Lockdown lessons: there’s good days and bad days

I want to start by underlining the fact that I’ve not suffered greatly during lockdown, so far. I’m lucky enough to be living with a supportive partner, have access to fresh air and we’re able to get regular grocery deliveries.

You’d think all I’d have to deal with is boredom, but even then we’ve more TV content available to us than we know what to do with.

But over the last few weeks, I can say with absolute certainty that some days are easier than others. And it’s not a case of getting easier with time.

Yesterday was one such day.

I had a terrible run in the morning, made terrible by the selfishness and ignorance of the other people on the streets. I just wanted to get a speedy 5km done before I started work, but had to slalom around groups of people walking three and four-abreast.

I then most definitely wound myself up when I saw the three separate personal trainers working with their clients in the local park I run through. My sister is a nurse, exposed to Covid-19 patients virtually everyday, and yet here are a bunch of selfish, selfish people continuing their lives as if nothing’s wrong.

Sharing exercise equipment. No social distancing. And will of course get the very best NHS care when they inevitably catch something and end up very ill.

I’ve decided not to run through that park anymore.

I returned to my apartment feeling very annoyed with the world in general, yet things escalated pretty quickly. It turns out that the massive building site opposite our building has council permission to keep operating for the next three weeks. So I come back to our building to find three of said builders taking their coffee and cigarette break outside our entrance, quite some distance from the worksite.

Inevitably, their discarded cigarettes added to the general detritus the public feel entitled to dump as they walk the Thames Path, and after very briefly considering intervening, I just walked by and went home.

Their work continued from 9am to 4pm, digging up the pavement opposite, making it impossible to keep any doors or windows open. It was the kind of noise that makes your teeth rattle. We have the tiniest of balconies, which gets the sun for about an hour at 11am, but I just couldn’t face the brain-melting noise outside and stayed inside with the doors closed.

It felt like another one of the simple pleasures that help make this experience bearable was taken from me.

And let’s be honest, they’re not building a hospital or anything else considered key to the country’s infrastructure. They’re building even more over-priced, tiny apartments, which Canary Wharf just does not need.

So we’re all forced (rightly) to close our businesses, but Tower Hamlets Council says that a private building firm should most definitely continue, even when their builders are most definitely not socially distancing.

Hardly seems fair.

But what I’m learning the hard way this year, is that life’s just not fair.

So after an appalling night’s sleep, I took to the sofa and just slept for most of the afternoon. I needed it and felt a lot better when I woke up.

I’m drawing a massive and very firm line under yesterday and hoping for a better day today. I’m looking for positives and focusing on the stuff under my control. I’m going to do my yoga, spend some time on the cross-trainer, get stuck into work and avoid the news.

All the stuff I talk about with my clients! Time to take some of my own medicine.

One day at a time.