lockdown diary

Brixton, London. 2020

There is lady, in the queue at Nour who is certain that the pandemic is part of the industrially complex master plan. We are at the front of a line that stretches all the way out of the market. Serviettes, bandanas and building site masks form our odd protection. We are still learning what 2 meters is. This fear of an unknown is palpable. I listen, we all listen. In Brixton, suspicion morphed with superstition occasionally spots the truth first. I don’t know what to believe.

On Brixton Water Lane. A boy behind me says into his phone loudly, “Forget Facebook fam, this is Judgment Day…read Kings. It’s happening’’ The Hill is alive with people carrying toilet paper on their shoulders. In different ways we are all preparing to shit ourselves.

Normal has left the building in some way on every level at every hour for everyone. There are no prostitutes in my street. There is a creeping silence, first falling at dusk. No abstract high howl, spicing up the nights.

In Brixton, a Tory telling you something will never happen, makes you prepare for that very something happening. We look to Italy. Our cupboard is full, There is a ten kilo bag of rice beside the boiler. Each day I find more food in stranger places. The missus is in hamster mode, I have never seen this before. Certainly, this uncertainty is creating its own humidity.

I am finding the supermarket overwhelming. I’ll stop and stand at the wail of an ambulance, looking into the faces behind the screen with my fist on my heart in salute. To see them parked in the middle of every other street flashing silent, is to feel that gravity is heavier.

I read Kings, like the boy suggested to his friend. To take things seriously you have to take then serially and I was only last week on the phone to Australian friends caught up apocalyptic fires, there has been floods in the North and Wales and plague of locust in the middle east. This feels biblical even if heaven doesn’t exist.

Then, someone switched off capitalism! Well, everything really. From a silent night rises this vivid, pre-industrial silence. As lockdown begins, it’s not the planes or cars that wake me - its a choir of birds in sing song. The last of the dinosaurs are roaring. Those I meet in the street are speaking of an uncanny happiness, the peace of plane free skies, the relief of having caught up on sleep. The tobacco sky above Heathrow is fading with every sunset and we all seem to notice. These streets are so beautiful! Brixton asleep like some tatooed Buddha.

I bump into Maria. This much-loved local lady, always with a beer in hand, always simple and beautiful. Today, for the dusty heat, she has fashioned a long black cape from a linen table-cloth that blows serenely in the empty wind as we chat. “We are not allowed to hug? No kisses?” she asks me. “No, Maria, not for now”, I tell her. “Ah, what a shame” she sings in a Latin lilt, “Is this because of the viral thing?” We chat about the streets at the moment, she tells me they are very dangerous now.

High above my tumbleweed town, a chain of super-modern satellites unfurl from their transporter to seek their orbit. It’s visible from Earth, but I miss it. Down here the talk is mainly a rolling attempt to describe this thing about the air. If you were born in a city and have always lived in the city, this is something you have never known before. It’s clean and fresh as if shipped in from a Spa.

We begin to behave differently. Up in the hills of Streatham, I watch the parade of parents shepherding kids as they learn to ride bicycles. At 3pm each day, it’s Music class must be at 3 as each day a bizarre cacophony of badly played cords begins to drift on the wind. Suddenly everyone took up running. My girlfriend, a long distance runner, comes home one night and tells me about the 133 bus. How this bus driver slowed to keep her company. From London Bridge to our stop on Brixton Hill, this goes on. She tells me about him breaking to catch a red light, waiting too long at every stop. They chat as they go. He keeps giving her chances to get ahead. I’ve heard promises of a return to normal. But, it feels strange to be promised a normal I was already over. I’m on Fayegate road shovelling ten ton of soil into a bed with Clem. As we work we wonder, “If it takes three months to change a habit, what will happen if this lasts longer than three months?”