Diary of Lockdown Life - Week One

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 talking about, the entire country, the world, is closed and we're heading for Lockdown." And head for Lockdown we did, on the evening of Monday 23rd March. Week 1 was a rollercoaster as I got to grips with my new normal. I'd spent the previous weekend mostly alone in nature and trying to come to terms with the fact that I'd be alone throughout the ordeal. I had gone through various states, including blind panic, at the thought of solitary confinement, but I had come out of that. I'm won't do this for the entire experience, but I wanted to set down the events of week one, not just for posterity, but also because it's a microcosm of the undulant ride that has become Lockdown Life. 

Lockdown Announcement - Monday 23rd March 

I went into Lockdown feeling fairly optimistic. There was a side of me that was seeing it as an opportunity for personal development and I was quite excited about the prospect of having the time - no room for procrastination - to complete various work, home, creative and personal development projects. Having watched Boris' historic broadcast announcing Lockdown with a friend, I hurried home to do a Zoom pilates class, hosted by my cousin Steph as I was already seeing it as an opportunity to get fit and healthy and lose weight. 

Pilates class via Zoom hosted by my cousin Steph and her glamorous assistant Charlotte 

I did my first of what would become a daily Facebook live broadcast and, looking back at it, I went in feeling bouncy and ready to take the challenge on. In the broadcast I shared the various coping mechanisms and strategies that I had devised and brainstormed with friends in the lead up to Lockdown. My intention was to look after body and mind and balance physical, mental and spiritual health with communicating with people regularly. While it was important to stay in regular contact, staying off screens would be a discipline I felt I was going to need to adopt. The other big one was structure. A while ago, a close friend (who had already been self isolating as he is immunocompromised) had emphasised the importance of having a 'shape to the day'. 

As someone who is generally spontaneous, preferring to flow with the tide, my mood and the weather, I don't hugely go in for timetabling life. But, perhaps feeling the need for some control, or to fill up the expanse of days that lay in front of me, I took out a paper planner and divided my days up into hourly segments for structured activity with a ruler and pen. I also got a Sharpie ready to mark the days off the calendar - a tactic that I would come to build into my daily routine each morning for a sort of psychological lift. A friend of mine is a project manager and had done a lot of logistical planning for Lockdown, including zoning out areas of his flat. I liked this idea to designate areas for work and exercise and I vowed to turn the spare room into a gym. I wrote a big to-do list for various projects that I wanted to tackle. 

Lockdown Day 1- Tuesday 24th March 

My first full day in Lockdown was difficult. At the time I was still working as a consultant for a client, so my day was reasonably busy - although there was no guarantee this would continue. I had a three month period notice in our contract, but as the days ticked by it seemed that circumstances would mean this wouldn't be honoured and I didn't feel I had the legal recourse to do anything about it. Despite the energy of the previous evening, I woke up reluctantly at seven and, propped up by coffee, shuffled into an unmotivated morning, hampered by the seemingly omniscient stress headache that had started pre Lockdown.

During lunchtime I had to say goodbye to my friend Bryce, who has been a real support for me over the years. He had been due to move in with me again but when COVID kicked off, he'd taken a last minute decision to fly home to New Zealand (one that turned out to be a wise move, given the way their government handled the crisis). We had lived through quite a lot together in the years he had been in Brighton and it simply didn't feel fitting to shut the door on all of that with a weird goodbye in the park. We pretended to hug each other from a 2 metre distance, by opening our arms wide, a salutation that would become standard practice during Quarantine, and he left me a bag of gifts, including stockpiled dried food and wine.

In happier times with Bryce, at Burning Man when we were masking for a different reason

As the working day drew to a close, the stress of Day 1, the work situation and the goodbye led me to open a bottle of wine in the early evening. It wasn't to be the only bottle of wine I would drink that night. I can see from Facebook that I posted a late-night update, stating "happiness is only real when shared". This a quote from the book Into The Wild, the true story of Christopher McCandless who hiked, unprepared in to Alaskan Wilderness in search of the perfection of solitude. Ultimately however, he realised that being alone is not all it cracked up to be and, woefully unprepared for the Alaskan winter, (spoiler alert) he died of starvation at the age of 24. You can see where I was headed with that one. Midnight, wine-induced melancholy, much?

Lockdown Day 2 - Wednesday 25th March

This is what my diary says: "melancholy, hungover and unmotivated today. Just wanted to hide really. Went out to do some shopping - to try to get fresh food and milk, eggs and toilet roll. None of the latter. It was truly dystopian with everyone wearing masks and standing 2 metres apart. Shops with a 'one in one out' policy. Morrisons had stickers on the floor and encouraging people to push trolleys in front of them to keep people at distance." Later on, in my Facebook Live broadcast I talked about how a couple of people were not respecting the distance and pushed past me. At that point I didn't have a mask - and wondered if I should? Would it even help to protect me if it did? There was no guidance from the government (indeed, seven weeks is there still isn't) about the efficacy of masks - edit this has very recently changed since I started to draft this blog. I couldn't get hold of any loo rolls for love nor money. I had three rolls left and I use a lot - so this was a worry! I still couldn't believe that this was what our world has become. 

Shoppers queue, two metres apart to get into the local post office - one in one out

In my hungover fug, I stood on my glasses. It was such a small thing, but a total pain as a bit of Google searching told me that opticians were not considered 'vital services' at that time and therefore closed. Just one of the many million things in life that we take for granted. I had broken them too fundamentally to fix with sellotape and spent most of the day trying to balance the specs on my head with their one good arm, ineffectually. Every time I looked down they slid off my nose, further adding to my irritability. 

My friend Mike told me that Shakespeare wrote King Lear when he was in quarantine during the plague. I participated in an art challenge that friends in Spain had posted on Facebook, badly attempting a version of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights which ended up as a weird remix in watercolour. At least we still have music, art and each other - albeit we can't be together, I thought. 

I managed to pick up some fresh milk from a local shop to make a fish pie. I was trying to make nutritious meals that I could freeze in case I got sick. I was paranoid about being run down and had a sore throat and headache. I didn't have any other of the symptoms that the government were talking about at the time - which were just a temperature and a cough. If I couldn't even get hold of any toilet roll then I had no hope that I could procure a thermometer. I hoped tomorrow would be a better day. 

Lockdown Day 3 - Thursday 26th March 

I had become overtired the night before and slept fitfully, waking up not feeling fully rested. This was trend that has continued through Lockdown and I know I'm not the only one who has struggled with sleeping patterns. I put fresh coffee on the stovepot, took my car out of the garage and drove down to the beach. It was wonderful to feel some kind of normality restored. The sky was blue and a little hazy. My retro speedometer hovered just above 30mph (although in my car it was more likely only just on the speed limit). With music on, I drove along Madeira Drive, relishing my freedom and feeling alive with a little rebellion. As I approached the beach I noticed a handful of other people who I would usually swim with in the mornings and talked to a couple of friends from the acceptable distance of 2m. I noticed that there was a depth to the conversation, with each of disclosing deeper and more intimate secrets than we would have done before Lockdown, when morning sea swimming was a jolly and rollicking affair. I wrote in my diary "This COVID-19 thing is so difficult for everyone in different ways. It must be hard with people to spend all this time with their spouses that they haven't before. And yet in other ways, it is bringing us closer." 

The mermaid remained at large - early morning swims to keep me sane 

I did quite a long swim in the serene and beautiful English channel and put my head under the water, which is the best for the mental health. 

I did an online yoga class at 10am with some friends from my co-working space. We just followed a free YouTube video but we did it together on Zoom. It struck me that we are making "appointments to view" in a way we don't do anymore - a bit like gathering around the TV together in the pre-internet age. 

Thursday evening was my favourite so far. I attended a really cool event, Cheap Cuts Short Documentary Film Festival online, followed by a Q&A. It was interrupted only by the heart warming and tear jerking massive round of applause erupting throughout Brighton for the work of our emergency services teams. Every single resident in our building was out on their balconies, lighting up the night with appreciation. 

Lockdown Day 4 - Friday 27th March 

On my first Friday night in Lockdown, I decided to make a night of it and have a party for one. So I got dressed up, donning a glitzy red Egyptian jalabiya, put my make up on and a bow in my hair. I poured myself a gin and celebrated the fact that I had finally been able to pick up some toilet roll. I put Echo and the Bunnymen on the record player and danced around the living room, broadcasting live on Facebook, much to the amusement of various friends.  

I joined an online Zoom pub quiz that had 100 attendees. I have to admit to getting a little grumpy during the 40 minutes spent listening to a variety of people dialling in (many of them older relatives of the quizmaster) trying to figure out how Zoom worked. The best bit was having our own 'breakout room' in Zoom, giving me the chance to catch up with friends, have a laugh and experiment with Zoom backgrounds. It actually felt like a decent Friday night! 

Lockdown Day 5 - Saturday 28th March 

I may have had a little too much to drink during my 'self party' on Friday because I was slightly in the doldrums on Saturday. I allowed myself a lie in, which was welcome after a week that had been structured so militantly. I was supposed to have a video call with my mum and dad, sisters and niece and nephew, but the technology wouldn't work, so I headed down to the sea. I grumbled and complained all the way down to the beach but I did not regret the swim. Far from it. Immersing myself in the cold water was, once again, tonic to the soul. I was so grateful for the sea and so happy that I was still able to swim. I felt that my morning dunk was the one thing keeping me sane. 

When I was swimming, a couple walking past started shouting out to me, wanting to know all about it. They were asking me how the water was and what I was wearing. One of the positives about Lockdown and the COVID crisis in general has been the fact that strangers have started talking to each other and smiling at each other. 

By the time I came to do my daily check in, my mood had darkened. My opening remarks were "up and down, up and down, the rollercoaster keeps going up and down." I said that I sensed a shift and that the general mood and vibe was flat. I didn't know whether to put that down to the weather, which had obviously turned since my swim, or the fact the "the weekend reminds us of all the things we can't do." This would continue for me as, even when I didn't have work, I would come to find the weekends quite a struggle - with time stretching ahead. 

This was the first day that I would start supporting the PR outreach for a missing persons campaign. It was a really sad and difficult story of a 16 year old boy who had gone missing during Lockdown and one that has still not resolved. I would come to work very closely on the case and with the family over the next few weeks. In many ways, it was emotionally triggering for me - the reason that I have expertise in this is because I acted as a media spokesperson for a similar campaign when one of my best friends went missing several years ago and was subsequently found dead. In other ways, it felt good to be able to put these very unique skills to use to help support the family through a very tough time. 

I noted on Facebook that I was feeling exhausted, even though I hadn't seen or interacted with anyone. With hindsight, I realise that I was probably in the very early stages of suffering with Coronavirus. At the time, I thought it was down to my body being constantly in the anxiety state and the fact that my sleep was light and easily interruptible. I had intended to host another virtual pub, but I was feeling so low, I didn't think I had the energy. A friend had wanted to join, but he wrote to me to say that one of his friends had just passed away from COVID-19 and it suddenly made everything seem a bit too real. 

I had began to notice that when I did talk to people, it was usually in a whole new vocabulary - using words and phrases such as: "Wuhan", "flattening the curve", "how many weeks behind Italy?" "antigen testing" and "masks". I again expressed uncertainty about whether or not I should have have a mask. I had guilt about going to the park opposite my house (despite having no garden and living in a first floor flat) and a feeling of dread as we headed toward the next stage of the curve. It was just the "abject interminableness of it all" that was getting to me. The one thing I felt that I could NOT do was to contemplate being alone for three months. But I was able to dig deep, to say that "we have got to keep going, we've got to keep doing this and there's a lot of positives coming out of it."  

I also noted that I had eaten two Pot Noodles in my first week of Lockdown, which is probably more than I've ever had in a year of life. 

Lockdown Day 6 - Sunday 29th March 

Looking back over my Facebook broadcast diaries, I can see that my mood had not improved by Sunday. I had an industrious day, turning my spare room into a home gym, going for a long walk and cooking a beef casserole. But at some point I had tuned into the news and it just made me angry.

My rant was along the lines of "as a PR and comms person, from a communications perspective, I just can't get over how this government thinks they are communicating well right now." I had been triggered by the various pieces of speculation from different experts about how long Lockdown would continue. We went into this, knowing that it would last an initial three weeks, with Boris confidently proclaiming that it would all blow over within twelve weeks. Seven, tricky days in, to hear news reports speculating that Lockdown could last into six month was a crushing, demoralising blow. With work dwindling to nothing at all, I couldn't see how I was going to be able to sustain the motivation to structure my days, take exercise and get through it, without knowing what my future would hold. 

Although Rishi Sunak had announced a package of measures to help prop up the economy, as a Director of a Limited company, I fell through the cracks. I was only entitled to 80% of the minimum wage, because, like every other Director of a Limited company, I paid myself mostly in dividends. The package wasn't reflective of what I earned, or needed, and it barely even covered half of my mortgage. When noise of COVID and Lockdown started brewing, I had, thankfully, managed to take a mortgage break - but this was only for three months. The thought of this economic hiatus and the ensuing financial ramifications really felt too much to bear. 

I was worried, scared and angry. I was also frustrated by the number of different mixed messages and the impact it would have on people's mental health - particularly those who were alone, elderly, vulnerable or living with abusive partners. To not have an end in sight could be catastrophic for those people and I felt that any kind of intimation of that was irresponsible. In my opinion, we needed practical solutions to work with. Not just Churchillian platitudes rousing us to use our Great British Spirit to carry on. 

After I had posted, I came to regret being somewhat emotionally 'out there' online, but a friend of mine commented "thank you once again for saying out loud what we've all been thinking." It made me feel better - although this wasn't the first emotional outburst that I would come to regret posting in fear that I might have gone too far. Part of the problem of living alone through Lockdown was that I was on the ride on my own, and I felt compelled to broadcast because it made me feel more connected to a community out there, and less alone. Indeed, I felt that I had made new friends and strengthened bonds with people - both locally and back 'home' in Liverpool, one of the other positives of the situation. 

That Sunday was also the first - and only - time I attempted to make bread from a home made starter culture. It failed, due to the leaven not rising appropriately. Sigh, joining the Instagrammable sourdough tribe was not to be. I felt I should better focus my energies on a couple of other passions instead: knitting, and writing. I wrote one erotica story and quite enjoyed it! Perhaps a new career beckoned?

Now that week one was done - what would the rest of Lockdown bring?