So, how’s it going? Getting into the Covid-19 working from home groove? Knocked enough elbows yet? Tapped enough toes? Personally, I’m quite shocked at how I’ve stress-eaten all the contents of the rainy day ‘treat box’, and resorted to no make-up, no hair-straightening, sloppy jumper days.
The physical recoiling, and looks of pure horror when my untinted moisturised face dialled in to what I thought was a phone conference with my work colleagues, which then turned out to be a video conference, made me immediately rethink the meaning of ‘social distancing’.
My normally relaxed attitude to cleanliness has been replaced by an evangelical thoroughness that would have made my late granny – a germaphobe who used to turn off taps with her elbows – proud. When one of the teenagers unexpectedly returned from university mid-week I made him stand at the front door, take off his clothes and go straight in the shower, throwing all garments in the hottest wash I could, and his shoes in the bin. The diet has gone to the dogs too. The 11 lbs I had lost since Christmas Day have become sacrificial lambs to my need to munch my bodyweight in Lindt 70% dark chocolate. And those fags that I gave up in the noughties, are looking distinctly comforting again.
If you’re thinking, what’s with all the light-heartedness, this is serious stuff. My answer, in my finest Ali G accent is, “it’s because I is Scottish”, and it’s fair to say my relatives who live in Pakistan don’t get it. In hushed tones they’ll call and ask how things are, and be utterly floored when I joke that it’s an introvert’s nirvana.
My 83-year-old dad is a case in point: On Monday the marvellous NHS brought forward by nine days a big operation he was to have, because of worries about the pandemic. Lying in pain, in the hushed high dependency unit of the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Glasgow with a 12-inch incision in his side, and terrified that Covid-19 could strike at any time, I could hear him through the curtain croakily, but clearly, speak to a nurse. “Is my wife here? I married a model, you know”.
Cue all eyes on my 74-year-old Pakistani-born mum, looking for a hint of Naomi, or a slight likeness of Claudia. Mum, at a neat 5 foot 3 inches rolled her eyes, and said loudly: “Aye, well, sorry to disappoint you all!”
The ward seemed to collectively smile for a moment. I laughed, thinking it’s actually a strange measure of ‘integration’ when immigrants who came here from far flung places and cultures and their kids adopt that black humour or just plain old light-heartedness that, in times of stress, we Scots are pretty good at.
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