IT IS difficult not to get whipped up in the frenzy... to stare at empty supermarket shelves and wonder if it might not be worth buying 16 extra toilet rolls and an industrial size bag of rice.
“You laughed at me over my Brexit box,” my friend reminds me, “But look at all of you now.”
It is confession time – we have a little box. I hate the 'p' word as in 'panic', but I can feel a little of it creeping into my daily life as the coronavirus takes hold and the news is full of it.
I have to beat down my inner Jones-y of Dad’s Army: “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!”
But maybe I have a few reasons and gloves never hurt anyone. Neither did hand washing and if you cough, please use a handkerchief and bin immediately.
The frenzy brings back memories of the Ulster Workers’ Council strike when the electricity came on and went off at odd times and a little man from Ballylumford power station appeared regularly on television to remind us that the situation was “confused and confusing” which, indeed, it was.
It seemed exciting, thrilling to us children. How you might be halfway through the Magic Roundabout and suddenly the TV screen would shrink to a dot, the lights would flash off and we’d be plunged into darkness.
Our next-door neighbour brought big silver churns of milk to his house rather than have the farmers pour it into the drains. My mother brought out saucepans and queued with the other families. She waited for the electricity to come on to shove three rice puddings into the oven. I can’t look at it now.
She’d disappear into the garage to heat beans and fry sausages on our little gas camping stove usually kept for the Donegal beach. Evenings were spent doing homework by fire and candlelight.
It’s exciting when you’re a child. But our parents made sure to shoo us away from the evening news.
And even my mother could not sustain the rosy glow she tried to throw over a world in kilter. We spied the nameless men in parkas, hoods up, handkerchiefs over faces, standing sentinel at barricades of slurry tanks and tractors. My mother could not keep from us the shadow of a dark wolf at the door, but she tried.
But that was long, long ago. This panic is different. We were chatting about self-isolation the other day and I happened to say that it was not too bad. Twenty years ago, I had to self-isolate after taking radio-iodine to solve my thyroid disease. Leaving my small son and husband was not so very easy.
But at least I could self-isolate at home. A friend reminisced with me about the time he got the same treatment and spent time in solitary in a room at an old hospital, waiting for the clunk of the dinner tray and watching the weeds fluttering in the breeze from his bedroom window.
It sounded like a scene from a Spaghetti Western where you’re waiting forever for the Magnificent Seven to ride over the hill to the rescue.
I spent my time upstairs in my own bed with my own toilet and my own plate and knife and fork. I flushed twice and didn’t share my eating implements. My husband slept downstairs, used a different toilet and delivered the tea tray regularly. He chatted to me from the bottom of the stairs when I felt lonely. Our small son stayed with his auntie.
After a while, I went down to my mother. It was like being hauled back 20 years and discovering that if two women are to live together peacefully then they both have to be very wise. She was great but she never liked being tidied up.
I spent days of splendid isolation in my car driving the Antrim coast, singing along with the radio and swallowing down sudden pangs of grief for my own child, my own husband, my own double bed. Bereft – yes – but it passed.
And this too shall pass, as my mother would say. In the meantime, we are trying not to watch too much news, which is a problem when you work in it.
And, like the rest of the world, we are battening down the hatches, washing our hands and doling out the toilet roll – one man; one roll; one week, I’ve told them... but are they listening?
