Observations from an Isolation - Part 1

As we all seem to have an unprecedented amount of time on our hands I thought it only right that I should probably use some of it to write a blog.

I can’t promise that it’ll make much sense as I seem to have lost my mind since the lockdown began but I’ll try my best.  I’m not quite at the stage where I’ve drawn a face on a football and named it but I’m definitely at the sausage surprise level of madness.

It seems to make sense to write down some kind of lockdown observations. So we’ve got them in black and white.  I feel qualified to do this based on the fact I’ve yet to weave my own hemp sanitary protection, make my own mozzarella or murder my family.  I’ll write quickly because they all feel imminent.  I thought something Bono said was a good idea the other day so my tenuous grip on reality is disappearing faster than the 36 pack of Wotsits in my kitchen.

Isolation Clothing

It would seem that people during lockdown seem to fall into 2 main categories.  The ‘dressed’ and the ‘not dressed’  Coincidentally my studies have shown that there are direct links to those WITH dignity and those who wouldn’t know dignity if it fell out of their bleach splattered leisure pants.

I should at this point say that my observations are based on those people who aren’t going out each day to important jobs and keeping our country running, you are the true heroes and we are more grateful that you will ever know.  This is based on those who are locked down at home, often with our offices set up on a paste table, balancing our monitors on 6 cookery books and a comprehensive guide to needlepoint that has never been opened.

So back to clothing during isolation.  The dressed people are actually dressed! In actual clothes.  I have heard rumours that some of the female dressed people are wearing bras.  That is correct!  During this crisis they have adequately supported breasts.  We’ll discuss the fate of the undressed bosoms in a moment, but brace yourself.  This isn’t going to be pretty. 

The dressed one’s wear jeans and their clothes are ironed.  If restrictions would allow they could be dropped into the middle of a social gathering and not be arrested. They look and act like respectable members of the human race.

Then there are the not dressed people.  Now I’m not suggesting they’re naked. I mean some of them might be I suppose, I’ve read about what goes on down South.  I’m saying they’re not dressed in normal clothing suitable for the outside world.  For the sake of full disclosure I will admit I fall very firmly into this category.

The not dressed people, or ‘pyjama dwellers’ if you will, are wearing an increasingly bizarre combination of clothing each day.  At first it was a novelty and we all wore matching pyjamas and we looked cosy but fairly smart.  In a sort of ‘one off lazy Sunday in winter way’.

We are now 4 weeks down the line and all bets are off.  We are literally wearing any combination of items that we can lay our hands on.  Nothing matches anymore, the pyjama top that you wore when you gave birth is being worn with a pair of ¾ length flowery leggings that you grouted the bathroom in.  You’ve got on a ripped pair of pyjama bottoms that judging by the draught could now very well fall into the ‘crotchless’ category and a t-shirt that you apparently got from a bar in Faliraki called ‘Big Willies’ (even more baffling is the fact you’ve never been to Faliraki) 

Knickers fall into the optional category and Bras are a thing of the past. It’s a new age for boobs. Perky is so last season, this is isolation and we are wearing them long and low.   The not dressed people all look completely demented and should probably be wearing a tin foil hat to complete their look.

Isolation hobbies

According to my Facebook people are really making the most of the opportunity to learn new skills which as a crafty person I think is great.  People are learning to play the piano or the ukele, they are learning to bake or make their own yogurt.  They’re teaching themselves to crochet and knit or they’re dancing in their living rooms and videoing themselves doing it. 

In theory this all seems fantastic but has anyone considered what’s going to happen to us as a country?  How we’re all going to come out of the other side of this isolation.  At some point in the future we’re going to emerge blinking in the sunlight ready to embrace life again however it won’t be the same will it?  I’ll tell you exactly how it’s going to be.

We’re going to emerge wearing completely knitted outfits.  Our shoes will be crocheted out of wool we’ve made from the discarded hair we’ve gathered giving each other haircuts with the wall paper scissors.  We’ll emerge to the sounds of ‘when the saints go marching in’ bashed out on a 22 year old Bontempi we bought off eBay in week 2 because learning an instrument seemed a good idea.  

We'll be freestyle high kicking our way through complicated dance sequences and body popping on our front gardens.  We’ll be at least 3 stone heavier from existing on a diet of home baked cheese scones and rock buns that we have been inhaling every day.   

We’ll all be blind in one eye or have some form of brain damage from drinking the gooseberry wine or rhubarb moonshine we decided to have a bash at at some point during isolation.  Our fridges will be full of homemade yogurt and our under stairs cupboards full of sourdough starters both of which are basically just a yeast infection in a jar.  Our cupboards fronts will be covered in substandard daubing’s probably of bastard bloody rainbows that our little darlings have been churning out at a rate of 300 a day and because we’ve managed to successful grow a geranium in a bucket we’ll all think we’re Capability Brown.

It’s going to be the end of civilisation as we know it.  Just you wait.

Isolation Food

This it would seem is a minefield.  I don’t even know where to start.  There seems to be no rules around eating or drinking anymore.  People seem to eat what they want when they want.  Can you imagine if we’d behaved like this before isolation?    Can you imagine turning up at work and at 9.45am unpacking your lunch bag and bringing out half a bag of prawn crackers, some wafer thin ham, a crab stick, 2 tangerines and a twister lolly and proceeding to eat it with a cup of tea.   

Eating a bowl of cereal and a hardboiled egg for lunch and having 2 bottles of Coors at half past 2 with a handful of Cashew nuts and a cheese scone.   It’s like a giant game of supermarket sweep every time you go to the fridge. 

Some honeydew melon and a Dairylea Dunker?  Don’t mind if I do. 

Left over curry at 11.15am?  The perfect time! 

Warm it up?  No need, this is isolation!  Civilisation has collapsed.  We’re one step away from eating with our hands. 

Well the people who aren’t dressed are!