Coronavirus diary - 29 March 2020

A bit of gallows humour in Totnes

A week into lockdown and life continues to shut down a little more each day. The first few days I was still driving a couple of miles to the start of my runs, to avoid running on the roads and the busiest trails. It made sense. The frightened look on people’s faces as I ran by was spooking me. Five minutes in the car and I could be alone. But then the noose tightened a bit more. There were threats of tighter lockdowns, arrests, police shaming people online for driving to go for a walk. Just run from the house was the message. And not too hard, not too far.

So I’ve settled into a daily rhythm, heading out the door and running loops in different directions. As the week has gone on I’ve seen more and more families and couples out walking, and more runners. Down muddy, rutted trails I’ve used for years and never seen a soul, I pass person after person. They either look at me with that “not-another-bloody-runner” look, or they smile that “isn’t-this-mad-but-by-Jove-we’re-still-smiling” smile. I’ve stopped minding too much. I’m just moving, taking in the fresh, spring air; running each run like it’s my last, stopping when a view across the sunset-coloured hills catches my eye.

The talk of further restrictions is concerning. Ireland has stopped people running more than 2km from their house. The death tolls are rising. We’re still a long way from reaching the other side of this. The virus is a continuous, brooding presence “out there”. When I venture into the town to buy supplies, people are quiet. In a shop a few days ago, as I paid for my food, I nearly started to cry when I said to the cashier: “Hope you have a nice day.” I wanted to say: “Thank you for still working, so I can still buy food for my family.” I probably should have, but then I really would have broken down.

So this is what it has come to. And yet, at home, life is calm, happy. Whisper it, but it’s almost idyllic. Someone said this whole thing was like a speed bump for the world, forcing everyone to slow down. A breathing out. After one week, in some ways it feels like that. We get up when we want, we have a slow breakfast, sitting on the sunny front step. Then we potter around. I try not to check the news too obsessively. I’ve had the last week off from my day job as a news subeditor at the Guardian (I was supposed to be hosting my running retreat in Dartmoor this weekend). The week before, as Europe began falling apart like a collapsing building, I was plugged in to every announcement, every update, for eight hours a day. I could feel myself struggling to breathe.

But now I mow the grass, or play football with my son, or drink coffee on the front step. Or do maths with my son. Or read him Billy’s Boots. My son commands quite a lot of attention, so any plans to start working on a fourth book are a little hard to put into action, especially with no office space other than sitting on my bed. But I’m enjoying this time with him, with all my family. In optimistic moments, I think that one day we’ll look back with fondness on this time we had together. Like those days when we were together on our month-long train journey to Japan. That was also tough at times: we fought, we cried … but we look back at it now and feel how it pulled us tighter together.

I remember in Kenya, often the electricity would cut out in the evenings. At first it was a hassle. Perhaps we were in the middle of cooking, or I was writing, and we had to stop everything we were doing and light the kerosene lamp and gather around it. We would tell each other stories in its warm glow, the night quiet outside. Then the electricity would flash back on, the lights suddenly glaring harshly, the noises reigniting, the fridge, the laptop. “Oh no,” we would say, switching off the lights quickly, wanting to get back to our cosy, quiet lamp.

Is this like that? Will we get used to this cosy, quiet time and not want it to end? Perhaps. I suspect it will depend on how long it goes on. And how bad it gets.

Like when we finally got off the Trans-Siberian Express after seven days squashed in a tiny train compartment, and felt the crisp air on our faces as our ferry sailed out of Vladivostok, we felt nothing but joyous relief.

So perhaps this is not like either of those things, or perhaps it’s like both at once. I guess only time will tell. For now, like an ultra runner halfway up a mountain in the middle of the night, with the wind picking up and the food supplies running low, we just need to take one step, one breath, one moment at a time. It’s such a simple and yet such a difficult thing to do. But we have little choice but to try. And whether we achieve it or not, like every ultra runner knows, we can still learn a lot about ourselves along the way.