Life under "Lockdown" - A London Diary

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

― Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)

Perhaps understandably I’ve recently found myself thinking a lot about Albert Camus’s novel, La Peste, or The Plague. It began just a couple of weekends ago, when I went to the supermarket only to find all the toilet rolls had sold out. This was quite early on in the current Covid-19 / Coronavirus situation, so it was quite a surprise. I remember it baffled me somewhat. I had heard that there had been a rush of panic buying of toilet rolls in Japan, but that this was because many people there mistakenly thought all toilet paper in Japan was sourced from factories in China, which were likely to be closed down as part of the Chinese Government’s sweeping lockdown in response to the virus which had so recently originated in Wuhan. I think, like a lot of people at that point, I was only vaguely aware of what was going on in China, and, perhaps unconsciously, I had assumed that it would play out much like the previous outbreaks of SARS and bird flu did, with the virus mostly being contained and stopped from spreading beyond Asia. Guilty of Western complacency in that respect, I was very much busy with my own affairs and so not really paying attention.

Looking back though, it was the first trumpet blast. A slightly comical forewarning of what was about to rapidly precipitate out of all control. The thing which struck me most about the nascent panic buying in the UK was that it was probably just a jittery response; something very much in line with the mood of the nation after a fraught year or so of Brexit brinkmanship, in which we were so often told it would be wise to keep our cupboards and larders fully stocked in case we crashed out of the EU without a trade deal and the lorries ceased to roll-on and roll-off at Dover and Calais. I was in the midst of preparing to sell my flat in London and so I was merrily doing the exact opposite, working my way through the contents of my kitchen cupboards, thinning my supplies down and replacing only the bare minimum so as to have less boxes and less weight to shift when it came to moving day. Consequently, I was down to my last loo roll. Finding the shelves at the supermarket totally empty was exasperating and personally inconvenient. I didn’t see it as a red flag, warning of things to come. Instead, all it did was confirm to me what seems to have been self-evident for a year or more – that the UK has gone completely mad.

Albert Camus

But panic is an insidious phenomenon. Once it takes hold it accumulates with a snowball effect. Because the loo roll was selling out, people who seemed to suggest they weren’t so worried about the virus began to buy more when they could find it to ensure they weren’t caught short later on. But then it began to spread. Hand sanitiser, soap were similarly soon depleted. Pasta, rice went next. Rapidly other things began to disappear too. Coronavirus had reached Italy and normal life there was quickly disintegrating. France appeared to be following tout suite. It was only a matter of time until it reached the UK, and when it finally did, we went into a meltdown. Fuelled by the hysteria of the mainstream media (which is essentially a sales technique at best, and socially irresponsible at worst), and a distinctly muddled response from the UK Government, Britain appears to have reaped what has been sowed over the last few years in terms of political division, social atomization, and the deep sense of distrust which seems so all-pervading nowadays. It’s every man and woman for themselves.

In the space of a week I watched as the Tube train on my daily commute thinned out. London very briefly became quite a nice place to be, emptier and less fraught. But it was an odd sort of quiet before the storm. By the end of the week I was one of only two adults in a carriage full of school kids on my morning train. The ratios had been reversed. But by the end of the day the schools had closed, and my Tube carriage was becoming increasingly packed out with builders and business people as the wait between trains had grown longer with the regularity of service clearly beginning to be reduced. At work our managers and IT department had scrambled to get everyone issued with the necessary hardware and software to transfer our office-based tasks to our homes. The quick shift was astonishing; WTF suddenly became WFH. Like most other people, I suspect, I found myself sat at home in a sort of punch-drunk daze, listening to the Prime Minister finally announcing a complete shutdown of the country on Monday evening. How the world turns!

Normal life has stopped. Most of us are now effectively prisoners in our own homes, but far better to be under nominal house arrest than pilloried in the petri dish of public space, awaiting our turn to catch this wretched thing. The Government’s initial and breath-takingly callous idea of “herd immunity”, in which we all meet this bacteriological foe head on, like a herd of lemmings rushing to leap from a cliff edge to our certain demise. Instead, they have realized that our entire social order needs to be recalibrated (in the short term at least), in order to shore up the national and indeed the global economy. But already people are beginning to speculate as to just what kind of global watershed this might end up being. Socially egalitarian optimists are hoping this might herald the collapse of globalized capitalism, others - perhaps more pragmatically - think it might lead to a further entrenchment of the populist far-right, only serving to curb our civil liberties yet further in the name of the greater “common good.” Businesses are either opting to go into aspic, suspended animation or hive hibernation, whilst others are frantically rushing to cut off their excess of employees like septic and infected limbs. The Government have promised an unprecedented “bail out” for those who are salaried, but as yet, those who are self-employed seem to have been left standing on deck in just their peejays and dressing gowns as the last lifeboat departs. There will undoubtedly be a ‘reckoning’ once all of this is over. But, in the end, I fear it will be in the older sense of the word; in that it will be a bill which the Government will expect society to repay with interest once the worst of the crisis has passed.

On a personal level though, living under ‘lockdown’ restrictions is an unprecedented social experiment the likes of which have never been seen before. The technologies which have helped to speed our globalised world up by connecting us more widely and immediately, which so many (even me) have partly blamed for atomising us, in many ways is now coming into its own. Such connectivity will enable us as individuals, as well as business and government corporately, to keep things together, to stop things from falling apart completely. In some ways this is good, but in others it is also bad. It is a curious thing watching my social media channels bifurcate into two camps: those who are shouting at the clouds, and those who are sitting back and laughing at the absurdity of life. It is Camus’s Oran with Wifi.

Mad Max (1979)

The internet memes are simultaneously flippant and profound: How I thought I would behave when the apocalypse arrived = picture of Mel Gibson in 'Mad Max'; how I’ve actually behaved now the apocalypse is here = picture of Jeff Bridges as the dishevelled Dude in 'The Big Lebowski' shopping for a carton of milk in his sunglasses and dressing gown. Or The Beatles, remastered, telling us they want us to wash our hands, so that we won’t “feel crappy inside” … It’s also been joyfully noted that the local council have taken the opportunity presented by the lockdown to repaint the zebra crossing at Abbey Road, given that it's now devoid of tourists and Beatles fans (see here). Then there are the genuine celebrities, lamentable extroverts locked in their own personal Room 101s of self-isolation, courting the cyber-gallery with varying degrees of style and aplomb; from the mawkishly un-self-aware chorus singing John Lennon’s Imagine (all out of key), to those noble old worthies reciting a Shakespeare sonnet a day, and the more wryly astute ones strumming banjos whilst singing daftly endearing ditties. As for myself, my predominantly hermit-like tendencies are standing me in good stead. This first week of self-isolation has actually flown by. Although a strategy of self-limiting my exposure to social and mainstream media has proved both necessary and beneficial. We all need to find our own way through it.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Less agnostic-types might be inclined to read a lot into the recent weather. After we’ve endured a winter of successive storms and floods, with months of unceasing rain and chill, seemingly coinciding with the advent of the first day of lockdown, the sun has been shining relentlessly in cloudless, clear blue skies utterly devoid of airplane contrails. False prophets have been posting photos of dolphins “reclaiming” the canals of Venice – the water is decidedly clearer, but sadly there are no dolphins (see here). I’m sure the natural world is, and will be increasingly grateful for the temporary breather it’s currently getting from our cancerous Anthropocene. Fake news is telling us that mortal pestilence and human folly are nothing new, when modern-day Samuel Pepys parody accounts get quoted as the man himself – his quill dipping directly into the inkwell of our own present day iniquities (see here). Meanwhile, true to form the most toxic of our leaders all are doing their level best to get some hefty geopolitical leverage over one another; the Chinese Government blaming the CIA and US Government, and tit-for-tat, vice versa, the US Government is doing the same, trying to racialize this as the “Chinese virus” rather than a virus originating from China. It is hard not to see the irony in an unhinged world so intent on putting up borders being assaulted by a common ill that respects neither walls nor human differences, reminding us that underneath our artifice we are all essentially one and the same.

River Thames, London - 3pm, 26 March 2020

It would be nice to think that this global pandemic might stimulate us to rethink the way we live our lives for the greater good. If survival of the fittest doesn’t actually equate to greed, and Gordon Gekko doesn’t end up inheriting the Earth, which seemingly in all other iterations of the virtual 'Matrix' he always does; maybe at least we can reset the self-martyr culture of struggling into work when we have a streaming cold! – Perhaps all this remote working, social distancing, "WFH", will do that anyhow as bosses realise the financial benefits of us all using our own space, time, resources and electricity bills to facilitate our jobs siloed in our amniotic pods at home – The Matrix realised for real. In many ways this whole thing could benefit or back-fire on us as individuals as much as it does for us as connected societies. Who knows what might happen? – It’s currently extremely hard to imagine us going back to the same sense of normal, particularly if this goes on for months as some people are predicting.

The Matrix (1999)

On a day-to-day level though, there is a lot to be learned from re-reading and thinking about Camus’s The Plague. I first read it when I was around 17 years old. I read it knowing it was an allegory for the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War, but I remember I was most struck by its intense realism. The way it imagined for me (or rather recalled/was inspired by Camus’s own experience) a progression through the stages of social panic and the moral dilemmas that a pandemic quarantine situation invoked in those whose freedom had been removed, and then the slough of ennui that later ensued with the slowing down of time; the gradual acceptance and complacency which sets in as people calm down and learn to live with the stifling state of terminal decay. I keep thinking of the character sitting in his room quietly shelling peas into a pan. I relish the fact I no longer need to set my alarm clock each night. I get up and get on with things quite early anyway, in accord with my natural rhythms. Yet each morning I am minded of Camus’s novel as I look out of my window and see my neighbours are opening their blinds and drawing their curtains ever later in the day.

River Thames, London - 3pm, 26 March 2020

I went to the supermarket yesterday for the first time in over a week, the first time I’d been out since the lockdown came into place. London is eerily quiet. I walked down my street and then along the Thames. It was mid-afternoon, around 3pm. There wasn’t the sound of a single motor engine within earshot. Not a boat, nor a plane, nor a car. The tide was at its highest and there was that profound sense of stillness and calm which the Thames has when it is in equilibrium – the river neither flowing out, nor the tide pushing in. The riverside walkway, however, was alive with lycra-clad joggers and cyclists exercising with a manic and distinctly aggressive sense of assertiveness. Some elements of this new social control evidently are still a little bit febrile. Around Cabot Square in Canary Wharf though, there was a surreal sight of empty red buses and black taxis dancing in reels. The scheduled bus service running to an immaculate timetable due to the lack of other traffic or even passengers. Inside Canary Wharf all the shops were dark and locked up with all lights out. Only the supermarkets and pharmacies open, with people queuing patiently outside at two metre intervals. The new regimen of social conformity being uneasily adhered to. This new norm is definitely an improvement on the selfish frenzy which had preceded on my last visit, even though some shelves still seem to have a Soviet-style starkness as they remain stripped bare. How much longer will it be until some of us are wistfully longing for oranges from Spain? (I already am) – There will be such knock-on effects if the skies stay clear of contrails for too long. Perhaps national self-sufficiency will be something the British public comes to demand just as keenly as self-sovereignty in our post-Brexit, post-pandemic future?

Asides from all the memes and fake news, there have been some seemingly absurd things said in all seriousness on both mainstream and social media channels of late. Often invoking wartime rhetoric in the best blandishments of the Brexit tradition. Working from home championed as a kind of "digital Dunkirk." Calling for a laudable Blitz-like sense of community spirit with everyone pulling together, whilst lamenting and equally lambasting the fact that not even the Blitz closed down the pubs. Some people decrying the nanny state whilst simultaneously demanding the Government “sort this bluddy mess out!” – Overlooking the fact that the Blitz and its Nazi bombs weren’t exactly contagious. My grandparents weathered the worst of the Blitz only a couple of streets away from where I live here in the heart of London's docks. And my great grandparents weathered the last great global pandemic in 1918 when my grandparents were still only new-born babes in their arms. In many ways whilst our current collective predicament might be unique, it is far from unprecedented. It is right that we should all applaud the NHS, and deplore the decade of austerity which has cut it back to the bone. I really wish those generations which have gone before were here now and could tell us how they handled it all. Picking up a book such as Camus’s The Plague, or J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun for that matter, is perhaps one way of engaging with their past.

Indeed, in some senses Camus’s allegory has been flipped back upon itself as those in good health and good jobs inadvertently or unthinkingly side with the plague in seeking to carry on with their lives, socialising and commuting as normal. Meanwhile the Police in Derbyshire are using drones to harass people going for solitary walks far from the (potentially contagious) madding crowd deep in the countryside (see here). Escapism could well soon be in short supply. Oddly enough, when the pandemic took hold in the UK I was part way through re-reading James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, perhaps unconsciously prompted by a longing to seek out my own escapist Shangri-La. Hilton’s words seemed to chime oddly with the current sense of global collapse as it was occurring: “... the question of his exploits and identity faded instantly into the background, save for a single phrase of his - "the whole game's going to pieces." Conway found himself remembering and echoing it with a wider significance than the American had probably intended; he felt it to be true of more than American banking and trust company management. It fitted Baskul and Delhi and London, war making and empire building, consulates and trade concessions and dinner parties at Government House; there was a reek of dissolution over all that recollected world, and Barnard's cropper had only, perhaps, been better dramatised than his own. The whole game was doubtless going to pieces, but fortunately the players were not as a rule put on trial for the pieces they had failed to save. In that respect financiers were unlucky.

But here, at Shangri-La, all was in deep calm. In a moonless sky the stars were lit to the full, and a pale blue sheen lay upon the dome of Karakul. Conway realized then that if by some change of plan the porters from the outside world were to arrive immediately, he would not be completely overjoyed being spared the interval of waiting. And neither would Barnard, he reflected with an inward smile.”

Where will we all be in a few weeks’ time? – Will this thing wear us down to the point where we all become of one mind, at least in the sense of seeing that some aspects of our society might need to be modified? And if we do, how will we come to collectively agree on a new way forward? – I venture no prophecies, no speculations of impending doom or of unicorn-populated utopias ahead. One thing we have been gifted though – that is, those of us fortunate enough not to have caught the virus yet and living under lockdown in the comforts of our own homes – is time. Having been forcibly taken there without his consent, rather like the lockdown which has been imposed upon us, Hugh Conway gradually comes to realise that this is what Shangri-La has given him, as the Head Lama explains: “And, most precious of all, you will have Time - that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it. Think for a moment. You will have time to read - never again will you skim pages to save minutes, or avoid some study lest it prove too engrossing.” – All we can do right now is hunker down, and read and reflect, as our lives and the world we live in slows down in a way which none of us have ever known or experienced before. We live in interesting times for sure.

- Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)