100 days from March to June 2020
It begins very fast, over only about two days. One day I’m standing in Pepe’s hair salon, talking about it and the next day shops are shut and official instructions are being issued about the restrictions.
My life is suddenly reduced to my flat and the short walk to the supermarket, five minutes away.
It takes a while though for the extent of the restrictions to sink in: NO leaving your home, except to walk a dog (and that within 50 metres of your building), to get medical care (hospital, pharmacy etc), to do an essential job (consult the list of essential jobs) or to care for a vulnerable person. And to shop for food. Everything other than essential shops and businesses closed until further notice. NO going out for exercise. NO taking the long way round between your home and the permitted destination and no choosiness about which pharmacy or supermarket – go to the nearest, and that’s that. And no leaving the city, except for urgent and approved journeys.
Sometimes it’s great. I feel we’re all in the same boat, all living in the same way, with the same restrictions. I’m never short of things to do and I can stay in my own little ‘pod’, my tiny attic flat. I have Zoom, I have Gateway Women, I have online yoga and friends and family in the UK to chat to. Here, people withdraw into their households, although one kind younger Spanish couple tells me to get in touch if I need anything and takes a spare set of my keys. I’d known them more or less since I came to live here. I’m terrified of being seriously ill alone, because there’s a huge fear of overwhelming the hospitals and we’re told to stay at home if we have symptoms.
I have my big terrace, my lifesaver. The place I can exercise and see the sky and the rooftops. Where I go for the nightly applause. And where I do my 10,000 paces a day on the communal area, listening to Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy.
But at the nightly applause there’s no one else alone, like me. People don’t wave back at me. I persist, and after weeks, they begin to respond.
No one else in my block asks me how I am, in the sense of really wanting to know, not once. I have to initiate every casual chat when they come up to hang out their washing – and that brief contact stops when the washing lines fall down and can’t be repaired because the workman aren’t allowed to come.
Towards the end of the lockdown, the young women sharing the flat across the landing have visitors. Visitors are not permitted at this time. They go on to the shared part of the terrace with them. I ask who they are and the woman says what was it to you? I answer that visitors are not allowed and that I’m scared. They are a group of four, and I am, of course, alone. We have moved in, we live here, one of them says. A blatant lie. I come back into my flat and cry and cry.
I have to keep going out to do my own shopping. Once I’m stopped by the police. I’ve chosen a quiet time to go because I feel very nervous having to stand in long queues, but this makes me more conspicuous and doing something outside the norm seems to be mysterious to them. After joking about Boris Johnson (he’s just gone into hospital with Covid-19) and telling me I was at greater risk because of my age, they send me home saying my trip isn’t necessary and I should only shop once a week. Once a week, and carry it all up five flight of steps, unassisted? I hear of friends in couples who could share the shopping trips or where only the husband goes out. Someone said eventually that she hadn’t been out for weeks for food. How is that possible, I ask. The market traders do deliveries, she says. I had no idea, and that compounds my sadness and isolation. How could I have known, I hadn’t thought to ask and no one had told me.
There’s Kirsty doing crafts on UK TV – with her family. There’s Grayson Perry and his wife saying they’re fed up cooking for themselves. What? They can take turns! They only have to do 50% each! There’s Jamie doing his family meals (he didn’t last long though). I had no idea what was going on on Spanish TV, but I wasn’t rushing to find out either.
There are police around every corner, demanding justification for any appearance on the street and fining people who are in the wrong place. My gas canister has run out and I’m anxious for a new one to be delivered. I fear I’ve missed it by going shopping, so on the way home, I go just around the corner to see if I could see the van. There are the police, and I have to explain my reason for being out, to justify that I haven’t come out of the house merely to look for the lorry. After that I’m very nervous to go anywhere even a few yards away from the nearest route to the supermarket, or even to an alternative pharmacy, in case it isn’t considered ‘justified’.
I don’t watch the Spanish news on TV because I’m afraid I might not fully understand and that will increase my anxiety.
Sometimes, in the early mornings, unable to sleep, I get up and go out on my terrace. There are swifts, swooping low, whistling and shrieking. It is glorious. There is a deep, background peace. No humming of machines, no doors or shutters banging, no bikes roaring down the narrow streets. The building is quiet, people aren’t going in and out so much so there’s less door banging and in general less raising of voices.
When we are allowed to go to the beach to walk, I see a single pure white egret sitting far out on a rock. And I see it the next day. Sheer delight. The water of the seas is clean and clear everywhere. Wild flowers begin to grow again on the beaches. The only shrieking is of gulls. There is no litter, no plastic bottles, no cigarette ends.
No traffic in the streets. Deserted squares. Only refuse lorries and police cars, cruising, appearing suddenly around a corner, prompting automatic feelings of unfounded guilt.
At a cash machine, a man waits behind me. Suddenly, he hawks, and as I turn around, startled and alarmed, he spit on the ground, halfway between him and me. I can’t help but react with disgust to the grossness of his action. He is foul and rude and dismissive, telling me to get on with getting my cash out, I’m keeping him waiting. I could kill that man, in my rage and humiliation. For so very many reasons, new and old. Trembling and powerless, I go home and can do nothing for the rest of the day.
On the Whatsapp groups people complain that they can’t see their grandchildren. In the art group I belong to, I post that I feel lonely. I am told there are many activities I can do. Thank you for that, I had no idea…. I reply that what I want and need is simply human warmth. I have to repeat that phrase several times before I feel heard. The woman making the ‘constructive’ suggestions just doesn’t get it, or doesn’t want to. Do you live alone? I ask her. No, she says. Ah, I thought not, I can’t resist replying.
People lament not getting hugs and kisses from their families – children and grandchildren. But you will be able to, I say. But they live a long way away. But you have them, I say. Ah but… ah but… they continue. But you have them, I also continue.
I reflect: who knows when life might force you into lockdown? Through illness, immobility after an accident, some kind of post-viral fatigue, ME, convalescence …
So many people have changed their lives after revelations and reflections during enforced retreat. Some people try to avoid the silence and the persistent thoughts, feelings and memories that threaten to invade them. Despite the confinement, they find ways to deflect those loud-voiced visitors, to drown them out with activity, with constant contact online.
Others allow them in and let the waves of grief and loss break over them. Could this be right, to be so deep in such a sea of sadness and anger? Could it be good to be face to face with the pain, the fury, the feeling of being cheated and having always tried to do the right thing only to be left without a family, alone, alone? The pain and anger that, for one reason or another, you’d put to one side for so long? Was it healthy to dwell in this void that the pandemic has opened up, such an abnormal way of living, that allowed unattended feelings to rise up and demand your attention? And this pain is felt so keenly, with the heightened sensitivity that isolation has created. No social life, no touch, no real voices and faces to ground us.
From the silence of the cities and the countryside, howls and cries of loss rise up, unheard, except for those lucky few who find kind listeners, kindred spirits. Tears are shed in torrents, unseen. Unembraced except through technology.
When the lockdown begins to ease, people can resume their lives with their families – I see them in the street in groups. They talk of meeting up, meals together. The feeling of being united, all in the same situation, begins to dissipate. My neighbour across the rooftop, the one kind person in my vicinity, talks of renting a holiday home – with his wife and two children of course. I have to share his enthusiasm, although I am hit by envy and sadness and just want to cry. Like everyone else’s, all my plans have been scuppered, since they all involved travelling by air to see friends and family. I have no automatic ‘unit’ to be on holiday with, even down the coast to the next town.
And when life returns to something resembling normal again, at least on a day to day level, people I know say ‘oh we felt so cared for during the lockdown, our neighbours were so kind and always asked if we were OK. And during the applause we all looked to make sure everyone was there and waved to each other’. So the sadness is revived.
Coming out from the tightest of the restrictions is as difficult as living through the worst of them. Less frightening from a health point of view, but seeing again all the families and couple resuming their connections, takes away the illusion that we are all equal in this. At least alone, you can kid yourself….
Anon.