Diaries of a plague year: experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic

1.- Chris Asprey
At midday, on 19 Dec­ember 2020, 12 hours before London was plunged into a third lockdown from which it has yet to emerge, I stood nervously at the front of St Mary’s Church in Hampstead, north-west London, waiting.

Our story had begun at the end of the previous year, over a pint of beer in a Kensington pub. On one of our early dates, Belén booked a couple of tickets to the ice rink in front of the Natural History Museum, a local romantic hotspot. I was determined to make an impression, but not this one: 10 minutes before our session was due to end, I lost my balance and, as I was falling to the ground, heard the crack of my ankle breaking. Skates glided and crunched around me. Belén looked helplessly down while I lay on the freezing ice, nauseated, embarrassed, waiting for a wheelchair and a ride to the nearest hospital.
And so, 2020 began for me as it was destined to continue for everyone else: confined at home.
On 23 March, when the prime minister finally announced “you must stay at home”, Belén and I took our first big decision. Instinctively cautious, neither of us was inclined to move in together at this early stage. And yet, not to have done so would have broken the rhythm of a relationship to which we had now become attuned.

That evening, I threw two pairs of pants, three T-shirts and a few odd socks into a bag, and drove to Great Ormond Street, where Belén was standing on the pavement, computer and cardboard box in hand. Her genetics department had ordered her to work from home, and so we headed off to her flat in north London.

The atmosphere in the country was apocalyptic by now: the Co-op downstairs was out of vegetables and loo paper, and on the neighbourhood chat group, rumours were circulating about the extortionate price of hand gel, along with offers of help for those who were shielding. You might not think that living and working together in a one-bedroom flat, at the same kitchen table, for days and weeks on end, is an auspicious context to build a relationship. But this is where ours grew stronger and deeper, until marriage became our natural next step.

Our wedding would have to be small, but we liked that idea. We also knew our plans might have to change or could even be cancelled altogether. As the day approached, and the virus continued to spread, 30 guests soon became 15; invitations were sent out for a reception that would never happen; most sadly of all, Belén’s family were forced to cancel their journey from Madrid, days before the wedding.

The hushed conversation at St Mary’s, barely audible above the polite organ music, betrayed the presence of a small congregation, as our friends and families looked on from their computers all over the world. Suddenly, the bright notes of Bach’s “Prelude in C major” rang out. I was overcome with joy. Belén had arrived – astonished, resplendent.

Chris Asprey works with L’Arche, a worldwide community movement of people with and without learning disabilities.

2.- Jenny Mitchell
It all began so well. At the start of 2020, I was invited to read at a poetry festival in Rome, an all-expenses paid weekend in a city I’d always longed to visit. The Roman audience was so incredibly generous, I found myself walking on air.
My hotel was close to the Vatican. In the evening I watched a news report about a virus seeping into the country. It seemed to jar with the beautiful view from my window. On the flight home, I was slightly taken aback by the number of people who were wearing masks.

Weeks later, the UK was in full lockdown. Like everyone else, I felt enormous fear and confusion. The early estimates of the possible death toll led me to imagine bodies piling up in the street (I have an overly vivid imagination).

Then something switched inside of me and I made the conscious decision to channel my anxiety into poetry. There were suddenly no opportunities to perform in public, so I set myself the challenge of going deeper into my work. I practised formal poems for the first time – pantoums and sestinas. I began a ­second collection of poems, based on a cane estate in Jamaica, in which I attempted to give voice not only to enslaved people but to enslavers. The material was difficult and ­sensitive but the long days in isolation helped me to concentrate.

As if to bolster my mood, in May I heard that I had won the Fosseway Poetry Prize. In July, the news came that I had won a Bread and Roses Poetry Award. Two days later, I won the Segora Poetry Competition.
Mind. Blown.

In August, when lockdown was eased, I organised a socially distanced London poetry reading in the stunning grounds of Bell House, Dulwich. It was an oasis of brief, shared ­happiness. We went back into lockdown soon afterwards.
In September came the news that I had won the Aryamati Poetry Prize, which was special to me because it seeks poetry promoting social change and peace, two subjects close to my heart. I only write about the trauma of enslavement in order to move towards healing. All of this personal joy was added to a short while later, with the news that two vaccines had been developed.

Christmas and New Year in lockdown would have been harder if I hadn’t been able to go on my almost daily two-hour walks. As well as much-needed exercise, I’ve been lucky enough to find lots of amazing books that have been casually thrown away. I’ve also spent a lot of time reading other poets and being inspired. Then in January, I won the Folklore Prize. Poetry competitions have their issues – most of the judges seem to be white, and I used to wonder how many Black British poets had won open poetry competitions not writing specifically about race. But in a year of isolation and loss for so many, poetry – and the prizes that have come my way – have helped me to feel held and healed, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Jenny Mitchell is a London-based poet and writer. Her second collection, Map of a Plantation, will be published in April by Indigo Dreams.

3.- Leonie Caldecott
When the pandemic swept in last March, I was, in a strange way, ahead of the curve. I had been ­widowed in 2014, under circumstances which locked me down in multiple ways. At the beginning of 2020, I was sharing a house with my youngest daughter, Rosie. Her ­partner of eight years was training to be a watchmaker up in Manchester: he had already landed a job with a mechanical watchmaking firm in Sussex. When Covid closed down his course, Dean came to join us.

For several months, our lockdown bubble was pretty idyllic. We went for walks in the warm spring weather and contemplated the fragile newness of lambs in the fields nearby. Dean worked on watches in my attic and used my outhouse to make furniture for their future home.

Rosie played a virtual gig in our garden, and created a series of lockdown paintings around the windows of my cottage. I am looking at one of them as I write: white ­wisteria frames a view of an old garden table and chairs. It speaks of convivial conversations, a safe haven at the heart of a world under siege.

At the end of the first lockdown, Rosie and Dean moved to a small terraced house in Glynde, half an hour’s drive from Dean’s new job. Rosie set up a new studio and began to cultivate an allotment. The pandemic may have been stalking us still, but seeing their happiness as life began to unfold for them, I felt a rising sense of hope.

Then one Sunday in the middle of November, Dean and Rosie went, on the spur of the moment, to Cuckmere Haven, where during the summer the Cuckmere River meanders gently into the sea. Dean wanted to get a feel of the new wetsuit he had been given for his thirtieth birthday. Being new to the area, lockdown having curtailed ­normal social interactions, they didn’t know that in winter Cuckmere becomes a ­hazardous place for wild swimmers. Testing out the water in the river, Dean was swept out to sea by an undertow from an unusually large ­rainfall the night before. Once in the sea, he was pulled into a riptide.

Why did a man who was so scrupulously careful about shielding vulnerable people, who was so practical, so sensible and ­measured in everything he did, put his feet in that river on that particular day?

One moment of giddy pleasure in the wild wetness of a nature reserve he had come to love, and he drowned. Rosie nearly drowned too, running into the sea in a vain attempt to reach him. Yet the waves released her, unaccountably.
The name Cuckmere means “fast-flowing”. It happens to flow from the place where Dean found his dream job, to the place where his life was suddenly cut short. I should have seen it coming, this undertow of death in the midst of promise.

Now all I hear is the remorseless roar of the sea. Perhaps that is what faith means: that which remains planted on the shifting shingle, when everything else has been washed away.

Leonie Caldecott is a writer living in the West Country. She is the editor of the International English edition of Magnificat.

4.- Phil Kingston
At 85 I am in the high-risk category, so I decided on physical isolation almost immediately. I live alone, so could only isolate with the support of family and neighbours, who bought and delivered food etc. I am grateful for their care.

I have long been a climate-change campaigner and activist. The five years to 2019 were globally the hottest ever recorded; 2020 was to become the second-highest. Awareness of this trajectory yet knowing the health risks of taking part in public demonstrations presented me with a dilemma. When I was asked to join the start of a protest walk in June along the route of the HS2 line towards London organised by Extinction Rebellion, I felt afraid. But when I prayed, and thought of our four grandchildren, I didn’t hesitate. A friend agreed to drive me to Birmingham. We practised physical distancing, wore masks and walked in groups of no more than six people.

The year has seen a major shift in my campaigning aims. I no longer believe that the 1.5°C temperature limit will be adhered to and am increasingly convinced that runaway climate breakdown is inevitable; abatement of the consequences for the next generation has become my priority. I have given much time to writing.

One article about the relationship between the global economy and the destruction and destabilisation of earth’s ecosystems was published just before the September Rebellion. My main participation in that week of action was via the online 24/7 interfaith meditation which took place in central London. I have long been committed to interfaith action and it was joyful to be there and to know that ­similar meditations were taking place in other cities.

I was arrested and charged several times during Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019 and two of these will result in court appearances next month. Early in the lockdown, a friend and I spoke about our difficulties in coping with the intensity and extent of news ­programmes.

We decided that we would watch Channel 4 News and afterwards pray by phone about what was most in our hearts about its content. This has become a valuable part of our daily routine, and by including Guardian world news in our sources, it has also provided an ongoing education. Christian Climate Action has an online prayer vigil on Zoom every morning at 9 a.m. which I regularly take part in.

This group has become my most meaningful Christian community. It is mainly lay-led and the level of honesty in the reflections after the prayer is often deeply moving. For all its difficulties and losses, this has been a year when I have become more aware of the pervasive presence of the Holy Spirit in my life.

I am fortunate. My mobility is good enough to allow me to go for a daily walk. I have a hedge and a tree outside my window which are presently alive with birds. Tending a small allotment and making jams and ­chutneys to enjoy and to give away brings me great satisfaction.

Phil Kingston is the founder member of Grandparents for a Safe Earth and Christian Climate Action.

5.- Claire Tomalin
Since 2003, my husband and I have lived just round the corner of River Lane, which has been a path to a small beach by the Thames for hundreds of years – our village of Petersham dates back to the seventh century at least. Monks came to fish here then, and no doubt people had been fishing from the riverbanks for centuries before them, and embarking in small boats from the beach.

We are both writers, working mostly at home. Since March, we have not been into central London. Instead we enjoy our garden and take daily walks – lucky to have a choice of directions – river, park, woods, common, meadows, Ham, Marble Hill, Richmond. Normally the riverside and lanes are quiet, but this year things have changed because no one can holiday abroad, so families come here to walk by the river and play in the meadows: we are standing in for the Costa Brava! I like seeing the surprise and cheerfulness of groups of children as they run about over the grass and discover the ferry that plies across the river between Surrey and Middlesex.

I’ve been looking in my diary to remind myself of the course of the year. I see I wrote “Corona Virus” above the week beginning 9 March, and “World Changes” above the next week – then, in spite of all this, “Garden magnificent” over the last week of March, which brought sunshine. After this the diary shows cancelled events – talks I should have given, in Cambridge, Bath, Dorchester, London – and operas and concerts booked for and unheard. In June, having found that we now had to book even to walk in Kew Gardens, we did so. Rain fell steadily throughout our chosen day, but there was still magic about the sopping greenery, and we seemed quite alone with it, under our waterproof hats.

Then on 12 August I recorded a hailstorm: huge, heavy lumps of ice clattered out of the sky for an hour, breaking the windows of a greenhouse in the nurseries next door, and savaging our flower beds. In the last month, we have had so much rain that new ponds have appeared in the water meadow. The ducks were pleased until the ponds froze, when ducks departed and children were able to slide over them. I love living where land becomes water and water land, sometimes unexpectedly.

So weather has dominated my diary this year – while I have been writing a book, which gives one little to say in a diary: “Worked. Worked. Worked” is not very exciting. The book was finally finished, and is about H.G. Wells, who has fascinated me for years: a great socialist and a storyteller of genius.

Finally, being a couple on our own has made me appreciate my husband better than ever. We have been friends since the 1960s and married for nearly 30 years, and we still surprise one another occasionally – just as our familiar landscape surprises us.

Claire Tomalin is a biographer. She is married to the playwright, philosopher and novelist Michael Frayn.

6.- Padraig J. Daly
I had a wonderful spiritual director at one stage in my life. She wasn’t Irish. Whenever I said, in the Irish way, “Sure other people are a lot worse off”, she pulled me back: “You can move on to other people later; but first, let God know how you are.”
So, how am I?
I am fed up with this lockdown. I miss people. I miss family. I miss the hugs from grand-nieces and grand-nephews. I miss being able to reach out to people who need comforting. I don’t like offering Mass, streamed or otherwise, in an empty church. I miss my post-Christmas mooch around London. I miss the winds and wild waves of West Waterford. I miss the Sunday morning crowd terribly; and the catch-up chat. Province-wide, we lost four of our members to Covid. That loss is still raw.

But other people are indeed much worse off. Jack, in his thirties, rang the other day. He lost his mother and only sibling to the pandemic. Bridie, aged 70, had Covid and could not attend her husband’s funeral Mass. Sandy prayed and prayed for her Derek but he didn’t recover. Josie sold her house in Wexford and moved to a Dublin nursing home to be near her children. She has been able to see them through a window a few times since March last year.

So my lot is relatively easy. I manage a decent walk every day, something that up to now I had been hit and miss about. I live in community and our community life goes on as normal. So far we haven’t murdered one another. I am prior, and a not over-efficient one. I am gratified by how the others, sometimes very quietly, take up the slack for me when they see me floundering. We laugh a lot together. I have been reading Brendan Hoban’s A Priest’s Diary and am struck by the loneliness, even in non-Covid times, of a priest living on his own.

And, thankfully, I am busy. Calls and correspondence around a recent book of poems have kept me occupied. We celebrate Mass online from our two churches, and we get great reactions from our widespread congregation. I have celebrated a few weddings, and they were joyous, in spite of the limitations. Funerals with 10 mourners have been pretty awful, but our Christian hope has buoyed us. And there is always something else to do – a card, a phone call, an email, a letter to someone needing a small bit of encouragement.

Prayer is difficult, common prayer, at times, an ordeal. There is nothing new in that. But I trust, as ever, that, when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit prays within us in sighs too deep for words. And now the jab is coming, and in my walks I see snowdrops and narcissi. And I can almost feel the straining of the prenascent leaves as they ready themselves to dress the trees in glory.

Pádraig J. Daly is an Augustinian working in Dublin city centre. His most recent book of poems, A Small Psalter, is published by Scotus Press.