LOOKING BACK ON MY PERSONAL LOCKDOWN: PART ONE OF A MINI-MEMOIR BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
What characterised the 2020 coronavirus Lockdown for me and my family? I think we’ll make a list this time. I love lists!
1. Well, first of all there was the shock and outrage we felt on March 12th when we were told by the government that the schools would shut that day and remain shut until March 29th. March 29th? How dared they? We couldn’t all mind our own kids by ourselves for two whole weeks without any input from the state! God Almighty, if only we’d known then what a long haul we were actually in for, and how ludicrous the idea of anyone or anything re-opening for business on March 29th really was…!
2. Then the shops shut. Not the essential food or medicine-y ones like Tesco or Boots, but the ones that made life worth living, like the bookshops (how are books not an essential service, essential for the good mental health of their readers?), the DVD and record stores, the stationery shops and netcafés, the good shops.
I was distraught. I personally probably own more books than one could ever possibly read in a lifetime, but that’s not the point, goddammit! I like to know I can buy another one when I feel like it.
I loathe and detest clothes shopping, so the fact that I couldn’t buy a million pairs of pyjamas in Penneys like everyone else apparently does routinely didn’t bother me one whit, but walking down a street and seeing ‘CLOSED DUE TO COVID-19’ on every shop door was hard to take. It felt a bit like in the classic horror movie Nosferatu when a whole town shuts down on itself because of… you guessed it… the plague…!
3. Even the charity shops shut. Now that hit me hard, as those are the places from where I’ve sourced most of my books and a goodly number of my DVDs. Learning that I couldn’t go for a grand old browse whenever the mood took me really hurt me in the place where I feel it the most: my bookshelf…!
4. I wasn’t too bothered about the pubs closing, as I hadn’t really used them in a long time. And, besides, as a writer, I tend to favour drinking at home anyway. A glass of wine as a reward for a few hours of slaving away over a hot keyboard had already been my modus operandi for some time. Heh-heh-heh.
However, as an Irish person, I knew full well what a big deal it was for the nations’ pubs to collectively close, their windows displays eerily ‘paused’ on shamrocks and shillelaghs for the next several months to come. How the big pub drinkers coped with the lockdown, I honestly don’t know.
Takeaway ‘pints’ and ordering ‘pints’ online became a thing towards the end of the lockdown (well, the pubs need to re-coup some of the money they lost this year and there will always be people desperate enough, or thirsty enough, to order ‘pints’ this way), but I’d be much too worried about spillages (and waste!) to even contemplate using such a mad service.
5. The closure of the restaurants and cafés hit me like a ton of bricks. I live surrounded by so many brilliant eateries that I’d barely fried an egg in years, and was only really aware of the kitchen as the place in my house where I store the wine and chocolate.
The lockdown forced me and my kids back into this tiny unloved space to cook, actually cook, foods like eggs, meat and even v…v…v… what’s the word I’m looking for?… v… is it vegetables? I’m surprised our systems didn’t violently rebel against them, lol.
I’m thrilled to see the restaurants and cafés starting to re-open once again, but we grudgingly admit that the lockdown has taught us a few much-needed culinary skills, and my adult daughter now no longer believes that going into the kitchen might actually kill you, which apparently is the message she’d picked up from me over the years…!
6. The hairdressers’ shops have been shut since March. I’ve been waiting four months, and might have to wait several weeks more due to queues, to have the natural blonde colour put back into my crowning glory. I’m counting down the hours. Enough said.
7. The churches all shut down too. Now, although I’m a Catholic, I don’t go to Mass (I know; shame on me!), but I’ve been absolutely gobsmacked by the way churches immediately started live-streaming their Sunday and other services online directly into parishioners’ homes, as casually and easily as if they’d been doing it for years.
Who knew that the Catholic Church could respond so quickly and efficiently to the modern Mass-attending needs of their flock? Of course, if you didn’t have Internet access, you were screwed, but online Mass was apparently a big hit, drawing more people that way than ever came into the actual buildings to park their butts on the pews, and remember the priests who did the Irish dancing up on the altar that time? ‘Twas gas crack altogether, like something out of Father Ted.
Now that the churches are opening their doors once more, I’ll be able to go back to (hopefully) buying my way into heaven, one candle at a time. (It’s thirty cent a candle. It all adds up.) I’m hoping that, when I meet my Maker, I’ll be able to tell Him that I’m fully paid up, and, with any luck, He’ll be so busy with the queues he’ll just wave me through and on to Reception…!
We’ll go on with our list of Lockdown complaints (I mean, my memoir!) tomorrow, hopefully, so see you then, with masks on, lol.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 