A Step Closer
The birds sing, and the sun shines. All is quiet and quaint in the streets and suburbs of Britain.
Within a few weeks in early Spring 2020, people’s lives have changed. New routines, new habits and new words.
“Furloughed, home-schooling, Zoom Arms.”
We long for the good times — so we’re recreating them.
Watch the video of a man who reclines in his seat and gazes out of a jet plane window. The camera pulls back…
Or the chap who built a ski lift in his back garden, for his kids. Our creative attempts to replicate the familiar are impressive.
Covid-19 lockdown continues, but one thing is striking.
Through the lens of a video camera. The social media feed. And the playful rainbow drawings in the windows…
…the garden fence chat with next door — grimacing through the smile as they entertain their kids…
…a polite knock on the window in search of a ‘thumbs-up’ from an elderly neighbour on the street.
Something else is going on…
We’re inside but looking outward.
Even though our social lives are synthesized by digital tools, it feels like we’re turning towards each other.
For hope, security and a bit of love. It feels like people are pulling together.
Leaders ask for a collective effort.
Many are giving their time and sacrificing their lives. Not just frontline medics and support staff.
Three-quarters of a million NHS volunteers are on standby to help someone near them at a moment’s notice.
The UK Formula 1 teams who are joining together to make intensive care ventilators.
Even a local Craft Gin Distillery, Conker Gin is making community hand sanitizer.
Local restaurants are keeping on their staff to prepare food for the doctors and nurses on the front line.
New people on our screens
As one day slowly morphs into another, the news updates us on curves, charts and trajectories.
New people playing big parts in our lives.
- A Professor calmly fronts press briefings to talk us through the stats.
- A hoody-wearing chancellor pours cash into a paralyzed economy.
- The first prime minister to make it in and out of intensive care.
We watch and struggle to process the grim figures. Then we make dinner and get on with the evening routine.
Kids are bathed, wine is poured and we settle in for the night. Later we step outside to applaud the workers on the front line.
Back within our own four walls. It feels like the world’s slowly falling apart but we feel lucky to still be here. And to still have each other.
A more meaningful purpose?
Has being indoors forced us to reflect? A pause to reassess. To re-think?
An existential threat is bound to affect and challenge our priorities. Has it helped us realigned what’s really important?
“It turns out that we can function without celebrities or star athletes, but we really cannot function without nurses, doctors, care workers, delivery drivers, the stackers of supermarket shelves or, perhaps unexpectedly, good neighbours” — Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian.
What next?
Paul Farnes, the last surviving RAF pilot of the Battle of Britain, died in January 2020. He was the last of ‘The Few’.
The acts of the few on behalf of the many is a concept indelibly marked on our national psyche.
Perhaps that’s why the sacrifices that NHS and key workers are now making, feels very familiar.
World War II gave the nation the collective and resolute character to deal with an adversary.
Coronavirus seems to be bringing that out in us. You can hear a pinch of that in the words the Queen spoke recently.
“We will succeed — and that success will belong to every one of us.”
In only the third time she has spoken to the nation in her 68 year reign. It feels like it’s a template for survival from yesteryear. But it’s very ‘now’.
The wartime phrases we learnt at school are now the qualities we demand of ourselves and others.
The concept of ‘duty’ is coming into sharp relief as mortality rates increase. For those on the front line, duty is not optional.
That sense of ‘pulling together’ feels new to many of us. Me included.
A journey from selfish to selfless
Those brought up in the 1970s and 1980s will remember the concept of individualism that was championed under the moniker of Thatcherism.
And how back then, Thatcherism played out on the picket lines and pit closures in the north of England and South Wales.
You might say that was communities v capitalism. Or the individual v a collective. No time for that now.
Meanwhile back to earth
What’s it like to make it through Intensive Care as a Covbid-19 patient?
We’ve heard from Boris but what about ‘normal’ people?
I’m delighted to say that a good friend of mine is recovering after nearly 3 weeks in a London hospital.
A few days ago, his sister and dad were able to FaceTime him.
When the effects of the sedation wore off, and he opened his eyes and felt how weak his limbs were. He was understandably confused about his surroundings.
He described how he felt:
“Like an astronaut floating down to a planet where nothing worked.”
The medics in masks and gowns made him think he was in another world. The tubes and machines that had kept him alive looked like he was in a sci-fi movie. In many ways he was.
Even with their PPE equipment on, the medics still managed to give him compassion and empathy. Not the mention amazing care that ultimately, kept him alive.
Even with huge barriers and threats, we are still finding ways to be human to one another.
