Learning to love the lockdown (satire)

So this lockdown thing has officially ended, just as I was warming up to it. I gather that most people are not actually ready to leave their bunkers, either because it’s too inconvenient, or because they are downright scared. Our politicians are slowly coming to grips with the fact that this is what years and years of the nanny state will do to a nation’s psyche. In your televised speeches, at the insistence of your lawyers, you read out loud some boiler-plating language to the effect that pub visits can never be guaranteed as to their outcome, and the next thing you know is that your previously gregarious voters are running for their lives.

And of course, we Londoners can’t actually leave our homes because we are totally confused as to what is expected of us once we step out into the world. To begin with, we’re not sure if we’re really supposed to. I don’t understand why the government isn’t issuing clearer guidance. This can’t be so difficult. All anyone is asking for at this stage is an exhaustive list of all exercises that should be done indoors, all exercises that should be performed outdoors, and what to do instead of squat jumps if you have bad knees. But instead of helping us plan our workouts, our fearless leaders are mumbling something about “work”. We are being encouraged to go back to work, but only if we are hell-bent on increasing our productivity beyond the level that is achievable amid crying children and partying neighbors, in between shopping errands and home repairs we need to do ourselves because the handymen are confused as to whether they are allowed to go back to work. Is it even worth it going back to the office if you need to go through a cleanroom style decontamination procedure before being allowed into the building, where you will be separated from your colleagues by screens, glass bubbles and several walls?

And if you do decide to go back to work, you are faced with the non-trivial question of how to get there. The Tube doesn’t want you. I gather that much from the subtle e-mail updates Transport for London keeps sending, where they explain that you should avoid using their services during the peak hours of 6am to 9pm, and you should also avoid the busiest stations — basically all of Central London. You should be prepared to wait for hours before you can board a train due to social distancing and crowd control measures, and you must wear a mask. For me, the mask thing was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I will never be able to get this right. I have an old medical mask sloshing around somewhere, but if I wear that, I will get clobbered because all my fellow travellers will assume that I stole it from a hard-working nurse who will now catch The Virus because of me and die before the next Clap-for-our-Carers round. And if I wear a homemade face mask, I will probably get arrested for protocol violation. I got two left hands. In kindergarten, I was usually in tears at the end of art class.

So public transport is out of the question, but I’m not sure you can drive, either. It seems most streets in London will be made into pedestrian areas, so the only way to get around London in a car is to drive into and out of every zone a million times and pay the skyrocketing congestion charge every time you do. Maybe my return to work will just need to wait until all these cycling and walking lanes have been built. I have no idea where the Treasury is going to find the necessary £2 billion (okay, make that £5bn, after the high-speed rail disaster) in the current economic climate, but I am sure they will be built eventually. After all, it’s a national priority. We should all walk and cycle more in order to help our prime minister lose weight, so that he doesn’t catch any more viruses. Something like that. I’m increasingly struggling to paraphrase the non-sense that is being spouted in the context of The Pandemic. Every newspaper article reads like a crude imitation of a P.G. Wodehouse story these days.

As I said, I had been warming up to this lockdown thing. Yes, I miss my gymnastics class. And yes, I tried online gymnastics classes. And yes, I had a nasty fall and smashed my kneecap into my furniture so hard that I won’t be using any walking or cycling lanes any time soon. So you could argue that even if I’m not aching to go back to work, I am keen to go back to gym to avoid aching after each workout. But that’s only part of the story. My lockdown life has been so very convenient because everybody has been so incredibly supportive. Okay, maybe not everybody. I am still ineligible for government bailouts. I have just resigned myself to the notion that that relationship will be a one-way street until the day I retire, and quite possibly until the day I die. I would like to take this opportunity to kindly ask every politician on the planet to write 500 times “Marietta is not a milk cow”. I would like to order you to do it, but I don’t have an enforcement mechanism, if that sounds familiar. I can’t say that I’m thrilled with my health insurance’s handling of the pandemic situation either. After charging me an arm and a leg each year so that what is left of my body can recuperate in a proper hospital, they nonchalantly sent me an e-mail informing me that they have donated all of their hospitals to the NHS. Also, my monthly magazine would be delayed due to the pandemic, but their great stories about emotional resilience would more than make up for it as and when they were ready to publish again.

But of course, I’m a realist. I am not counting on governments or insurance providers to make my day. The point is that all the people in my life have kept on surprising me with their support. My neighbor was itching for any excuse to go outdoors and would always offer to shop for some of the hardest-to-get items. My boyfriend got bored to the point where he started sorting my admin. (Seriously! This is so much more than I would ever have expected from 50 years of marriage!). And I evolved great techniques for extricating myself from situations that involve less supportive people. I used to hate video conference calls (why is everybody insisting on them? What’s wrong with phone calls? Are they expecting me to dress up? Are they expecting me to interrupt my household chores to sit in front of a computer?) until I discovered the “Leave Meeting” button. Now, when things are not going my way, I discreetly click on said button and follow up a month later with a cheerful e-mail along the lines of “Soooo sorry we got interrupted. Not sure what happened, probably too many people video conferencing at the same time. I believe we were done anyway. Really great talking to you and please don’t ever hesitate if you need anything at all. Stay safe!!!!!” (Please feel free to copy paste this text for your own e-mails and insert emojis as needed).

The most amazing support has really been coming from the people I have no direct interactions with. I am sure you will agree. Just as the economy was melting, stock markets and other asset prices have been kindly propped up by central banks. Even the real economy is still running because people have been duped into spending their hard-earned money by politicians’ vague promises of a “V-shaped recovery” (as far as I recall, the first half of the letter V is a nearly vertical drop, but let’s not get hung up on detail). Everybody is happy. True, the oil price roller coaster has not been for the faint of heart, but The Donald is on The Case with a tried and tested formula for propping up oil prices: start some sabre rattling in the Middle East and wait for an old and trusted ally who could also do with higher oil prices, such as Iran, to heed their clarion call to duty. What’s blowing up a few warships against the threat of oil derivatives blowing up? You don’t ever want to see oil derivatives blowing up. It’s not pretty, and it would seriously jeopardize the V-shaped recovery.

All in all, this lockdown has felt like a pleasant vacation on a desert island. Not engaging with the world in any shape or form feels so peaceful. Of course, I have an advantage. I don’t own a TV and I don’t subscribe to any newspapers. Which is why I keep on forgetting about The Evil Killer Virus That Will Come After All of Us. I wish my friends and family would stop following the news, too. The information asymmetry puts some distance between them and myself. For example, I am the only one who keeps forgetting to start every e-mail by checking if everyone is healthy and ending every e-mail with “Stay safe!!!” because I simply assume that everyone is safe. I mean, it never occurred to me that intelligent people might end up in the emergency room after snorting disinfectant. But then, you never know what people are going to do when they get scared or bored. Maybe it is time we all go back to work after all!