Coronavirus diary - 22 March 2020
Anyone else get that thing where you’re sitting at home watching some Netflix show set in happier times and then it ends and you look around the room and a slowly dawning memory starts to gather like a dark cloud in your mind, that outside the window the entire world is in the grip of a coronavirus pandemic?
These are strange times. I remember a few weeks ago when my biggest concerns were races being cancelled and Liverpool being denied their first-ever Premier League title by this bug thing going around. Then every day the seriousness began to ratchet up a level, and that basically hasn’t stopped. And I really want that to stop. I’m longing for the day when the ratcheting down begins, where things start to get reopened, rescheduled, rather than shut down and cancelled. How far away is that? Not knowing how long this will go on is one of the hardest bits.
I did a homeschooling thing with my son the other day where we both wrote a letter to ourselves five years in the future, so he wrote to his 15-year-old self and I wrote to my 50-year-old self. I started writing and it just poured out, and then afterwards he asked me to read mine aloud. Well, I can tell you, I broke down more than a few times, my voice trembling.
At one point, I wrote, to myself: “I hope you’re reading this and thinking about how quickly it was all over after all, and not thinking: ‘Oh boy, how little did he know what was coming next.”
I ended it: “p.s. I hope Mum and Dad are OK and still as crazy as ever.”
I was in bits by then, because right now everything feels less certain than at any point I can remember. The fear is real. I’m still running, but people step right out of my way as I come by, shielding their faces. In our little Devon town, people are nervous, it pervades the streets, the eerie quiet of fear. The usually bustling shops are shut. The few people around are short with each other, and walk with their heads down.
I want to say that it’s like that moment of crisis, of despair, that you get in an ultra race where it seems you’re broken, beaten, and you can’t go on. I’ve been there, I know you can always come back, you can ride it out. But the thing is, not everyone will ride this one out. So I can’t find solace even in the memory of those experiences.
But then I go for an actual run, in the engulfing mist on Dartmoor, or along the seafront, with 45mph winds knocking me sideways - the more extreme the weather the better.
(And yes, I run alone. All social distancing rules obeyed.)
Along the seafront in Torquay on Saturday evening, I was drenched by waves crashing over the seawall. Not enough. I wanted more. I turned back and ran through them again. Then, as I ran on, I sped up, faster and faster, my heart pumping harder, the wind blowing me into oblivion.
After I stopped, I felt a surge of calm. I stood on the beach looking at it. Nature, you motherfucker, you beast. But it felt better to join it, to merge with it, then to hide away scared. It filled me with strength to stand there and feel the wind on my face. Looking up, the clouds still scudded across the fire sky, the sea still thrashed and churned.
So I don’t write this to offer any advice, or sense of perspective, or any wisdom. But I have been finding solace in seeing people, both in real life and online, carrying on with life, embracing spring, nature, the sky - even those in isolation in Italy and Spain, finding ways to hold on to that joie de vivre, even as the fabric of our constructed societies are put on hold.
Yes, we are missing so much, and we face a genuine risk greater than most of us have ever known (whether that’s to our health, or our ability to put food on our tables), but each day, regardless, life continues. While we still can, getting out for a run can bring some peace of mind and an appreciation of the essence of life, things that right now we need more than ever. So, if you can, while you can, keep running, keep looking at the sky, fill your lungs with breath, because now more than ever, we feel how fragile it all is.