Welcome to Lockdown

Since it seems that everyone from Popbitch to Joe Wicks (who, incidentally, deserves at least an OBE for services to the nation’s sanity) is doing something to help us all fill all this magical free time we suddenly have with something other than masturbation and bickering, I thought I’d throw another log on the fire of the discourse and blow the ashes off the now horribly mixed metaphor that is this blog.

A lot has happened since I last posted, and most of my draft posts have been overtaken by events almost as catastrophically as the game show host our friends across the water so wisely elected in 2016.

The one about how marvellously quiet European cities are in February and how blissful it is to travel in the off season hasn’t aged well; the one about Zach getting into Oxford (yes, THAT Oxford, and, yes, we do now have a definitive answer to the question: ‘Does travelling the world for four years necessarily fuck up your academic future?’) requires a rejig; much of my lovely Bali content is dead in the water (who could have imagined that a public health strategy centred on lying and the power of prayer could have such catastrophic results apart from, well, everyone?!); and let’s just say that interest in home exchanges is lower now than it was when the banks weren’t wiping down the cashpoints with sanitiser every two hours.

I must, however, observe that long-term travel and a “career” in freelance writing have proved excellent preparation for the world of lockdown, apart from the peripheral matter of earning enough to feed oneself, that is, and surely only someone entirely dissociated from the love of their craft would dare to quibble over a little thing like that.

Here Zach and I are in a small town in rural Norfolk (loooong story, but to précis: He was here, I was in Dubrovnik, Ethiopia with my spritely yet definitely boomer parents seemed like a very bad idea, the apartment was already paid for, and, well, here we are…) – and there we go, my syntax, like the fake-tousled fake-clever Etoxonian handjob that waddled into Number 10 a mere few months back, has completely lost control and is off on indefinite sick leave.

Sorry, cheap gag! But, seriously, years of hellish third-world bus journeys (such as the time we spent 36 hours stuck behind a broken tree in rural Borneo), ferry journeys (such as the 24-hour vomit comet to Flores), and even motorbike journeys (such as the time I tried to get us both to Papua from Bali on a Vario and made it all the way to Timor Leste, yes, yes, I KNOW) have taught us to exercise patience in close proximity, roll with the punches, and generally adapt to radically changed circumstances the moment they appear (or, in this case, before).

And changed they are. I made the fatal error of forming plans for this year, life bit me firmly on the arse, and quite frankly I won’t be bothering with that again.

Seeing two fixed points gleaming on the September horizon like the North Star – my parents’ Golden Wedding in, umm, Italy, and Zach’s impending start of university, still TBC – I booked a tonne of stuff. Having the foresight to identify a recessionary risk (although I assumed that to be nationalist idiots rather than the fucking plague), I gamed out a genius plan, which basically involved retreating to Bali to ride out the economic storm and using the house to travel via home exchanges, and, yeah, that’s aged about as well as all my draft blog posts, although our two months pootling around Europe in fancy apartments was rather splendid.

But I digress. I realise we’re all basically living on the internet now. Every conversation I have, due to the fact that nobody is doing anything, is basically social media, right down to the cat video discussions and baby interrupting videos discussions and the man who showed his arse on a conference call video discussion and the “Is Joe Wicks unusually sweaty or just being nice?” discussion (if mercifully, although we ARE only a week in to lockdown, free of the five-day knockdown drag-out bitch fights over ropily sourced trivia). Time has warped into some strange weird meaningless loop — although if you have a restaurant you love or neighbourhood bar you adore that’s doing takeaway, I recommend ordering in on Friday night to give the week some structure. And it’s really not at all clear what’s real, what’s fake, who’s lying, who’s mistaken, who’s deliberately avoiding knowing, and who’s just really fucking stupid.

Anywise, I have digressed enough for now. Since in these difficult times I am ALL about the public service and have sweet fuckall to distract me from writing, I’d like to know what sort of content you — if there are any “yous” still out there! — would like to see from me. I want to write a service piece about home schooling at some point (but may do that for someone who will pay me first); I will write about lockdown, because that’s where we are; but would you also like some nice escapist content from our recent jolly around Europe? We went to so many lovely places that I’d be happy to share, even if it now feels like postcards from another planet.

Drop me a comment and let me know. And, most importantly, stay safe, stay well, and look after your loved ones, your neighbours, your old folks and your immuno-compromised.