A journal of the plague year

SOON enough there will only be three types of journalism: there will be stories about coronavirus, stories about what to do to keep going and to distract during coronavirus, and columns like this will be coronavirus diaries.

I promise I won’t do it every week, but I’ll need to do it this week while I figure out the way forward for now.

Tonally I’m going to keep it light-ish, to try and distract us a bit. This is not because I don’t understand that there are people hurting out there, but not everything can be grim and bleak. We will go mad if it is.

MONDAY

I had pizza for breakfast. This is not a good start to this new regime. The experts say we need structure. I decide that I will in future defer eating until noon. Once I start the day’s eating, it is basically straight into non-stop eating, so the later I start, the better.

I also vow to put on clothes as early as possible in the day. And to stop working from my bed. My motto becomes “clean yourself, put on some clothes and have some selfrespect”.

I say it to the youngest, and she looks at me, slightly alarmed. Today is technically my day off. I was already figuring out work routines before the added complication of coronavirus. And with this, what even is a day off anymore?

TUESDAY

If the painter Lowry, of matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs fame, had painted the zombie apocalypse, it would be Sandymount Strand on St Patrick’s Day when the tide is out. All these discrete pockets of people, all walking aimlessly in different directions, all with an invisible cube of distance around them. Talk about walking into eternity on Sandymount Strand.

I see they are going to tell the German Big Brother contestants live on air what has happened. There’s no way those people will believe this

story. It’s just too made-up, too unlikely.

Reeling in The Years is on TV. I realise they should just show Reeling in the

Years on a loop, maybe dedicate a special channel to it. It is comforting to see that other world we used to live in, where we thought we had problems.

I only thought I had coronavirus once today, which is an improvement. I’ve had up to three coronavirus-related anxiety/panic attacks in a day. As they describe the symptoms on radio or TV, I can feel them rising in my throat.

I ring my mother a few times a day. We do this little charade where we pretend I am ringing for her sake, to check in that she is okay.

She plays along with me, even thanking me at the end of some calls for ringing and keeping in touch, as if I am the one doing her the favour.

THURSDAY

I decide to cut down on coffee. Just one strong one to get me vertical in the morning. Any further coffee beyond that can lead to increased heart rate and a spiral of imagined coronavirus symptoms and general economic and social worry.

I will also be limiting alcohol to one glass of wine. I had a few drinks on Sunday and it didn’t help the mood the next morning.

I envy people who can tipple their way through this, but I’m not that person. I am up and down like a yoyo as it is, without complicating it with drink. I am still eating my way through it for now.

We always said Generation X and millennials would be too soft for a war, too privileged and sensitive to go through what our grandparents went through. Turns out we were right. But we are adjusting. We will buck up.

FRIDAY

I bought running shoes today, proper ones. I am going to download something called Couch to 5K. This is a sign of what unprecedented times we are in.

For 50 years I have avoided running. But then again, there was never anything like this to run away from.

People say we should take this as a time to get to know our family. I know mine already. I know them well enough, thank you. I wish I was one of those jolly-hockey-sticks people who could be knitting a quiz to do with all the kids, or baking a deck of cards with them, to then play Beggar my Neighbour with them for four hours.

We come together at times and then we all scatter to different corners of the house.

This is the sign of a family that knows each other. We can take each other for granted. And thank God for that right now. Because so far, for us, we have relatively firstworld problems.

I continue eating at all times. But I try and introduce more reading to distract from doom and food.

I was reading American

Dirt on the grounds that the woman in it is in much deeper shit than we are, but I have temporarily set it aside for a book Gerard Howlin recommended on the radio last week.

Camus’s The Plague is showing me that we think we are unique, but in fact all plague behaviour is the same.