon and ham at (the) Café de Flore we picked up a bottle of Mumm to drink at Pont Neuf as the sun set. Our final evening was spent at the rooftop restaurant Tortuga, with views across Paris.

Day four, due to head home, we awoke early to wander up to the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre. Feeling completely indulged and extremely grateful we returned to London to start our 14 day quarantine.

Conclusion: MR loooves Paris 💖 and I concur. The city is aptly referred to as La Ville Lumière for its significance during the Enlightenment but also because it was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale. But to me, the City of Light, is an expression of how the stone buildings and blonde gravel illuminate when the sun appears, creating an architectural soft box for the city’s well-dressed.