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Who would have thought that when we finished the last issue of the magazine that the words ‘Social-distancing’ and ‘Lockdown’ would become a major part of our everyday diction? In fact, there’s a whole new vocabulary in use – especially on social media – to describe the collective experience we are all going through. Some descriptions are quite apt for the situation. For example, Coronacoaster: a way to describe the fact that Lockdown hasn’t been easy for any of us. Coronadose: An overdose of doom and gloom from consuming the constant barrage of news reports. But in typical British ‘pick-yourself-up, brush-yourself-down-andget-on-with-it’ style we tend to make fun of a bad situation. A sense of humour about life’s challenges is a great distraction in these troubled times and again social media comes to the rescue with a plethora of jokes and quips to cheer your day, many of which we can relate to. One such quip described the sensibility of a section of the population quite succinctly. When the sun comes out, people still flock to the coast in their thousands – “The spread of the Corona virus is based on two factors. 1 How dense the population is. 2 How dense the population is.” And so apt – a light-hearted explanation of how the virus spreads quite rapidly... “Have you ever come into contact with glitter... like hugged or shaken hands with someone who was wearing or using it? ... And how for the next two weeks it hangs around forever and ends up on surfaces you can’t recall touching, and places you can’t imagine it ever getting, and seems to still be there even after showering and washing? Think of COVID-19 as glitter!” Joking apart though, how fortunate we are that we now live in a communications era where Skype, Zoom and What’s app have also become everyday terms and essential aids to many whose families are having to isolate apart, or are living in various parts of the country and unable to meet. On the plus side, has anyone noticed how people are talking more and greeting strangers they meet? It’s like a ‘communal camaraderie’ a sort of ... ‘Well, we are all in this together!’ attitude. The virus has also taught us how little we actually need to survive, a lesson in less consumerism, in recycling and make do. And it has also reminded us of what is really important in life, in fact – life itself Long may these lessons stay with us when the virus has gone! There has been greater recognition of how critically important the ‘essential workers’ are now, because our health, safety, and survival depend on them. ‘Heroes’ – a term regularly used to describe these essential workers – is very appropriate, because they perform work that can bring harm upon themselves and potentially their families. Let us hope that hero worshipping and recognition continues too, when this is all over. We asked residents if they would like to tell us how isolation has affected them, the following pages contain stories we have received and offer an interesting view.
Cautionary Tales From The Lockdown The Cabbage At the start of the lockdown we were faced with the challenge of organising supplies of fresh produce as were so many of us in isolation. We are longstanding customers of a doorstep milk delivery service, which offers a surprisingly wide range of goods, but we had to turn to a local farm shop for our fruit and vegetables. The only item they could not supply was broccoli, which they said was being offered by their wholesaler at ridiculously high prices, could we accept a cabbage instead? No problem Liz thought, it will make a change from our usual fare.
What we received was a cabbage nearly as large as a football and weighing considerably more! Undaunted, Liz set about cutting and shredding the ‘beast’ which was extremely hard work and of course, being almost solid, its bulk increased the more she chopped. Eventually we finished up filling a fair amount of our freezer’s capacity with shredded cabbage, and that was despite having cabbage with nearly every evening meal for a week.
For want of a tin of paint My days in lockdown have been similarly enlivened by a question, ‘Where has all the paint gone? With the weather slowly improving I decided that the time had come to melbournmagazine@gmail.com
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