27
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT ‘Lockdown days’ I’ve wanted to write about the lockdown since… well, since the lockdown began. (How long ago is it? Three weeks? Three years? Three minutes?) But since it all began, my wife and I have been doing our respective jobs full-time from home – hunched over improvised work stations at either end of a not very large flat. We accidentally eavesdrop on each other’s online conferences. We print documents and scribble notes for ourselves and leave them scattered round the place. It feels as if work has spread into every crevice of our dwelling, like an item of home baking that won’t stop rising, even after it has been removed from the oven. Meanwhile, we have ‘kettle’ rather than ‘water cooler’ chats in the kitchen and carefully monitor one another’s relationship with the fridge, to ensure than it remains a flirtation rather than evolving into a full-blown civil partnership. The radio murmurs in the background, kept low enough not to distract us but loud enough to stop the home atmosphere from becoming completely sepulchral. The only loud noises are emitted involuntarily when, having finished a Zoom or Skype call, one or other of us stands up to go to the loo, forgets that they’re still connected to their laptop by the headphones cord and nearly strangles themselves. Seven pm, or thereabouts, is dinner time. Hurrah! If it’s not too cold, we open the French windows, which give onto a small iron balustrade and a ledge just wide enough for a few pot plants – or ‘the estate’ as I occasionally refer to it. We have three robust honeysuckle on the ledge and sometimes, if there’s a warm spell in summer and the wind is blowing the right way, they fill our east-facing living room with sublime fragrance. But it’s too early for all that, alas. Will we still be confined to quarters when the first blossoms appear? We agree that the most surprising aspect of the lockdown so far is just how exhausting a normal working day is when you do it from home. Everything seems to take so much more concentration than normal; everything is heightened and intensified. The remote versions of the IT systems we use intermittently struggle, working at the approximate pace of a tortoise laden with heavy shopping. Our aching necks and backs sing a lament for our office work stations and those ‘ergonomic’ chairs we took for granted. Most mysteriously of all, we both wake every morning with what feels like hangovers, in spite of the fact that neither of us is drinking at the moment and we’re able to sleep in a bit more than normal. I shamelessly suggest that if we have the hangovers anyway, we may
as well indulge in the other half of the equation the night before. This idea is taken under consideration. And every couple of days, we go out for Government-sanctioned exercise! We’ve had some great evening walks around Hyndland and Dowanhill. Three-paned bay windows are filled with the letters ‘N’, ‘H’ and ‘S’, accompanied by rainbows scribbled in crayon (and, in one case, beautifully rendered in coloured post-it notes.) Foxes skulk in the distance, but somehow look marginally less furtive than usual. ‘Only able to go out when no-one else is around?’ they seem to say. ‘Welcome to our world.’ (Colleagues report that their pets have started to fix them with a basilisk stare, as if to say, ‘Don’t you have to be somewhere?’) We take our time when we’re out, savouring the fresh air, but meander and zigzag a lot, to maintain social distance from our fellow pedestrians. Traced on a map, our average route would resemble the itinerary of a drunk snail. The only challenge is to stay out of the invisible slipstream of suspect particles created by the laboured breathing of joggers as they bear down on us out of nowhere. Otherwise, the chance to see some plum blossom, crocuses and daffodils is a real tonic. Back home, we have the brave new world of streaming TV to entertain us: lots of ‘prestige’ series, which, I’m told, are shot ‘flat’ on digital video then manipulated in post-production to reproduce the lustrous style that expert movie cinematographers once spent hours painstakingly creating for real with lights and filters. Maybe that explains why watching too many of them feels like being forcefed processed meals. Much better, all things considered, to curl up with a good book, glancing up occasionally to watch the pink super moon rising. What’s that? A pink gin too? I thought you’d never ask! ----------------------------------------------------------David Cunningham works in the Graduate School and he originally published this piece in Scottish Review. His short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines and have been broadcast on Radio 4. He has also published a novel for teenage readers- CloudWorld- with Faber & Faber.
The HaSS Research & Impact Bulletin [ People & Society - Spring 2020, Issue No.6 ]
