Home Front Alice Pitman

‘This is absurd – we don’t live in a police state!’ ‘We do now!’ said the policeman

A teetotaller for 12 years, Mr Home Front has been unusually generous when it comes to keeping me supplied with alcohol throughout this lockdown.

At the beginning of week three, two boxes of Chilean arrived from Majestic Wine. As the delivery man offloaded our order, our near-neighbour Rita stopped putting her bins out to watch. She didn’t say anything but there was a glint of puritan disapproval in her expression. The pandemic has turned one or two round here into curtain-twitching, judgemental Covidnosies.

Mr HF quickly snuck my shameful supplies round to the patio before more eyebrows were raised. Then, in his Howard Hughes way, he disinfected each bottle with his home-made anti-viral spray, which smells of fish and makes Destry sneeze.

Having no willpower and a constant supply of wine means I have been merrily drinking my way through the lockdown. The sunny weather in April merely intensified the illusion of good cheer.

But Mr HF is nobody’s fool. Like Nurse Ratched handing out the pills to keep the lunatics sedated in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he knows that, when I’m on the red stuff, I’m as meek as a lamb.

In exchange, I’ve relaxed guidelines over Bullseye: he can watch as many old episodes as he likes. I am otherwise occupied upstairs, writing terrible lockdown songs on my guitar under the tragic delusion that I’m the undiscovered Joni Mitchell of Surrey.

After dinner, we reconvene in front of Twin, a Norwegian TV drama. No matter how much I’m enjoying it, I invariably fall asleep, usually at a pivotal plot point.

‘Oi, Princess Margaret!’ he barks. ‘Wake up!’

‘I am awake!’ I murmur, eyes shut, having acquired the supernatural ability to hold my wine glass without spilling a drop.

When I asked the 95-year-old Aged P if two large glasses of red a night was too much, she said it wasn’t nearly enough. ‘You should have seen what your father and I put away in the Sixties!’

During the second week of lockdown, the Aged P’s care home rang to tell me she had tested positive for COVID-19. Her symptoms were mild but, knowing how quickly it can turn nasty, it was a nail-biting fortnight. I had a feeling she would pull through, though, as she kept grumbling about carers mumbling behind their masks. She still phoned to tell me about TV shows on that night: ‘A whole programme devoted to Les Dawson!’ And she never stopped expounding about unsolved national murders: ‘I know exactly where the body is – it’s at the bottom of the stepfather’s garden. The police need look no further!’

Meanwhile, son Fred is exiled in a gardenless council flat in Hackney. The boy is furious, as last December he completed the first draft of a novel about a world flu pandemic from China: ‘Now everyone’ll be writing one!’

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘What if Alistair Maclean had had that attitude about the Second World War? He would never have written a word!’

‘Ha ha – yeah, OK,’ said Fred, a little mollified.

A few weeks ago, he was nearly arrested in London Fields. Over-zealous COVID cops descended while Fred was meditating, as socially distanced from others as it was possible to get. Fred pointed out the hypocrisy of six more police huddled in the back of a nearby police van without a face mask between them: ‘And I’m the one who’s the Covidiot?’ Handcuffs were produced. ‘This is absurd!’ exclaimed Fred. ‘We don’t live in a police state!’ ‘We do now!’ said the policeman. A passer-by filmed the incident on his mobile, and Fred lived in fear of appearing in the papers. Betty, whose bible is the Mail Online, checked daily on her brother’s behalf: ‘Don’t worry, Fredsies, it’s mainly fat people in pyjamas fighting over loo roll.’

‘I’ll never forgive the way the police behaved,’ he told us over Skype. ‘It’s an undemocratic, sinister Brave New World. The only people who come out of this looking good are NHS nurses and doctors – every other institution, from the media to the police, looks terrible!’

I do wonder how much longer these weekly claps for the NHS are going to last. The first few weeks were genuinely moving, but when a meaningful act starts to feel compulsory, it loses its meaning. As no one wants to be seen as the first to stop, the saucepan-bashing goes on and on. An element of performance has crept in.

A 20-something neighbour sang Britney Spears songs from her driveway last week, along with Peggy Lee’s Fever (‘Bit inappropriate,’ said Mr HF).

For next week, there is talk of a mobile disco. Sadly, it clashes with my first glass of red wine on the sofa.