The new rules of Covid Competing Ways in which we’re trying to outdo our fellow isolators
We are now kitchenproud... partly because we’re scared of what the cleaner will say when she returns
The lockdown, we’re all agreed, is bringing communities together, renewing family bonds and making us appreciate what we’ve got. Meanwhile, I can’t be the only one who has noticed, alongside the Blitz spirit, a new spirit of competition. Covid competing is unlike competing BC (Before Corona) because it’s necessarily limited in scope – must all happen at home or in the park – and because what’s topping the chart is not what we’d have expected, had we given it any thought.
The latest Covid Competing chart looks like this:
Still at No1: Exercise
People who barely or never exercised (moi) have turned into Rocky during their allocated one hour of outdoor activity and signed up to classes. When we’re brushing our teeth, we’re stretching our calves. We’re taking the stairs two at a time and hopping on one leg waiting for the kettle to boil. As for the people who always took plenty of exercise, they’re doing yoga and pilates three times a day. You can’t have a conversation with a female without them mentioning Adrienne or Davina, or their private person who is brilliant.
Suddenly we’re all behaving as if we’ve been barred from daily gym workouts with the world’s finest and we absolutely have to maintain our routines.
At No2: Serious five-star no-cheat cooking
We were convinced that it was all going to be tins and dried food agogo, but instead we are treating the lockdown like Christmas if we were loaded and living with Ottolenghi.
We’re insisting on fresh everything. We are ordering boxes of lamb shanks from companies with the word “ethical” in their names, when BC we were quite often eating discounted non-organic chicken. Recipe sharing has become a thing again like it hasn’t since the Fifties. We don’t want to look up recipes online, we want to get them from our friends – and vice versa – as that way our efforts are logged.
At three: Carefully curated TV watching
BC you would just flop on to the sofa and watch whatever was on, plus your catch-up list. Now it’s deadly serious. When you come out of the lockdown you want to have watched All The Classic Films, All the Classic TV, and read War and Peace. Everyone’s comparing. Just in at No 4: Making an effort with our hair
We had given up, but now looking like an old Victorian doll and seeing that others are maintaining their shiny bobs has got us fired up. We can’t do anything about the grey, but maybe the Baby Jane do?
Five: Being tidy
In particular being kitchen proud and bathroom-on-it. This is partly because we are scared of what the cleaner will say if she comes back to a midden.
At No 6: Pulling together families
Way back BC you may remember there was a time when the most competitive women were clocking up five children just to annoy their peers with only four. Now the game is how marvellously well the vast family are gelling over old board games, seed planting and sourdough making, and how much volunteering the children are doing.
Seven: Reliably excellent memes
You know when you’ve got it and when you haven’t.
In at No 8: Enterprising home improvements…
… that don’t involve storming B&Q, eg. making lovely areas to WFH (v galling for those of us who used to WFH BC in a dingy corner piled high with unnecessary papers.)
Nine: Being wildly social
This has dropped down the chart since the early weeks of the lockdown. You can be the person doing two quizzes a night, but it’s starting to feel like the worst of BC when you couldn’t find a weekend to see your best friends. Now you can’t agree on a time slot to talk to them.
At No 10: The garden
Don’t you wish your garden was hot like mine? Don’t you wish you’d got your slugs under control, like mine?
Sorry, it is strange, but we did not make the rules.