Lockdown, Four Years on.

 

Summer 2019. I was on a roll. I had just exhibited and sold one of my artworks in the somewhat prestigious Harley Gallery. Sunshine was plentiful. British sunshine. The kind you want sunshine to be like. The kind that frames all your childhood memories. The kind that my “straw” trilby hat and shades could easily cope with, as I sat in the gallery courtyard sipping my latte, being careful not to disturb its frothy top. Life was good, and would continue to be so through the cool winter months ahead. Until the unexpected happened.

Early 2020. An allegedly life-threatening disease came in, allegedly, from the East. Allegedly. Something to do with bats and test tubes. Rumours and conspiracy theories were rife. And that was when, over the horizon came the first of a trilogy of lockdowns, broadcasting their soon to be legalised directions: “Stay indoors! Cover your face! No physical contact! No touching!” The lockdowns didn’t really bother me. As long as I have a sketchbook and laptop, I swear I could easily do solitary. What bothered me, and does so to this day, is what happened next.

On July 19th 2022, we all stepped outside. It was a bit like one of those sci-fi movies, when they take off their space helmets on an unfamiliar planet, to see if it’s okay to breathe the air. The Lockdown Tripods had gone. It was okay to breathe. But was everything else okay? I felt like the character in “28 Days Later”, or “Day of the Triffids”, who woke up one morning to discover the world was no longer how he had known it. 

I took a drive out to my usual sketchbook haunts, only to find that several places where I used to stop in the past for a drink or a meal, were gone. They hadn’t survived the pandemic. I took a drive in the opposite direction and immediately incurred penalty charges for entering what had previously been a much used familiar lane, but was now restricted for buses only. When did that happen? And what about all the new buildings along the skyline? Some people must have had a very busy lockdown. I must have not got the e-mail.

The last four years have gone by fast. After the lockdowns a high percentage of people did not return to their workplace, choosing instead to continue working from the seclusion of home, like they’d gotten used to it. A notable percentage, though capable, chose to not work at all and let others pay the taxes. We got four Prime Ministers in four years. More blades in city streets than the cutlery drawers of Buckingham Palace. A country that once took down the Luftwaffe, now no match for a rubber dinghy. Everything seems broken. Remember that song about walking along city streets where there’s “Always something left to remind me”? Well, there isn’t. Or if there is, it’s fading fast.

All text & art copyright ian gordon craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 13. Summer in the City.

 Straw Trilby? – Check.
Face mask? – Check.
Reactor-light glasses? – Check.
Bus pass? – Check, although beneath my face mask disguise, its passport style photo is totally useless.

Today I decided on my first trip into town since lockdown began. It seems longer. Regardless of the virus, I no longer tend to browse shops. These days the word “browse” is officially defined as an internet activity, number 2 on the Cambridge Dictionary charts as such. People no longer browse in the real world.

The bus into the city centre deposited so much sanitizer onto my hands it would have facilitated a full shower. Shortly thereafter, just as that first dose managed total evaporation, the Art Gallery dispenser’s sticky deposit made for a generous top-up. And that’s when the identity requests began, with a curator like a border guard asking for my papers. Once upon a long ago, at various night club doors, it was “If you’re not wearing a tie, you’re not coming in”. Now, one is expected to provide contact details, “just in case”. Yeh right. I do appreciate and accept the need for all this. But for me, the simple joy of “going for a coffee” is fast being negated by what now feels like a form filling, tax return activity.

There are winners in this world of the Nouveau Normals. A few short years ago the bright blue Caffe Nero stores were very much the new kids on the block. Not so today. Wherever one walks in the city a veritable host of bright blue Deliveroo bicycles, carrying huge bright blue food boxes, dash, hover, and surge as they negotiate their narrow way through masked pedestrians. “Meals on Wheels” has become yet another term with a brand-new meaning for the 21st century.


All text copyright Ian G Craig.