I feel guilty I’m wasting this lockdown

SUNDAY I don’t even like cocktails in real life, but somehow, right now, my week builds up to five o’clock on Sunday. I’m clearly not alone in having cocktail hour. Never have so many been able to have cocktails delivered by so many others. We’ve graduated onto making our own — more cost effective, and possibly stronger.

It’s margaritas this week. My wife, the mixologist, went to some trouble to get her hands on some triple sec. As usual, the weather has built up and up all week only to turn to crap on Sunday, so it’s into the pub (the garage). The beauty of tequila is that you get a mini buzz on for a while and then you just stop and go in and watch TV and it’s like it never happened. The truth is that the anticipation of cocktail hour is as good as, if not better than, cocktail hour itself.

The procuring of the triple sec gave the mixologist a project for a few days.

We also like to peruse lots of takeaway menus, before invariably deciding to support our local place again. Next week, we’ll go further afield, we say. And there will be a next week. This is our life now, our small and thankfully uneventful life.

Monday

I think I’ve flattened the curve on the weight gain. The numbers are not going down but I have certainly plateaued. I won’t be taking it upon myself to drive the curve down right now, but my modelling is suggesting an R-number of 1, which will do for the moment.

I’ll try and keep the weight steady from here on in, but there’s no way I’m dieting during a pandemic. What else do we have now except food? Cocktails, I suppose.

Tuesday

Of course we’re all doctors now. The uncertainty is killing us so we scour the papers for any bit of good news on treatments or vaccines. It’s hard to accept the fact that for the first time ever, this is something ‘They’ can’t just fix. We always assumed ‘They’ could sort everything out. ‘They’ can do anything these days with technology and science. But ‘They’ can’t fix this right now.

And we can’t fix it for the kids, the way we try and fix everything else for them. But I insist on maintaining a science-backed optimism at all times. We must see beyond this moment. The game will change. I force myself to believe the treatment is coming, and then the vaccine is coming.

And I force myself to believe that afterwards, everything will not be changed forever.

Wednesday

My Mary likes get out an iPad and go over old holiday pictures. She likes to be told the stories, over and over, of each picture, of where we were and what we did.

In one way it is wonderful right now to look at how carefree we were in years gone by in the vivid light of faded Italian towns, or Spanish swimming pools.

But in another way the yearning is too much. Because I know we can’t have it, I crave a holiday to look forward to even more. I crave anything to look forward to. I want all those simple things back, all those simple things we took for granted, that it turns out were so important.

I want an early evening pint, a meal in a restaurant. I want to drive to Cork and eat my mother’s brown bread at the kitchen table or out in her back garden, with her and Dad.

I want to get up at 6am and go to the swimming pool. I want to feel the short, sharp shock of the first second when you strike off into the sea. I want a walk with a friend, a wander in town, a crowded street. I want to meet someone for a cup of coffee.

But most of all I want that feeling of looking forward to getting away, that feeling of booking something, months away, but knowing it is there, that on that specified day in the future I will be getting on the plane. A lot of the other stuff will come back gradually. But the solace that comes with looking forward to getting off this island could be a bit away yet.

We can’t even be sure there will be a welcome in Kerry or West Cork this summer. But maybe there will be, at some point, when they get desperate enough, as long as we all wear our plague masks and queue in an orderly fashion.

Thursday

How many weeks are we into the pandemic now and I still haven’t pursued any of the higher things I thought I might. Busy with my medical research, I haven’t read any of the great books I thought I might read. I haven’t perfected any baking skills. My Italian remains less than basic. Admittedly I am working towards running my 5K in 25 minutes, but overall I feel I am wasting this lockdown.

So tonight, inspired by Bressie, I pick up a ukulele the kids have and tune it up. I spend 10 minutes picking up three chords from a sad man on the internet, and then realise that they are roughly the chords for U2’s All I Want Is You. Before I know it, I can croon it, accompanying myself haltingly on the ukulele, like a Hawaiian lounge-style Bono impersonator.

I’ll be the George Formby of the pub this Sunday night. And in fairness, it’s time we introduced some live entertainment there, because

God knows the two regulars are running out of things to say to each other.