Most of us have been in some semblance of lockdown for over a year. In the UK, we started this gruesome social experiment on 26 March 2020, and in theory, we emerge blinking and drinking from our cocoon in June.
Like grief, lockdown has its own stages. I’m not talking about the broken promises, the tiers, or Eat Out To Help Out. I’m talking about our own, personal stages.
The first stage was of course the hideous, grasping, mass panic, where grown men wrestled 18 rolls of Andrex from frail old ladies, and people slid whole shelves of tinned fruit into their trolleys with their arm, and bought Spam for the first time since 1982.
Then there was the stage of stupefied disbelief and a kind of eerie 28 Days Later moment as you witnessed empty streets, and had long walks accompanied by the realisation that there were in fact birds in your local area all along.
There’s the adjustment to a new routine, or as it’s become known, The Netflix Stage. Never mind recommendations, just devour the entire catalogue on offer, and lower your bar for entertainment as the actual goal is to have at least one series on the go no matter the quality otherwise what will you talk about on the Teams call tomorrow?
There are the variable stages too, depending on your circumstances and state of mind.
There is a financially-induced anxiety stage, unsure where your next pay packet will come from, you lay awake at night imagining a dystopian future where your cats have to be pimped out: £1 a stroke, £2 for a tickle under the chin, and no funny business.
Sadly there will be the relationship breakdown stages for some, where through proximity or distance, one of the parties decides they actually hate you, and it’s better for all concerned if you were handed spiralling grief to focus on in your isolation. Yikes.
Orbiting this stage, or perhaps because of its threat, will be the many drinking stages. The daily, ‘I might as well have a drink tonight’ stage, followed by the ‘I am drinking too much’ stage, and the ‘I need to get fit’ stage. Maybe even a, ‘I am going to stop eating gluten’ stage, followed rapidly by a ‘’Bloody hell, gluten is in everything’ stage.
There’s the ‘Why am I even wearing socks?!’ stage, the ‘I can finally write that novel’ stage, the ‘I really need to take stock and look at my life’ stage, and then the ‘I did that and realise I hate my family and working for a living’ stage.
There’s the Zoom quiz stage, the ‘Start screaming at someone on Facebook and calling them an imbecile / murderer / sheep for having different views on Covid / vaccines / lockdowns’ stage.
The ‘Of course, you know that lot are all cheating on the Zoom quiz’ stage, the tragic ‘I am going to start wearing socks again and just see what happens’ stage, and of course, the ‘Christ, I didn’t know I had Spam!’ stage.
But nearly all those phases lead to the final stage of self-improvement, or as it’s most commonly manifested, the lockdown clear-out.
This is in fact the second one I have undertaken. The first was all about selling half of my CD and DVD collection and disposing of the Ikea bookcases that housed them.
This second wind is much more about the minutiae. Sure, there are still a few DVDs clinging on, but this time I have unearthed several artefacts from my life.
They have included: a collection of Star Wars figures (all without their tiny guns of course, and so, worthless), many rave flyers (which after some cursory research it turns out are now worth money), the original advert me and my mate put in Melody Maker for our band (‘Wanted: Bassist and keyboardist’ for an ‘excellent Romford-based ska outfit’. Don’t you remember that whole Romford ska explosion phenomenon of the early 90s?! Huge!).
I also found some stink bombs, some blood capsules, a duck caller, and my training log from the one and only time I foolishly did a parachute jump at 17 (the comment from the instructor states, “Good exit and spread, but no count heard”. No, well there wouldn’t be you see, because as soon as I leapt out of the plane, I became immediately convinced the ‘chute hadn’t opened and I was going to die. In Ipswich. Counting came quite a way down the list of thoughts at that moment).
My Indiana Jones moment though, came when I discovered my ‘CB copy book'.
CB stands for Citizens Band radio. It gained popularity in the USA in the 70s, not least down to films like Smokey and the Bandit, and Convoy, and then in the early 80s it became a craze that was embraced in the UK.
It was surprisingly cheap to set up, and so people started to get little black CB radio units, and have enormous ugly aerials attached to the side of their house. All this to have what was essentially the same experience as dialling a random local number on your phone, and saying “Hi! Let’s chat!”.
Jargon was key, including, ‘1-4 1-4 for a copy?’, ’Pick a window’ and ‘Candles’, which was your age (How many candles are you burning?).
And then there were the handles. Yes that’s right millennials, social media didn’t invent handles. And this is why an 11-year-old in the 80s needed a copy book. For the handles. And their corresponding candles.
I remember spending a considerable amount of time choosing my own handle. It needed to convey a persona that would be met with awe on the airwaves. And so, in 1982, a massively disappointing Clint Eastwood film came out about an ace fighter pilot who had crushing PTSD. Clearly, this story really spoke to me at 11, and so I became ‘Firefox’.
The whole craze lasted a year, maybe two, in our house, but my copy book tells a tale of adventure and mystery and makes me feel a lot better about my own handle (see pic above).
Obviously I am not jettisoning my CB copy book any time soon. Along with my Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, and ’81 Spurs away strip, it will be designated an heirloom to pass on, and so I will simply take it from the cardboard box it lived in, dust it off slightly, place it inside another, slightly smaller box, and put it away until the next national lockdown.
Tom James
Tom James’ new book Your Children Are Boring is available here in every format, worldwide.
Tom James on Twitter
www.YourChildrenAreBoring.com
www.SauceMaterials.co.uk
