Orwell really knew how to self-isolate. He sequestered himself on the Isle of Jura at the end of a road 35 miles from the only shop and the only pub. No electricity, no telephone. He was running away from journalism and perhaps from possible assassins after he was placed on a death list by Stalinist stooges. Against this example of deliberate separation, we are merely amateurs. Biographers talk about how bleak the house, Barnhill was. Perched above a seal-draped bay on a tiny island in the Inner Hebrides, the pictures some of them paint is of a fatal self-imposed privation. I did not find it so when I stayed there. I understood. The scenery, the silence and the solitude is beautiful and calmed the turmoil inside that he must have felt. I wish I was there now.
After 9 weeks of Lockdown, not for the first time, I woke up with the miseries. So I cycled up the hill to Alexandra Palace hoping to get a lift from Mr & Mrs Endorphin. But they were self-isolating and wouldn’t open the door. I was almost arrested for being doleful in a built-up area. Police gave me the choice of being locked up inside for a long time or going home…
At the summit, in front of the People’s Palace, London lay before me, not like a patient etherised upon a table. But like a deluded escapee from an institution, convinced they are well and normal again, only to suddenly notice they are naked in the lion house at the zoo. People are on the streets again in great numbers. Not realising our government is using them and their children as canaries in the coal-mine. Guinea pigs in a social experiment. They have been off the wheel of working to consume, consume, consume too long for their liking. Time to sacrifice a few for the greater good.
The feeling is of a nameless dread that sits in your stomach like a lead weight and even though me and mine are all healthy and have nothing much to complain about, feeling like this is an excuse for me to beat myself up about everything.
Lockdown and my first London Marathon postponed. Months of training down the drain and I stopped running altogether. I have to start training again for October. But not today. Definitely not today.
But because I know this is how my brain works in these circumstances, my only trick is to sweat and write my way out of it. So labouring up the hill to Ally Pally and venting this sentiment here right now on this blog, I must shake it off and perform that mental sleight of mind that gets me over this hump and up the long incline to perspective. I am ready for another day of writing my way there. Now where are my crampons?
After 9 weeks of Lockdown, not for the first time, I woke up with the miseries. So I cycled up the hill to Alexandra Palace hoping to get a lift from Mr & Mrs Endorphin. But they were self-isolating and wouldn’t open the door. I was almost arrested for being doleful in a built-up area. Police gave me the choice of being locked up inside for a long time or going home…
At the summit, in front of the People’s Palace, London lay before me, not like a patient etherised upon a table. But like a deluded escapee from an institution, convinced they are well and normal again, only to suddenly notice they are naked in the lion house at the zoo. People are on the streets again in great numbers. Not realising our government is using them and their children as canaries in the coal-mine. Guinea pigs in a social experiment. They have been off the wheel of working to consume, consume, consume too long for their liking. Time to sacrifice a few for the greater good.
The feeling is of a nameless dread that sits in your stomach like a lead weight and even though me and mine are all healthy and have nothing much to complain about, feeling like this is an excuse for me to beat myself up about everything.
Lockdown and my first London Marathon postponed. Months of training down the drain and I stopped running altogether. I have to start training again for October. But not today. Definitely not today.
But because I know this is how my brain works in these circumstances, my only trick is to sweat and write my way out of it. So labouring up the hill to Ally Pally and venting this sentiment here right now on this blog, I must shake it off and perform that mental sleight of mind that gets me over this hump and up the long incline to perspective. I am ready for another day of writing my way there. Now where are my crampons?
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