Could this be the definitive record of the isolation era?
When the pandemic is over, whenever that is, how are we going to remember it? What records will be left behind? The Queen’s extraordinary address to the nation, for sure, and the diaries that schoolchildren are being encouraged to keep, and maybe even the legacy of the inexplicable expertise we’re all developing for making banana bread and sourdough.
Life on Lockdown (Radio 4, Friday) is providing a record of voices and stories of people in isolation. It’s made by the radio producer Cathy Fitzgerald, who somehow always manages to give a refreshing and surprising take on something you thought you already knew about. This programme, the first in a series, might be some of the most important radio being made just now: intimate, humane, evocative and representative of the moment, and with a real feeling of the first draft of history about it. It’s compiled from recordings that people have made themselves on their phones and emailed directly to Fitzgerald.
And so we heard Orla O’neill in northern Italy, recording the sounds she could hear around her home: the Italian radio stations all playing the same music; the loudspeaker being driven around the town telling people to stay inside; the daily news updates giving the latest death toll.
Other stories included newly composed music; children at home from school; people struggling with symptoms of the virus; and someone who had been diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks previously (“The timing was impeccable,” as she said), who was still doing her best to enjoy the beginning of spring.
Fitzgerald gave her own perspective too. She has asthma and has been nervous about going outside at all, and is separated from her family. “I miss mum’s hugs,” said Fitzgerald, “and her marmalade cake, and I’m looking forward to the sweetness of both when this is over.”
There are as many different stories about the coronavirus as there are people. Every time I think I’ll escape news of the virus by listening to something completely different, there it is, still affecting everything.
Not being a farmer, I only started listening to the radio early enough in the morning to catch Farming Today
(Radio 4, daily) when my daughter was a newborn, but I’ve been listening again now in these bright dawns when the birdsong is louder than ever. And it’s finding yet more unique perspectives on the pandemic.
Major agricultural events such as the Royal Welsh and Royal Highland Shows have been cancelled, but on Sunday we heard of enterprising attempts to organise online versions, including cattle judged by their photographs and a virtual home baking tent. There have been updates on garden centres and plant nurseries, who are facing logistical problems in getting their plants out to people who want them, even though lockdown has turned Britain into a nation of obsessive gardeners overnight.
But there was also a broadcast from a lambing shed in eastern Scotland, where one family was working closely together to keep the farm functioning, having had to ditch their sideline in luxury holiday accommodation on their land for a renewed focus on giving a “five star experience” to baby animals and their mothers, instead. Some creatures are doing pretty well out of this human crisis.
Radio still has still time for human joy, too. The BBC has begun broadcasting classic episodes of Just a Minute (Sunday, Radio 4), soon to be joined by vintage editions of I’m
Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Now, Radio 4 Extra already broadcasts plenty of classic radio from the archives, so Radio 4 isn’t breaking any new ground here, and the plan is probably partly motivated by the need to fill gaps in the schedules as new radio programmes become harder to make. But Radio 4 has a bigger audience than 4 Extra, and beaming out a bit more fun from the past is still a great idea.
They picked a wonderful episode from 2005 to start with, featuring Sue Perkins, Ross Noble, Paul Merton and Graham Norton, four of the best players of the modern era, with perfect chemistry between them, and the matchless chairman Nicholas Parsons at the helm. Like all the best episodes, it got almost completely out of hand as the players got sillier and sillier. On the subject of What I’d Say to a Mermaid, for instance, Noble’s suggestion of “blubble blubble blubble” was correctly challenged – with two seconds to go – for the repetition of “blubble”.
It was absurd. And, as the times themselves are so absurd, it was perfect.