BARTLEBY

Covid Limbo

The other day I did something for the first time in more than six months. Come to think of it, there are quite a number of things I haven’t done much lately. I haven’t been on a train. I haven’t set foot inside my local library (which is still closed, though I’m not sure why). I haven’t seen any number of people I normally encounter during the festival of local events that constitutes autumn in our part of town. And until the other day I hadn’t been to an art exhibition.

You no doubt have your own list of things you miss: football matches or trips to the theatre, or singing in a choir or dancing at a nightclub (it’s been a lot more than six months since I did that, which is probably a good thing). Things are much worse for the people who would usually be providing us with the entertainments we enjoy. They’re out of a job, after all. Yet I don’t think we should underestimate the effect Covid Limbo is having on all of us, because how we cope with this condition may determine how quickly they can get back to work.

Recently I was chatting with an older neighbour who has always been a great self-educator. She loves going to lectures, especially about art, and used to give me tips on which improving events I should attend. When lockdown was imposed her lectures were all cancelled and she was inconsolable. Why did I miss that lecture on the PreRaphaelites? She lamented. Now I may never get another chance! I didn’t see her for a while and when I did she was much more cheerful, having discovered the online webinar platform that sounds like a ’70s ice lolly (you know the one).

“It’s not like the real thing,” she said. “But it will have to do for now.” That was in May. More recently I asked her again how she was coping without the cut and the thrust of the lecture hall, and this time she answered with a big smile. She much preferred online lectures, she said – no more wind and rain! But what about her friends? Coffee? Chats? Oh, I do miss all that, she said, faltering slightly, but you know…

I did know, because I’ve been feeling the same way. Before lockdown I was a GWR frequent flyer (or equivalent thereof), and when in London I’d be in and out of the Tate and the National Gallery. In fact, wherever I went I’d check out the local art gallery or museum, and back home I rarely missed a show at the RWA or Arnolfini. Looking at art (old, new, weird, boring – I’m not fussy) had been a sort of colourful strand running through the weave of daily life. For years. For ever. Then came lockdown and that strand snapped.

The great hiatus was followed by a tentative reopening. Art galleries and museums in Bristol and Bath invested time, money and goodwill to ensure they were safe for visitors. Exhibitions started up again. Yet through the summer and into the autumn I found myself trapped in Covid Limbo. It wasn’t that I was scared of the virus, because I’m pretty fatalistic. Nor was it a case of making a deliberate choice not to go to this thing or that. It was more that something had been extinguished. I’d got used to a smaller life that revolved around dog walks and Scrabble. An art exhibition? You mean, out there?!

It was of course Ms B who dragged me – not kicking and screaming but limp, like someone rescued from a cult – to Arnolfini, where a new exhibition had just opened. I walked in and for the first time in months stood in front of a painting – not a picture of a painting but an actual canvas covered in richly coloured paint. Somewhere inside me, a light blinked on. ■