thecoronacles

[thecoronacles]

20.4.20 - The water cooler moments

I do lists. A lot. They help me make sense and feel in control of a world that is both nonsense and uncontrollable.. despite my best efforts. There’ll probably be a few of them on here before the pandemic is done. 

Don’t worry.. not like shopping lists (that’s mainly pizzas and cut-price Easter Eggs at the moment).  Anyway.. in no order, here’s a bunch of things I’m missing a whole lot after near on a month of borderline solitude and scruffy beard-growing. 

1. The water cooler moments - the random chats you have with people passing in the corridor in the office or your neighbours. They’re mean nothing and everything is one go. 

2. The loved ones and the homies - spending a week back in Wales, spending a few days in Poland with Helena, a music fest with my uni friends, a trip to Tiny Rebel with my school friends, watching football with my brother. Sigh. 

3. The McDonalds I know I shouldn’t have at 6.30am before the train on the way to work in London. Definitely don’t need it. Definitely worth it. Every. Time. 

4.  A pint in Charters beer garden... it’s annoying that the first sunshine session of Spring has been delayed, but that first one will be all the more worth it when it happens. I’m legit debating moving in there once this is over. I should smash the pub quiz too with all the Zoom practice underway. #lockdownperks 

5. A sausage and bean melt, and a vegan sausage roll from Greggs. Name a more iconic duo. 

Complete side note - the swans on the River Nene are not shy. They were out of the water and trying to grab my loaf of bread straight outta my hand. Yes, i backed away from a swan. Yes, they circled me. Yes, I borderline ran away. I am not the Swan King. 

[thecoronacles]

7.4.2020 - Week three begins

Until the last few days, Covid-19 has felt rather distant. Like it was always a headline. Out there, somewhere else but not here. Everyone I’d spoken to (virtually, of course) hadn’t really known anyone with it. But one-by-one people, as the days turned into weeks - someone from work, then back in Wales  - got symptoms and had to self-isolate.It’s becoming more and more common. 

I saw in the local paper today that 14 people have now died in the local hospital. The same hospital i cycled passed only three days ago that was a ghost town, compared to the last time I visited two years ago. It was haunting. It hit home a little bit more. 

The same thing feels like it might be happening  to the national psyche. A weird kind of collective ‘oh shit’ moment has descended on the country - at least on the Twittersphere and the folk I’ve spoken to at work. The PM is in intensive care. It didn’t really feel real til now. 

All that passion that’s raged on all sides of political and Brexit debates over the last four years seem so pointless and wasted alongside this. It’s all been so insignificant. I think that we forget there’s a human element to politics - and that’s been brought to the fore in the last 48 hours. At times we may all disagree on the how, but everyone on all sides of the political spectrum genuinely wants the best for the country. Hopefully, it’s a lesson we’ll carry with us when this pandemic is done and dusted. 

[thecoronacles]

25.3.2020: Life under lockdown

Hi. Hello. Croeso. Buenos Dias. Dzień dobry. (Insert your native welcome here).

Okay, so blogging isn’t a thing I do on the reg, and I’ll be honest I’m not sure I’ve fully thought this out. I know that the Covid-19 outbreak is big. Like history big. It’s something I’ll talk about with my grandkids/pets. So it felt like I should write something/anything to try and capture this in realtime, whilst not tracking my/the national/the global descent into a new normal. 

This blog isn’t intended to be: 

A ‘how to survive’ guide of pandemic living.

A diary of my deepest darkest thoughts.

A cry for pity.

A hubris-stuffed, ‘live my best life’ social media influencer type thing.

It is (and may contain): 

Politics.

A healthy level of cynicism.

Random life happenings.

Opinions, upon occasion.

Bad puns. 

The odd typo, much to my disgust. 

A lot of DVD-style bonus material, but from my brain. 

Sit back. Relax. Have an existential crisis or two. We’re gonna be here a while. This is my chronicling of Coronavirus - the Coronacles. 

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The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster - for everyone. As someone who suffers the much maligned modern day condition know as Twitterer’s Thumb, I was vaguely aware of Coronavirus in early January. And it felt distant. Just another one of those new diseases (Ebola, SARS, MERS etc) that drop in and out of the media from time to time, but always seem to stay in a far away place before fizzling out. (That’s not to diminish the tireless effort put into to containing/treating them or the suffering of those affected). It never really feels close to home - like they’re an imminent threat for me going about my daily life. 

Covid-19 tore up precedent of its Coronavirus relatives and did not fizzle out.  Like an ambulance siren coming towards you from afar, it got closer and closer over the next 8 weeks. 

It entered my life like a tsunami on Friday 13th March (way to go pop culture) when I was a few beers into a meal out in West Wales with my family and girlfriend (’twas a bit of a buzzkill tbh - proper ruined my Blue Moon). Britain was on a bit of a time delay in terms of imposing anti-virus measures... and Poland (from where my girlfriend originates) announced they were closing their borders in 24hours. Cue a frantic dash to book any flight from anywhere to anywhere in Poland, and a tranquil few days away were cut short rather drastically. It’s a weird reality not knowing when I’ll see Helena next. Not one of which I’m a fan to say the least. 

Anyway, that’s more than enough to be getting on with.  I won’t bore you with more just yet - we’ve got plenty of time for that... 

#coronavirus #loveeverylockdown quarantineagersusetumblr #covid19 #bloglife