Walking With Gloves

A pandemic diary with a sea view

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#endofpandemicdiary

I have decided to close my pandemic diary today and stopped counting after 77 days. The Scottish government started ‘phase 1’ yesterday easing previous restrictions.

It’s been a unique experience and an amazing journey documenting the inside and outside of life in lockdown and it still is. I’d like to thank all the wonderful people who allowed me to share their stories and my family too.

A bit further down the line

will be an exhibition and a printed publication, once I’ve raised the funds. Please send me a DM if you’d like to be kept informed.

In the meantime stay well.

Holger



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‘Music is like water, it has no colour, everybody can like it’*

The RNLI life boat was called out yesterday morning to rescue a woman and her daughter from Craigleith, the little island we can see from our bathroom window. Her inflatable standup paddling board had a puncture. She had driven down from Edinburgh.

#phaseone

#endoflockdown

*quote from Nikolas Davies’ documentary ‘Rude Boy: The Story of Trojan Records’

https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=gECFTCUSS29LcQD6&u=/watch%3Fv%3D3GqvTn_quvo%26feature%3Dem-lsp

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Ian - life pilot

‘I am doing the things now I always wanted to do as a pensioner. I once had a little recording studio on Forth Street in the late 70s and over the past couple of weeks, I have managed to make a series of compilations for radio from some of those reel to reel tapes - it’s rock, folk and recordings of the local operatic society.’

‘The programme is on an internet radio station called 242 Radio from Edinburgh. I have a spot on a programme called ‘Between the tracks’ , the DJ is Bionic Bob! The first transmission is 3pm this Saturday and I’m on about 4pm.’

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day 75

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What will stay with you beyond the lockdown? Tracey replied: ‘It has shown me what I didn’t know I missed’.

For the past 10 weeks repetition, routine and ritual defined the inside life of our family-lockdown. Meeting the outside world as part of the daily hour-long exercise added a sense of absence - absence of people, cars and commerce, but it was also full of unexpected conversations and very special ephemeral moments.

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day 75

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Ralph

The cows came really close, they sniffed the lens and licked my hand. Quite nice to have a wee break from social distancing.



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Emma - doctor

‘On my way home I often stop at the beach and have a 10-min swim to wash it all off not just physically’. Emma works 10-12 hour shifts. Half of the week in her GP practice and the other half at the hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh. ‘A lot of consultancy is done now over the phone. Last week I helped a 90-year old set up a health support app on his iPad. I know my children are ok when I’m away working - the two are getting on fine’.





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On every ‘NHS Thursday’, our neighbour Lex plays a vinyl record from his attic room. We’ve had Beethoven’s 9th and Flowers of Scotland. He then comes down into the street and blows a little plastic whistle. We are a lot less imaginative - we just bang pizza trays and pots shouting ‘thank you NHS’ for Tracey’s two nieces who are junior doctors on corona wards down in England.

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day 68

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‘I think it was easier to get into this lockdown than it will be to get out of it’ - Mark has just come off the beach after a swim with his youngest son.

Silence and emptiness have been all around me on my drifts around our little town in the past two months. It has made me listen again and sometimes see things that I hadn’t seen before or never noticed as much. There has been a real shift in the past couple of days. The outside world is back, the noise of revving motorbikes and the influx of unknown faces. Gone seems to be the aimless gaze into the horizon.