The Damn Panic

So it’s been a year. How are we all doing?

I might be jumping the gun here, writing in a reflective, retrospective, did-that-just-happen kind of way, while we dutifully follow Boris’s roapmap the hell out of here, paying zero heed to the fact the rest of Europe remains mighty fucked. We’re fine! It’s over!

But, I had ambitions to write a regular lockdown diary and I can see from the I, II and III which I managed 11 months ago, that it’s a good thing I didn’t write more as I’m not sure what to do with my Latin after VIII. OK I’ve googled it, don’t write in to tell me about IX, X, XI. That’s not the point.

The point is, I just didn’t have a whole lot to say. As Adam Buxton mused in one of his lockdown podcasts: ‘I get so overwhelmed by the predictability of the routine, I forget to cheer up and be grateful.’ Sometimes I had a lovely lockdown and sometimes I didn’t.

To recap, I live in the countryside with my husband, Gaz. I have worked from home for so long, I predate the pandemic buzz-acronym WFH. My dad lives next door and in lockdown, my mum and sister, Pip, who has special needs and a special soul, lived with us.

I could write a book entitled What I Learned About Marriage Living In Lockdown With My Divorced Mum And Dad. But I won’t. Although if anyone knows of any good therapists…

My locked down lot.

Pip understood that I worked weekdays and it didn’t take us long to rename the days of the week: Work, Work, Work, Work, Chocolate, Cake, Crafts. Saturday had to be Cake, so we could eat the leftovers on Crafts, before I returned to my militant rule of eating no sugar Monday - Thursday, which makes me less fun in Pip’s opinion, but will hopefully pay dividends for a long and healthy life.

Pip kept spirits up with her unceasing optimism and perpetual wittiness. She magnificently renamed the pandemic the Damn Panic and you better believe we’ve called it nothing but, ever since.

Watching Pip and Gaz together fills my heart with joy. He loves her, understands her, respects her, makes her laugh, laughs with her, helps her and listens to her, even when the rest of us are talking over her or for her. Which is probably why she calls Gaz her prince and always buys him chocolate. Although, here’s a little Pipism for you. Offering her chocolate to Gaz recently, she said: ‘You can have it… If I don’t eat it.’

‘Oh,’ said Gaz, realising there were terms and conditions. ‘Are you going to eat it?’ Pip thought carefully. ‘Um… I don’t know.’

Generosity which keeps you on your toes.

Coffee mornings with Mum.

I don’t suppose I would ever have lived with Pip or Mum for an extended period, were it not for the pandemic. We had SO much quality time. Mum and I enjoyed quiet coffee mornings before anyone else had arisen. There were arts and crafts, games, films, walks. We shared laughter and hugs - the things I know so many people have missed.

Recipes for a well fed life.

I need to champion the one cookbook I turned to again and again throughout lockdown. So much so, it will forever be wrapped up in my lockdown memories. Eating in for a year, I had to up my cooking game. I couldn’t churn out Thai Green Curry every night. Rebel Recipes delivered. I’ve found the best crumble, soda bread, cherry bakewell tart, pizza base, strawberry and peanut butter pancakes and so much more. I’ve written: ‘Yum! 10/10!’ on pretty much every page.

Along with One Pot Vegan and for Cake Day, Vegan Treats, we were almost guaranteed delicious, healthy, unusual, plentiful meals every day (exemptions made for cook’s own mistakes, including but not restricted to: burning, undercooking, not reading the recipe properly, not having the right ingredients, thinking that’ll do). Considering we now all know what empty shelves and food scarcity does or might feel like, our plates of plenty have been something I’ve treasured.

Pip and I would spend Saturday mornings having a meeting, in which I took a register, made sure we were both present, then flipped through Vegan Treats deciding what we fancied whipping up. Here’s some visuals:

It’s not all fireworks embedded in kiwi adorned cheezecake. Mostly my cakes look so little like the photo in the recipe book, it’s almost a skill in itself.

Screw you, cookie pizza pie cake!

I started to find Zoom calls energy zapping and depressing around the point at which we all collectively lost the will to hope it’d all be over soon, deep in winter, deep in deaths. I found winter extremely challenging. Darkness + Existential Darkness = Black Hole!

But I feel better now. Spring is springing, vaccines abound, there’s a smidge of hope in the air. And I am all too aware that whatever impact the pandemic has had on our morale, finances and freedom is nothing compared to those who have died or lost loved ones. To you, I’m sending so much love.

The Step Monsters.

Not going to get any steps that way up!

My Walking Buddy.

I have passed 365 days in a row of walking 10,000 steps and if you are a 10,000 step junkie like me, then please do praise me for my achievement. Or don’t, Garmin has already given me a badge so I’m alright for praise. I’ve got Gaz hooked now, like some kind of drug dealer, but the drug I deal is euphoria. It’s free but I do insist you take a hit every day. He’s just passed 100 days in a row and now sees all the advantages I’ve been wanging on about. What walking does for my immediate and overall wellbeing can be summed up best by an adventurer, naturalist, environmentalist and posthumous meme generator who lived over 100 years ago, but who I only recently discovered. John Muir, also known as John of the Mountains, said:

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

Previously I gifted you Solvitor Ambulando, now I gift you John of the Mountains.

Mum and Pip have gone back to their respective homes and lives and it is time to start looking forwards. I miss my friends with a palpable ache in my heart, but I don’t miss crowds. I miss parties, but I don’t miss my old habit of booking up weekends three months in advance. Re-entering the atmosphere is going to take some getting used to.

As we tumble into whatever the future looks like, let’s be kind to others, be kind to ourselves, be kind to the planet. Be kind to animals - because if we don’t start treating animals better, the next damn panic will be just around the corner.

I won’t leave you there, it’s too depressing a sign off. Here’s another John of the Mountains hug from my heart, through my fingertips, keyboard, the internet, your screen, your eyes, into your heart:

“When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.” John Muir, 1838-1914.

Gaz of the Hill.