I'm not in Kansas anymore...

It's bizarre looking back over the last seven weeks that the UK has been in Lockdown. In some ways I can't believe that we are here. In others, it feels like a lifetime ago that things had any semblance of normality. This sense is perhaps exacerbated by the fact that - spoiler alert - I contracted quite a nasty case of COVID-19 and have spent the past few weeks in a kind of twilight haze - further suspended in time and space by the virus that continues to grip my body. Two ambulance calls and a hospital admission later, I'm on the very long road to recovery. But more on that to follow.  In order to piece together the past and to sharpen my own recollection of events, I've delved back into my hand-written journal, as well as Facebook where I tend to document my life, to pull it together. Dipping into my diary, I had last written an entry in early March. The next was as follows: "since I last wrote - the world has gone insane. COVID-19 - the virus that everyone's...

It all started to get a bit weird around early March. Up until then, Coronavirus (as it was then known) was buzzing around the outskirts of the news agenda, mildly on the radar but not really an issue for concern.  Hailing from Liverpool, I probably picked up more than most that the passengers returning from Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, had been sent to the Wirral to be quarantined. Jokes were circulating online ( that guy in the Hazmat suit sitting next to the bus driver), and on Whatsapp. In fact, for a time, I switched my Facebook profile picture for a retro image of bottles of Corona lemonade. I thought it was cute and funny. An estate agent came round to value my flat and joked with me that I had the virus when I said I'd been a bit unwell, pretending to step back in faux fear. My mum was particularly worried, but I believed it was hype, kept reassuring her of the stats - more people died each year from regular flu, from road traffic accidents, from a million and one ...

It's been seven years since I have posted anything on this blog, but enforced isolation, the need to fill time and turn the current madness into meaning has brought me back.   In the intervening years since I last posted, my adventures have continued. I'm going to summarise them here, but will return to write about them - and hopefully link to other posts - periodically.   I spent nearly four years living in a conscious community in a big Victorian house with seven other people in North West London. This time enabled continuity from community / spiritual life in Asia. It also gave me a safe haven whilst I navigated the traumatic life event of losing one of my best friends, very publicly, in an unresolved incident. I played a role in an international media campaign to find him and later decided to change my career to mainstream media and PR.  Living in the house allowed me to save up the deposit to buy my first home in Brighton.  I've been her...