Polly Vernon has her say

Last seen, early March.

I’VE REACHED A new phase in All This. Having romped through: Phase 1) Abject Terror; Phase 2) Resilience and A New Resolve; Phase 3) Appreciation For The Little Things/a Growing Conviction That Good Will Come Of This Too (aka my Pollyanna phase); Phase 4) Projects!… I’ve entered Phase 5) Moody Arsed Bitch.

I wake up and think: this again? Seriously? I embark upon My Routine

– the one I created in the early days to anchor me with purpose – and am immediately filled with resentment at its rigid repetitiveness. I experience one tiny restoration of what passed as everyday privilege in olden times, feel briefly uplifted by: being able to get takeaway coffee from my fave café! Or: being able to social distance socialise with one person who isn’t in my household! – then immediately slip-slide into bitter resentment over all those very many other things I can’t yet do, may never do again.

I’m calling this my ‘MC-CC’ – my Mid Corona-crisis Crisis – and, based on the anecdotal evidence of everyone I’m allowed to talk to still, it is universal. I hear they called it ‘The Week Nines’ in Italy[1], though my mate D calls it: ‘The New S**t’ because it’s: ‘The New Normal – which is s**t.’

It’s nothing as worrying as a mental health issue induced by isolation. It’s nothing as debilitating as anxiety activated by the perpetual uncertainty of life in 2020 (though someone did recently tell me off for listening to a podcast about the country’s economic prospects: ‘That amounts to self-harm, you muppet. It’s the “googling your symptoms” for Now’). It’s rather an accumulating grief over all the freedoms and possibilities we used to have. I miss my life! I miss bits of it I can’t even remember! I have a hazy sense of my pre-corona self perpetually beetling about via all modes of transport (tube, Uber, foot!), busy, curious, hectic and all up in other people’s business; gyming and gossiping, shopping and boozing. & Other Stories for a quick squizz at Just In, swing by a backstreet salon for an unscheduled eyebrow thread, interview some bloody massive celebrity in a hotel suite, road rage at half three, Pilates at 5, tapas at 7… THAT WAS MY LIFE. This? This fiercely regimented, limited, timeless, dateless, sensible drag? This isn’t my life! This isn’t it!

I know this sounds spoilt. I know throwing my toys out of the lockdown pram is vulgar, pointless and probably – given how dreadfully others are suffering, how much others are sacrificing – offensive. And I know it will be fleeting. All corona crisis phases are. But being peed off about this is as defining and truthful a part of it as the hope, gratitude, et cetera and so on – and I’m going to honour it, too.

[1]: Mild depression that kicks in circa week nine of quarantine. I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds likely.