Desperately seeking beauty and calm in coronavirus lockdown

Monday

All of the supermarkets near us have introduced a “one in, one out” policy to enforce physical distancing for the safety of both staff and customers. So far it is working well. After last week’s mania, the queues – even at two metres apart – have not been too bad and waiting times less than expected. Either people have realised their fridges and cupboards only have a finite amount of space, or they have accepted that the lockdown is likely to last longer than any amount of food they are likely to be able to hoard so there is no point in any further shopping. At least for a week or two. We are currently eating our way through various vegetables that are fast approaching their sell-by date. Last night’s mixture of soggy carrots, courgettes, onions and peas, all blended together and then fried in sunflower oil was a new low. Though obviously slightly enhanced by a sense of moral superiority.

The only thing I am still panic buying is therapy sessions. Here, I am cashing in all the Nectar points I have accrued over more than 30 years. If there is one advantage to having been on the mental health at-risk register for half my life, it’s that I have a therapist and psychiatrist who are there for me when I most need them. I am currently having three half-hour sessions with my therapist each week and one session every three weeks with my shrink to monitor my meds. I couldn’t manage without them and feel for all those who are stressed out and cannot get help. My therapist friend Debby says she has never been so inundated with people referring themselves, and neither she nor her colleagues have the capacity to see them all.

Tuesday

Even with all this extra support, my mental health can still only best be described as extremely ropey. Mornings are still by far the worst as I struggle to uncurl from foetal terror into something approaching a functioning human being. Even though I know that the best thing is to get out of bed as soon as possible, it still takes me a good 45 minutes before I can drag myself out from under the duvet. The one change to my routine is that the dog has started joining in with me as I do my first set of press-ups of the day to ease the physical anxiety in my body. At this rate, he could become the most ripped cockapoo on Tooting Common by the time the partial lockdown is over. He’s yet to join me on my daily Church Lane Challenge – six repetitions of the same half-mile hill. My friend Kevin reckons I should wear a GoPro on my helmet to start a cult YouTube group for the most boring exercise regime of all time.

The rest of the day is merely competing waves of anxiety that everything is going to be a disaster and windows of hope that it won’t be as bad as I feared. You can probably guess which waves are the largest. It hasn’t helped that my concentration levels are completely shot. I must have read the first three pages of Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light about 10 times now. It goes without saying they are three very brilliant pages, but it would be nice to be able to make some progress. Not least because I have Hadley Freeman’s House of Glass and Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet stacked up by my bed waiting to be read.

Wednesday

I’m guessing that someone in Downing Street is now bitterly regretting the decision to hold daily coronavirus briefings. For what was intended to show that the government was well on top of the situation has merely highlighted the exact opposite. Time and again ministers are asked straightforward questions to which they are unable to offer direct answers, because the simple truth is that the government has been caught well and truly on the hop and has been forced to change policy after a week. From as early as mid-January, all the evidence suggested the coronavirus was heading our way, and yet the government was far more interested in whether the Big Ben bongs would ring for Brexit and taking a 10-day half-term break during recess. There’s no way of knowing if the preparations would have made any difference, but at least it would have shown the government did give a toss.

It also hasn’t helped that, with Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock out of action, the government has had to rely on a B-list of ministers to do the front-of-house stuff at the press conferences. Dominic Raab merely radiated instability while Michael Gove pleading for trust was irony overload. With most other ministers instantly disqualified on grounds of either stupidity or levitas – think Priti Patel, Liz Truss or Grant Shapps – today’s briefing was led by Alok Sharma, whom not even members of his department are aware is the business secretary. Still, at least we have Hancock back tomorrow. Though I have frequently made fun of the inverse relationship between his Tiggerishness and effectiveness, I am quite fond of him as he is definitely a minister who means well and I sent him a message saying so, along with hopes for a speedy recovery. He replied asking me not to mention this to anyone as it would ruin both our careers.

Thursday

My tech levels have now improved so much, I am not only able to operate a spreadsheet – I am busy cataloguing my books, a slow process as after four days I am only up to authors filed under E – but I can also master Zoom and Houseparty on my iPad. Talking to my daughter and son, along with their partners, is a bittersweet experience. It both brings me close to them, yet reminds me of how distant we are. Like so many other people, I have no idea when I will next see them.

Related: Digested week: fear and loathing in coronavirus lockdown | John Crace

Curiously, though, my TV viewing has actually dropped off. I no longer even bother flicking to the sports challenge as I have zero interest in watching repeats of games that were played years before and whose results I already know. Precisely the reason I seldom bothered watching Match of the Day. Just about the only games I might be bothered to watch are virtual ones on Fifa. At least the ones being played with my friend Matthew as manager, because miraculously Spurs are through to their second Champions League final in two years. Despite having been abjectly knocked out by Leipzig.

Other programmes have also taken a hit. I’m usually a sucker for documentaries such as Hospital and 24 Hours in A&E, but I find these far too scary these days. The same applies to the news and most dramas. I’ve even had to give up on Belgravia, though only because we tried to watch it on ITV catchup and the sound was completely out of synch with the pictures. What TV is going to look like this summer and autumn is anyone’s guess. Summer is usually wall-to-wall sport, all of which has been cancelled, and all of the autumn dramas are not being filmed due to the lockdown. Stand by for yet more repeats of Pointless.

Friday

Thursday night’s Downing Street press conference went on rather longer than usual, so I only managed to finish the sketch just after 8pm. Which meant I was a little late for the clapping for the NHS in our street, though I did get down in time for the tail-end of it. There were no klaxons from the flats across the road this time, which was slightly disappointing – though Herbert Hound did try to make up for this with a few well-timed barks – but the sense of community gratitude was still very much present. The only slight odd note was the runner who raced past us all as if she felt the applause was all for her. Maybe she had just done a personal best.

As regular readers will know, I’m not generally the most fun bloke to be around but I’m determined that during the partial lockdown I will try to end each week’s diary with something vaguely positive. So here goes. I loved the stories of the goats invading Llandudno and the wild boars roaming the streets of a French village, so I’ve been trying to think what I would most like to see on Tooting Common. Top of the list, given that my trip to Brownsea Island has now been cancelled, would be for a colony of red squirrels to make the train journey to London to take up residence. Failing that, I think some orangutans in the woods would be fun.

I’m also thrilled that the Paris Opera is going to be streaming its recent production of The Barber of Seville. At one point last December I dreamed of going over for the weekend to see it as the divine Lisette Oropesa was singing Rosina, but inertia won the day. This will be a good second best. But the thing that still gives me most pleasure is just staring at our collection of ceramics. A few years ago, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge had a stunning exhibition called Things of Beauty Growing. I now realise I had only half understood the title. Because the closer I look at our pots, the more their beauty grows.

Digested week, digested: The return of Hancock’s half-hour. And then some.