In Episode 6 of his new book, author Julian Roup looks at the impact Covid-19 is having on personal relationships.
In case you missed Episode 5, click here.
Life in a Time of Plague
Sussex, 12th April 2020
By Julian Roup
Our preparations for surviving the lockdown included doing a deal with others to look after our two horses and arranging for toilet paper to be shipped in from Holland.
Jan sourced all the food and drink we might need to be delivered weekly from small Kent and Sussex suppliers that had until now been supplying schools and restaurants, as the supermarkets were overwhelmed. She ordered the loo paper from an Instagram advert one night when there was none to be had in the supermarkets. Luckily it turned out that the company uses half its profits to build toilets in developing countries – an astonishing 32% of the world’s population do not have safe sanitation.
We live on the 6,500 acres of Ashdown Forest, with a forestry plantation just behind us, so exercise is not a problem. Our son Dominic and his partner Steph come up from their boat in Brighton marina to help us with anything else we may need. Our daughter Imogen is staying with her godmother by the coast, where she helps with shopping and cooking.
In Cape Town, my sister Jay and husband Guy arranged for their housekeeper to take a paid break, and are having food delivered nightly with a recipe and all ingredients included. They live on the green belt in Constantia, so early morning walks were in order, but now the lockdown means nobody can leave their property, so that pleasure is removed. Their daughter Nikki and son-in-law Jon deliver food and other items as needed.
In Santa Barbara, California, my brother Herman and his wife Teri live on a cliff above miles of beach, so they can exercise their dogs each day as usual. Food is delivered to the door. Their daughter Lindsay and son-in-law Seth nearby, who can be called on in emergency, but they cannot see them or their grandson William at close quarters.
None of this makes for hardship, yet we all speak as though we are facing an arctic winter alone. And to be fair, death is a possibility, although when was it not?
But what of the millions of poverty-stricken people living on the edge of South African cities with no toilets, or facilities for washing or showering? They are packed into corrugated iron and wood shanties like sardines. What of our own inner city council residents here in the UK, in high rise apartments? And what of the poor across the US, mostly black and other minorities, whom statistics tell us are being hardest hit, dying in numbers totally out of proportion to their population?
Money may not buy you love, as The Beatles maintained, but it sure as hell helps to buy you life, and a comfortable one at that.
We can only wonder if this massive inequality will survive the virus’s impact on our economies and lifestyles? Will we be kinder, more generous, more caring once we’ve beaten the virus? My guess is maybe, for a year or two, there will be some distributive economic justice, but I fear that it won’t last; we will be back to the rat race almost immediately. And why not? If this world-stopping pandemic has taught us anything, it is that money makes all the difference in surviving and doing so comfortably. Where you live and what you have in the bank can make the difference between life and death.
Another form of inequality brought into harsh focus by the pandemic is that between some men and women. There are many for whom incarceration with their significant other is the worst form of torture. It is no surprise to hear that domestic violence has more than doubled in this period – 16 women have died at their partners hands over the past three weeks. New safe houses and refuges have been opened, and one is allowed to leave home to escape violence. Rail companies are offering free tickets to those on the run from abusive partners.
The food banks are busier than ever in this time of need. And it is a cause of national shame that in the world’s fifth richest economy, people go hungry and many sleep on the streets. The homeless, however, have suddenly been housed, not so much out of compassion, but because of the fear that they might prove to be a cause of infection of further contagion.
The police are busy, struggling as ever to find a balance between imposing the law on aggressive idiots who cough and spit on them, and a gentler reasoning with fellow citizens who just don’t get it and keep going out for picnics and barbecues.
And life being life, love, dating and sex continue as ever, but with a new urgency perhaps. Yesterday I read in The Guardian of some newly formed couples who had agreed to move in together for the duration of the lockdown. In some cases, it was working reasonably well, in others less so, as personal habits hidden during normal dating were suddenly evident in the close confines of a shared flat or room. The mystique of a new partner and the romance of new love is often not able to withstand the scrutiny so close up and sudden. But how to leave? The words of the song ‘Baby its Cold Outside’ come to mind. But it’s more than cold that lies in wait beyond that closed front door.
And what of those in long-term relationships like my own 43 years with Jan. How are couples coping with the relentless, forced intimacy? The old joke about being “married for better and for worse, but not for lunch” has never seemed more relevant. In our case we tend to meet for lunch and dinner and a walk in the evening, the rest of the day taken up with writing at opposite ends of the garden, from which positions we share occasional conversation. Gus, our dog and Saffy, the cat, shuttle back and forwards between us.
The constant flurry of deliveries at the front door has slowed to a stop and the long Easter weekend has meant even fewer human contacts not more, as work too has ended for four days. It is becoming evident that this will be a long haul, not a sprint, and that life is going to be changed for a very long time indeed.
How change will look is far from clear. There will doubtless be thousands of lost jobs as companies fold and the bounce back will doubtless take a very long time. The financial collapse of 2008 took years to rectify and the least well off paid the highest price. But it does no good brooding on what will be, we have to get through the present, the now, that which is here that needs dealing with immediately.
Thank God for books and phones and computers and the internet, and for education which opened up our options and our inner landscapes. Our bodies may be constrained for now but our minds are still free to roam the earth’s most remote places.
So, for now, I am choosing to fly back from Africa, tracking the swallows who have been delayed by bad weather on the way. But they are coming.
Click here for Episode 7.
