Corona Journal, 22 March: Day 7
10am What a beautiful day to be inside.
12pm Decide to go for a socially distant hobble around the park. I put on a summer dress for the occasion, but tell my boyfriend that he needs to lower his expectations of my face because make up is a thing of the past. He snorts and says that make up has always been a thing of the past for me. How rude.
2pm It’s the first time I’ve had bare legs outside this year! Sorry, I mean leg.
2.30pm Sitting in the park, far away from everyone, reading a book called Everybody Died So I Got A Dog. It’s a funny and sweet book about the life of a woman called Emily Dean rather than a blueprint for 2020, though you could be mistaken for thinking the latter.
5pm COVID-19 Briefing. I know it’s not really a briefing but I’ve taken to calling it that because it makes me feel like coronavirus is my job now rather than being unemployed as of next Wednesday.
5.15pm Am I the only one who feels a bit sorry for whatever poor bugger they put on the news to fill time and inevitably get brutally interrupted when Boris decides to show up?
12am I can’t sleep. I lie awake thinking about the life I had just started to build for myself as a travel editor and writer. The press trip to Iceland I had planned for the summer that I had been commissioned to write about. The guidebooks to Porto and Malta and Edinburgh and South Africa I had edited that had my name in the back that might never be printed. I loved that job and everything about it. I loved the work and the people and running along the river at lunchtime. I was so happy. It’s not fair, I think. I worked so hard for this, I think. I finally got my break after such a long time and I’ve had it all taken away. I wonder what I will do when this whole thing ends. If I will have to go back to the soul-crushing job search and how I will cope with that.
And then I stop thinking about it, because what has happened has happened. This is not my fault, it’s not anyone’s fault, and it’s not just me in this position. There is nothing to be done now but to muddle through, to lend a hand in any way I can, to make the best of it on a daily basis and to try to keep a sense of humour. And also, obviously, to annoy the fuck out of my boyfriend and flatmate, because if there is one thing in this world I have a talent for, it’s being irritating on an olympic scale.