Life we’re forced to live

ANYONE else fed up? Fed up of doing everything too much – eating, drinking, worrying? Where does it end?

And don’t get me started on the guilt. It must be a Catholic throwback. Guilty about relaxing too much; not relaxing enough; not seeing loved ones; being too soft on the kids; being too hard on them; guilty that just for a moment you can’t think of anything to feel guilty about.

Enough.

Let’s turn the tables and think about the good things lockdown has brought.

To anyone with schoolkids, there are no white shirts to iron. Hurray.

Iron-ically, we have all the time in the world to iron, so how to explain the mountain of clothes in the room of shame – that room even you are too embarrassed to enter?

If you’ve not got young kids, maybe you’ve taken the time to get on top of everything.

As examples I give you my uncle and aunt who cleared out their garage, resulting in very excited boys screaming that there was a line of toy army tanks lined up on our drive. And my mum who got round to emptying the shed of my wee sister’s toys – including a Wendy house and car the boys love.

Perhaps your house is the zenlike, uncluttered haven you always imagined. With school out for the forseeable, I’ll just have to imagine how this feels.

Greasy hair, roots showing your greys, chipped and broken nails

– the plus side? No one need see them. Heard the one about leaving your hair for three weeks to make it healthier than ever – so dirty it eventually starts washing itself? Now we have the time to do it.

I won’t be alone in talking to some people more – albeit on Zoom or FaceTime – than before, making twice-weekly “appointments” with my mum and sister, begging the question that, given the realisation of how important loved ones are, why did we never do it before?

And in those moments that come to us all – of fear, relaxation, calmness, terror, for me all of the above in any given hour – maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure out some of the answers to the bigger questions. Like, what’s it all about?

Maybe that’s what we’re meant to do during this surreal rollercoaster of history through which we are living – figure out who we are and what we’re really meant to be doing with our lives.

But as that’s rather heavy, for now I’ll sweat the smaller stuff.

Like, how can a bottle of white, or box of Maltesers evaporate so quickly on any given lockdown night?

Some of the spoils uncovered during a shed clear out.