LOCKDOWN life is an unsettling place.
Is it getting easier? Even though the gradual lifting of restrictions will begin later this week, it still feels like any kind of ‘normal’ is a long way off.
No doubt about it, a weariness set in for us this week. We all felt it. The drive to keep busy is getting harder to maintain. The adrenalin of the early weeks, when it seemed like if we could just keep upbeat, learn Swedish and teach ourselves ukulele everything would be okay, has long since evaporated but the fear and uncertainty remain.
Like many families, ours has had to cope with bereavement and grief in ways we would never have imagined before this pandemic took hold. Our young people – my sons, their cousins, our niece – have had their worlds turned upside down. Worry about elderly relatives is constant.
It is the strangest thing, this swinging between bouts of satisfying productivity, when rooms get tidied and grass gets cut; and the periods of anxious dithering, when you do not know where to start, when even the small, pleasurable act of reading a book or calling a friend becomes a mountain to climb.
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(And I know I am fortunate - I am not hungry, or sick, or scared for my safety, or worried about where my children’s next meal is coming from.)
It is during this dithering that I end up idling on the internet, drifting between this and that, alighting upon pages and places I would normally whizz past.
This weekend, for example, to distract myself from all-consuming rage over a certain Government adviser’s breathtaking arrogance in breaking lockdown rules, I found myself marvelling at cellist Samara Ginsberg’s performance of all parts of the Star Wars theme by herself in a Darth Vader mask; I discovered why plants stop flowering and the slightly sinister ways to keep them in bloom; and even got caught up momentarily in the campaign to reopen North Berwick Outdoor Swimming Pool.
From there, I started to wonder if all that aimless surfing was a form of mindfulness or just plain bad for you. More surfing, and I can categorically state it is either going to mess with your brain and stop you achieving life goals, or make you more productive and able to cope with stress. Sigh.
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No, lockdown does not get easier, but we get stronger. I take heart from the resilience I see around me - in my own family, from the NHS, from our teachers . Our capacity for coping, it turns out, is pretty huge, and that is what will get us through.
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