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DIARY | Ivor Tymchak’s Lock Down Diary

A guest diary entry from IVOR TYMCHAK

Lockdown Diary

Most days I pretend to be a writer. This largely consists of sitting on the sofa with a giant mug of steaming coffee and staring out of the window for hours on end thinking about – oh, things like, how house dust is almost entirely composed of dead skin cells so vacuum cleaners are really miniature coffins – that kind of thing.

The reason I’m not a writer is because the actual business end of the activity—the stringing of words into chains of charming chatter, I tend to leave to the muse rather than the iron discipline of a routine that requires five hundred words a day.

The problem is compounded by the fact that my entire family is now in the house all day long so periods of undisturbed writing sessions are rare; my thriller novel is coming along at a pace more befitting that of a protagonist who’s just been shot several times in the belly trying to reach the ‘off’ button on a burning consul as the secret mountain lair of his enemy crumbles around him.

Now, instead of dreaming about stories I have to: regularly admire the hand-sewn blouse being made by my daughter; appreciate items of memorabilia unearthed by my wife as she tidies corners of the house long ago assigned as landfill; remember to inform my son that there’s a pandemic raging throughout the world (he’s a nightshift gamer so I don’t see him very often – at least some things have remained the same during this lockdown).

I’m fortunate to have a garden so when the sun comes out I can dig. For years now I’ve grown a few vegetables in the small space I’ve appropriated from the lawn but this year the husbandry has taken on a new urgency: the fallout of the lockdown is going to produce some unforeseen consequences and a food shortage is sure to be one of them. Homegrown foodstuffs are a good insurance policy.

My exercise is taken during the day either as a walk or bike rides. It’s an electric bike so the steep hills around where I live aren’t too much of a problem. These days I prefer the bike, as it’s easier to maintain social distancing on the road. From an upstairs window in my house I have a view of a canal towpath. I regularly see walkers on it. It’s not a one-way path so anyone passing will have to break the social distancing minimum by a metre. I get the impression some people still aren’t taking the plague seriously enough.

I’ve been self-employed for decades now having to live on my wits, so I can always invent things to do (some of which sometimes make money). And as I usually work from home the lockdown hasn’t challenged me too much – I’m quite happy in my own company. What I do miss is the occasional trip to Leeds for a meeting. I’d often spend a couple of hours looking around the art gallery and shops tutting at how absurd the world has become. Little did I know that very soon the world would become so absurd that a notoriously right-wing government would outstrip the promises of a moderately left-leaning Labour opposition in a state-spending spree.

Strange days indeed.