“If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere”

Any news?

Only joking. There’s no news.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I was in Castlerea a few days ago. Put on a bit of tinted moisturizer and my good jeans for going. Lost the run of myself in SuperValu.

I’m a bit over the lockdown now.

I’m badly caught out on the lies I told myself about all the stuff I’d do if I just had the time. But now’s not the time for unrealistic ambition, the Great Personal Projects can be postponed for another bit. It’s the time for keeping the spirits up, treating ourselves and savouring what’s good so we can fight to keep the good stuff when all this passes.

Most of all, now’s the time to recognize that it’s grand to just be, well, grand.

My weariness was neither sudden nor creeping; there was just a week there I found myself getting down (and narky) when thinking about the duration of all this and how much more there is to go. It’s not the present that does be weighing on me, it’s the future. It’s nothing to do with where I am (I waxed lyrical about my surroundings only a week or two ago) or who’s around me, it’s the lack of stuff to look forward to like football matches on Sunday and pints on a Wednesday.

Dancing in a bar or at a concert, that’s ages away. Kissing strangers and eating Mighty Macs at 2am, that’s ages away. Football matches and dragging children to beaches on days that are vaguely warm – i.e. ‘mild’ – that’s ages away too.

And because of the way things are in rural Ireland, the government’s announcements on lifting restrictions don’t have a morale-boosting effect. There’s not many around here cycling exactly 2km, turning around and going straight home. The cocooners who can have long been going for daily walks down quiet roads.

Most of us are doing fine and, like me, probably have very little reason to complain. It’s still okay to admit weariness, even whilst recognising that it’s much, much worse for so many other people.

But we’ve come this far, we may as well see it through.

In that vein, I made two executive decisions; the first was to stop making endless lists and the second was to do something once a day that I really like doing (or eating, as the case may be).

I wasn’t doing myself any favours writing up long lists of projects to complete only to berate myself later for making a decent stab at only one. Really, there’s normal-productive and COVID-productive, and any bit I get done is productivity enough at this time. I don’t need to scale a mountain or run a marathon in these weeks, being ‘grand’ is plenty.

I knocked a solid hour out of last Wednesday making a list of things that make me happy, that can be reached for if I need perking up.

I am the proud owner of a multipack of HB Tangle Twisters. I literally cannot fathom why I was denying myself the little loveliness of having Tangle Twisters in the freezer.

“Visibly transformed skin, softer, smoother and brighter with an even healthy glow” seems to make me happy. I went online and bought a pot of some Loreal facemask off a pharmacy in Ardee. Dunno about the ‘visibly transformed’ skin but sure doesn’t it keep me happy.

I’m not binging Normal People so I can save it for Tuesdays and look forward to it (The Spotify playlist is marvelous).

I’ve unsubscribed from about seven politics podcasts and found nice easy ones for ponderous walks up the road.

I pick up (or send to town for) nice beer or a cider for a sunny evening. I’m not talking Bulmers or Budweiser but something more unusual, something with a nice picture on the bottle. It makes me feel fancy.

They’re pure indulgence, all of them, why in God’s name did I wait until now?

We live and learn.

Or at least we should do.

I love Seamus Heaney’s line from a 1972 interview “if we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere”. This too will pass but it’d be a shame to discard what was good about the lockdown, to simply pick up where we left off.

Lockdown is hard, but an upside has been those hours spent with children counting tulips and naming birds, watching the Saturday evening movie together and going for walks. You know, the stuff we usually haven’t time for.

We haven’t the time for it because the time for ourselves, for people, has become the most disposable time of our own days. We haven’t time because we were persuaded that sitting in cars for three hours every day was fine. We haven’t time because time spent on ourselves does little for the share prices and end-of-year profits of others. We haven’t time because the free market tells us that what doesn’t make money isn’t worth doing.

Great upheavals cause great changes.

Hopefully, when we emerge from this with blinking eyes adjusting to the light of day, employers and government will put in place the structures that allow us to do our jobs well without having to sacrifice family, people and a healthy work/life balance. In our post-COVID world, it’d be nice if a company posting an annual profit of €10m wouldn’t tell its workers that €10 an hour is enough for working a production line, and that they should be glad to get it. Will this crisis awaken employers to the fact that workers don’t need to be in an office five days a week in Dublin or Galway to get the work done? Now that they’ve saved us all, will healthcare workers finally be appreciated and paid accordingly? Hopefully we’ll all join this lady in being proud of those on the production lines keeping the country running and getting food to our tables.

That looks like a bright future. If we get it, we’ll be moving towards a world in which yeah, people can get wealthy if they want and are provided with paths towards achieving that, but not at the expense of employees, their families and society’s well-being.

Yeah, well-being before wealth!

People before prof…. oh no wait, better calm down there now.

The green jersey is getting a bit tight now, it sat easier on me a few weeks ago when we were all fired up to be on call for Ireland. The pause button was pressed on the world as we know it and maybe it needed to be. This too will pass and we’ll knock longer out of the good days if we go easy on ourselves, treat ourselves to a face mask or even a nice sandwich if we can. It is, after all, grand to just be grand.