Dear Yuri,
Having always been essentially a freelance-working-from-home, I don’t find the same profound difference to life and its organisation that most people do, and I frequently walk out around the too-well-known but flowery streets of Kentish Town. Of course, I’m frustrated at not being able to go further but that’s just like everyone and not very interesting.
In any case, as the dismal news from round the world evolves day by day, I am becoming increasingly cynical about the whole well-intentioned principle behind lockdown. The virus is not, as people hoped at first, going to be driven off by such means, and all this about `peaks’ and `declines’ is looking more optimistic than realistic. It is being increasingly pointed out that the country, indeed the world, cannot go on and on in this state of economic suspension. I think we’re going to have to return to some semblance of normal life, and just accept a higher everyday level of risk, and of death, than we have done for two generations. All our ancestors lived like this, century after century, up to within living memory: it’s sad, but it isn’t the end of the world. My family have already lost two old friends to the virus – `old’ in both senses of the term.
I think I’m allowed to say this, as both my husband Richard and I are ourselves over 80: – We don’t want to die – more exactly, each of us selfishly doesn’t want the other to die! – but we know perfectly well we are mortal and that the death of either or both of us at our age should not be greeted with horror. We are unmoved by the exaggerated fuss about people dying in care homes [though of course it’s tough on the staff]. In normal times such fragile people frequently die from ordinary flu, or just a bad cold that `goes to their chest’, and no one thinks this is terrible. In addition, some 60-70% of the inhabitants of care homes have a noticeable degree of dementia: that’s why they are there.
R and I have long agreed that each of us would rather be dead than live on in that state and have made our wishes clear to all concerned.