'A Room with No View?'

Hello. 

It's been a while since I've seen you – well, since I've seen anyone  'IRL'  really.    How's lockdown going for you?  I'm somewhere between boredom-binge-eating and panic – neither are conducive to living my 'best Covid-19 isolation life'.   If I don't get my act together soon it will all be over and I won't have learned Spanish or how to bake soda bread.  

            “What did you do during the Covid-19 crisis grandma?”

            “Well darling, I ate two magnums a day for six weeks straight, drank A LOT of coffee and painted a rainbow on my window” 

OK, I know this is ridiculous – I don't even have kids.

But anyway, have you been furloughed?  Fuh-lowd. I've been furloughed and think it sounds like something you do to a field of vegetables. “I'm just off out to furlough the potatoes...” sort of thing.   I'm sad about stopping work as  I had only just  started my new dream job as a Conservation Cleaner at Westminster Abbey.  Six-weeks in and it transpires that vacuuming the dust out of Edward III's nostrils can't be done from the comfort of my living room so I'm temporarily put out to pasture (and working that farming metaphor).  On the plus side I've done a deep-clean of my flat  - twice.  If I turn off all the lights and play Gregorian chants whilst flicking a duster about, my little studio room is a fair approximation of morning service in the Lady Chapel at The Abbey. I might even wear my uniform when I do it next time.

Hey, but how about those empty streets!  So good for running, right?  Well, once you've socially distant manoeuvred your way around people walking their dogs and the kids and their dogs and ...ooh, everyone else who's out for their daily constitutional.  And people are pretty cheerful too, apart from the grumpy ones who say you're flinging sweat in their face even though you've taken to running in the middle of the road to maintain a clear two metre space between you and them -  because playing chicken with the oncoming traffic is preferable to the evil looks from passing pedestrians. I know, I know - we are all having our best running lives right now!

I've been 'Zooming'...and Skype-ing and WhatsApp-ing and Face-timing and Facebook video calling and Microsoft Teams-ing.  It's amazing – so many people are virtually IN my tiny flat at ALL hours of the day, it's like Piccadilly Circus, well not at the moment obviously. The West End is a ghost town, so I hear. I even lost my voice in week two of lock down, what with all the chatting to people who aren't even here.  It's so good to see people though – and sometimes it's also nice to not see them quite so much and to read a book instead, or watch  David Attenborough on telly.  I find that there are days when only the brutal drama of the natural world can help me: penguins hurled about by the surf on their journey out to sea, baby seals picked off and tossed around by killer whales, giant walruses raging bloody battles to secure a mate.  All observed from the safe island retreat of one's sofa and blanket-bundled against this panorama of adversity.  You will, I promise, develop some much needed perspective on our present circumstances.

At least the  weather has been lovely.  Even if you're stuck inside there's the early morning sunshine – you can throw open the windows and get a nice breeze.  Unless you live in my flat where there is no view.  I'm not joking – the windows of my studio look out onto a brick wall.  Not just any wall, this is a thirty foot high, sixty feet long Grimm's fairytale of a wall standing six feet from the side of my flat, blocking out pretty much all natural daylight. Clearly designed to keep out some long since vanquished ancient terror -  it remains, a foreboding reminder of the perils lurking beyond the safe space of my home.  Or something like that.  I may have no outside view but my inner world is vast which is making lock down a fun and creative experience for me.

A positive thing about living in perpetual darkness and needing to have the overhead lights on all day is that I can organise my own sleep schedule when it suits me.  Now that I no longer need to rise at dawn to hoover the high alter, I have repurposed those useful hours from midnight until 5am for everything from housework to reading... writing to trawling Twitter. It is an insomniac's dream – oxymoronic as that sounds – and is great for catching up on all the social media, fake news and views accumulated during the previous day.  The UK may be sleeping but the US is still online so I can watch all the President's press conferences – live!  This helps enormously with the staying awake all night thing, which in turn means more productive moonlight hours – yay.

And so, back to my wall and the title of this piece. 

In the 1985 film  A Room with a View, E M Forster's Mr Emerson is brought to life in all his robust indelicacy, by Denholm Elliott to exclaim:

            “I don't care what I see outside.  My vision is within! Here is where the birds sing! Here is            where the sky is blue!”

I've been holding this in mind during the last few weeks, especially on days when I haven't made it out for a walk.  On Easter Sunday I opened the sash window wide, balanced a cushion on the sill and clambered into the window frame to drink my morning coffee in companionable silence with my wall.  In fact I wasn't entirely honest about the perpetual darkness – sun hits the window for about 30 minutes, early each morning.  On this day there was a sliver of blue sky visible at the end of the wall and a riot of bird song.  It was perfect.  I took a walk past my local church, St-John-at-Hampstead, to see that someone had left armfuls of locally picked wild flowers arranged in jam jars outside the locked church door with a note inviting others to pick a few bluebells from the churchyard and add these to the display. I bumped  into the Reverend, Jeremy (at a good two metres distance.)  He had been admiring the flowers and was heading back to the vicarage to conduct the Easter Day service via Facebook Live. Later that afternoon I joined a Serpie meetup via Zoom where members from Fulham Runners had been invited along for a cross-club social.  A fun-filled ninety minutes flew by as we swapped notes on club life and introduced the assembled group to our pets, kids and strange lockdown habits.  It was an Easter Day like no other and yet I am struck by our determination to find new ways of safely celebrating the things we hold dear and bringing people together, undeterred by the present necessary constraints.

It remains a challenge most days, but I endeavour to choose my own view – from my window and of the strange circumstances we face together.  Like most people,  right now I am unsettled, scared, frustrated, angry –  but I'm learning what  sets me off on a downward spiral and adapting as I go. I've unplugged from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, instead seeking the virtual company of people that I know will make me laugh.  Truly there is much darkness –  but there is also light when we know where to look for it.  

See you soon, and until then take care.

Kim 

Author  profile: 

Kim has been a Serpie for five years.  She lives alone in a studio flat in leafy Hampstead and has been in lock down for six weeks of emotional highs and lows.  She is incredibly grateful for friends and family who are variously keeping her sane, holding her to account and making her laugh when nothing has felt at all funny.  Her top tip for covid-19 isolation survival is to step away from your phone or computer  more often – recognise your triggers and gift yourself some quiet time (and yes - watch David Attenborough on TV)