Lockdown 2020 #4

The world was a different place four short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

March and April were a time of random anxieties about the future and worries about what might happen but they gradually faded as we got used to queueing outside shops to buy food and the world around us didn't crumble. Many people continued to go work and others were furloughed because they weren't needed at the time. Radio and TV shows kept things upbeat and positive (like the great 'Grayson's Art Club'), theatres were very good at offering refunds on tickets, often asking for donations to keep them going but a refund wasn't a problem, and we got used to the new language of zooming everywhere. My Zooms were for online drawing sessions. May crept into June and June into July as lockdown started to ease as the country passed the peak of cases.

I started looking back to the strange days of March and April as being not so bad, when the roads and streets were virtually empty and the world was quieter and cleaner. The government started announcing stupid rules like 'social bubbles' that were totally unenforceable and people just started ignoring them and doing as they wanted. Raves started happening on the local Commons and litter significantly increased. Things were getting back to 'normal' in a pandemic. Masks or 'face coverings' started to become a 'thing' and became mandatory on public transport. I bought colourful masks from OddBalls, the prostate cancer charity.

The National Gallery became the first gallery or museum to open on 6 July for members and 8 July for the public. A brave move that was very well done with staff and guards wearing visors and visitors asked to wear face masks and maintain distance as they looked at the works. I gave them a week to sort out any teething problems and went on 14 July to support the Gallery and see some Art. Trafalgar Square was empty but there was a big queue to get into the Gallery by timed-entry tickets. That was the first time I'd been more than a couple of miles from my front door since March.

Other things started to open like 'non-essential' shops and department stores, pubs and restaurants, workplaces that could operate safely and it became a lot easier to book food deliveries as more people started shopping for themselves. Hairdressers and barbers became a 'thing'. Was this all happening too quickly? Probably, but it was what people seemed to want.

I can get into the centre of London by overground train to avoid buses and tubes and that's what I've been doing. Visiting an art exhibition, St Paul's and Tate Britain, getting a lot of walking in as exercise to and from train stations. I wore a mask on the trains and in the places I visited and will continue to do so. London felt more alive and busier last week, not back to 'normal' by any means and the streets were still relatively quiet, but London is waking up again.

What will happen next? I don't know. Most people seem to assume there'll be another outbreak of the virus and more deaths at some point so there's still a need to be careful since the virus is still out there. We'll see...

Lockdown 2020 #3

The world was a different place five short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

Easter was late in 2020 and was in the second week of April. I discovered a new, local plant shop opened virtually on Good Friday and I ordered some plants to be delivered. I used to have loads of houseplants and missed having something to look after. They arrived the following Tuesday by bike delivery.

I started doing my cuppa-on-the-couch afternoons. During the week I'd select an art book to leaf through and look at the pictures and on Sunday it was time for a Sunday afternoon film. New traditions were born to fill the days. The weather got better and I missed flowers and started looking enviously at window boxes - I'd thought about getting them before but never got round to it and now it was an obsession. No point in having a window box, you also need a lot of soil and some plants...

So my walks started taking me past a local hardware shop and a pet shop that sold plants and soil, and one day the stars aligned and they had window boxes and soil so i leapt in and got them. And on a change to my walk I found out that Homebase was open and it was full of flowering plants so I indulged. I now had two small 'gardens' to look after on my window sills. And, one morning, I found a squirrel sitting in my window box smelling the flowers.

The government was doing daily press briefings every afternoon to tell us the number of virus cases and deaths, answer questions and spin its lies. I couldn't watch it and managed to avoid them all to save my mental health and blood pressure, just getting the highlights on the news. Then I stopped watching the news and just heard clips on the radio news about ongoing shortages with personal protective equipment in hospitals and care homes. The government kept announcing it was sorting out the problem but it went on and on.

'Stay at home and protect the NHS' was the mantra and I did. If I went out it was to pound the local streets, mainly walking in the roads since they were largely empty. I didn't go to the Common much due to the joggers and cyclists who deemed themselves immune and didn't bother distancing. And I discovered online drawing through Zoom sessions.

I've done some life drawing in recent years and it was nice to rediscover it by staying at home. A lot of sessions started up and I joined in Zoom drawing sessions with models from all over the country and the world that I wouldn't normally have access to. At first everything seemed to be very flat, drawing from a screen, but you get used to it. I've drawn models in York, London, Paris, Barcelona, Bangalore and New York. We're learning new skills and hobbies in this worldwide lockdown.

My sleep patterns changed and I was sleeping a lot less, waking up very early to see the dawn. Why couldn't I sleep? I can only put it down to the random anxiety of the virus and the uncertainty of the future. I went out less and less and had to force myself to go to for walks in the roads, seeing the same old streets and trees, peering into the same gardens to see how the plants were growing.

Then the D. Cummings thing exploded in late May with him breaking lockdown and driving up to Durham and then going on a sightseeing trip to Barnard Castle to 'test his eyesight'. There was the ludicrous moment when M. Gove said in an interview that he'd driven to 'test his eyesight' in the past. That was the end of social distancing in my area. I could see it happening from my window as people stopped social distancing as they walked in the street and stopped walking out into the road to avoid people but just walked past each other on the pavement. That stopped me going out even more, as the traffic - both pedestrian and roads - increased and distancing ended.

And summer arrived with glorious weather. For a while.

The National Gallery in a Mask

The National Gallery was the last place I visited before lockdown in March 2020 and it was the first place I visited as lockdown starts to ease. Back in March everything was uncertain and no-one knew what to expect, Trafalgar Square was empty and so was the Gallery. It was oddly quiet and I remember walking into normally crowded rooms and finding them empty. There was a nervousness in the air. Yesterday was different in subtle ways. Trafalgar Square was still empty but the nervousness had gone and the Gallery was open, people were happy and smiling, from those welcoming visitors back inside the front doors to the smiling guards in the rooms wearing visors and chatting away. What a difference a pandemic makes.

Outside the National Gallery the big red 'welcome back' banners were fluttering in the breeze as I joined the queue up the side of the Gallery waiting to be let in and put on a mask. The Gallery ask visitors to arrive 15 minutes before entry time and it didn't take long to get inside. The foyer is strangely empty and the bookshop is closed but we were welcome by a very cheerful member of staff directing us to the stairs to get up to the art. Three routes have been introduced, a sort of curated way to see the Gallery safely, and first off for me was Route A to see the early Italian paintings in the Sainsbury Wing.

It was lovely to be back, to say hello to the little Giotto panel, the small Duccio altarpiece, the Sassettas, the Botticellis and Bellinis, the Crivellis and the Raphaels. What to look at first? The floor is marked out with arrows to keep people on the route and make sure people stay safe. I asked one of the guards how I could see the rooms behind the route I was following and he explained I'd need to go round twice before almost conspiratorially telling me that 'that's a Michelangelo over there' as he pointed to a painting. The normally serious guards actually interacting and smiling and welcoming you into their rooms. I loved it.

So I walked round once to get back to the start of the route, then walk round again go into another set of rooms to see the Van Eyck and Campin paintings. I didn't mind. Small rooms were roped off so you can't get close to the Leonardo panels but they're still easy enough to see from the entrance.That means that I visited the Fra Angelico predella twice on the way out of the Sainsbury Wing and it's always a joy to see works by Beato Angelico.

Then I headed off on Route B to see room after room of great paintings. There seems to have been some re-hanging of paintings while the Gallery has been closed and the huge portrait of Charles I has been re-framed into a far more effective frame that really shows off the painting. It was lovely to see some old friends but I couldn't help wondering where Mr Silenus was getting his booze to still be so tipsy even after lockdown. Some people never seem to grow up and none of his mates were wearing a mask either.

It was quite touching walking into the Rembrandt room and seeing the self-portrait of him as an old man, not much older than me. I saw a number of people stopping to gaze at him, perhaps with feelings of their own mortality? There's no exuberance here, this is man who's lived a full life and knows it won't go on forever. Quite sobering really.

It was also lovely to see the self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi hanging on the wall next to a Caravaggio, momentarily sad because she should have been the star of her own exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment and then remembering that the exhibition has been rescheduled for the autumn. I'm looking forward to seeing that exhibition.

Walking on and then I found myself in a room of French paintings and there she was, Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun who had an exciting life and died after attending a party in her 80s - that' how to go. Here she is as a young artist showing off her skill as a portraitist and it served her well. I have fond memories of seeing a big exhibition of her portraits at Le Grand Palais in Paris years ago. She deserves an exhibition in London.

Route B (and Route C for that matter) ends withe the Impressionist and post-Impressionist rooms. They are always busy rooms, really busy, but yesterday? Not so busy. I can't remember ever standing in front of the five paintings by Van Gogh and be able to see them all without a crowd of people in front of them.

It was a delight to be able to visit the National Gallery again, a treasure in the soul. Most people followed the advice from the Gallery and wore a mask but some people didn't, or wandered round with a mask pulled under their chins (which is rather pointless). I had to keep re-jigging my mask to avoid my glasses steaming up but it worked out OK. The toilets were suitably socially distanced and there was even a limit to the number of people who were allowed in the shop at the end of the visit. I had to wait a few minutes but I wanted a souvenir of my visit and bought a sim book of paintings by Rubens.

I didn't see the Titians since they're all grouped around the current exhibition about his poesy paintings but I've already booked another ticket to visit and that includes the exhibition (again - I saw it on my last visit in March).

Thank you National Gallery and thank you to all the staff for looking after the paintings during lockdown and now for giving them back to us. I really enjoyed my socially distant visit. I'll be back!

Lockdown 2020 #2

The world was a different place five short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

My front door was the only thing between me and the seemingly dangerous world outside. What can I touch? What can I be close to without worrying? Soap became a close friend with endless hand washing.

The official lockdown started on 23 March. Some people, the most vulnerable, were told to 'shield' and stay isolated. Others were told to stay at home at much as possible, work from home if you can, stay two metres apart. People and businesses had already started doing this before the government pronouncements - they were too slow on virtually everything.

I'm vegetarian so always have packets of pasta, rice and pulses in my larder so my main worry was about having enough fresh food. I was lucky enough to have a groceries delivery slot booked with Tesco so I could get food delivered without venturing out but what about when that runs out? That's when I discovered the new game of food delivery roulette and trying to get a slot for a delivery with the main supermarkets when new slots became available each midnight. Trying and failing most times and every now and again getting a valuable delivery slot, generally three weeks apart. Better than nothing. And rainbows became a thing.

If you needed to go into a shop you had to queue to get in as places inside were limited and everyone queued two meters apart. We're good at queuing. The only shops that were open were 'essential', mainly food shops They started putting up perspex screens at tills and trying to organise how you shopped with signs on the floor showing which way to walk to keep away from others. I got into the habit of visiting the small Sainsbury's round the corner early on a Sunday morning to pick up whatever I needed. I didn't mind running out of milk or bread on a Thursday and waiting until Sunday to get more since that was the new life. How quickly we adapt.

We were advised by the government to only go out for essential shopping and for one hour of exercise each day. I'm lucky enough to live near Tooting Common, a huge expanse of greenery with a lake and my favourite geese, but other people discovered it. Having the Common on their doorstep encouraged the joggers to get out and stay fit or use the opportunity to change their life-style. Good on them but it meant that the paths were full of joggers who stayed on the paths and ignored social distancing (the two metres rule) since they wanted to beat yesterdays' time for their daily run. If you see them coming you can walk off the path but if they come up behind you and almost brush your shoulder you can't really do anything other than shout at them angrily as they run away. That put me off going out.

I started doing lots of little jobs around the flat to fill in the hours. I realised that I had lots of things in frames dotted around so I spent a morning hanging them on my bedroom walls on the basis that if I caught the virus and spent a lot of time in bed then I might as well have things to look at. The walls are crammed with things. I pinned posters to the walls of my kitchen - why not? I started listening to CDs to decide if I wanted to keep them or give them away to a charity shop after lockdown, starting at one end of a shelf and working my way along it. I have a lot of CDs so that job is still going on. I've now got a healthy pile of CDs for the BHF shop stacked in the kitchen.

And then there were masks, or face coverings as they started being referred to. The masks available to buy online all took weeks to arrive so videos started popping up on YouTube on how to make a mask without any sewing. It was a new trend. After initially tying a bandana around my head I moved to the handkerchief and elastic bands method before settling on the no-sew tee shirt sleeve method.

And then it was Easter.

Lockdown 2020 #1

The world was a different place four short months ago. Those months have been the longest ever due to 'lockdown'. I'm conscious that I'm beginning to forget what life was like at the time and want to make a few notes to help me remember.

I think I first heard about coronavirus around Christmas 2019, a strange disease happening in a province of far away China. And then it started to spread. The world is so much smaller these days and places are more inter-connected than ever before. I did a print-making course in January, trying out different ways of making prints. Then I went to Belgium in February 2020 to see an art exhibition about Van Eyck without a care in the world. Whatever was happening was far off and far away. It wasn't long till we started seeing stories about the virus creeping across Europe in Italy and in Spain and then the first cases reported in the UK.

Panic buying started in supermarkets in March, with people stockpiling pasta, pulses, rice and toilet rolls, grabbing whatever they could. I remember joking about going out to do some 'stockpiling' by which I meant going to the supermarket. It was an odd time. I think we all knew something was coming, but what?

There was news of cities closing, borders closing across Europe. The seriousness of the situation began to sink in as the reports of death tolls grew across the world. It sounded like things were pretty awful in Italy and in Spain and we saw film of empty streets in Rome and Madrid as tourists stayed away and locals stayed at home. The few people you did see were wearing face masks. At home, people were starting to work from home and people started to prepare for an expected lockdown. Things were changing.

I went to the member's preview of the new Titian exhibition at the National Gallery on 13 March.  It was as crowded as you'd expect so I decided to go back on the Monday to see it again, and I did. Monday 16 March and I'd never seen London looking so empty. I walked into the foyer of the National Gallery and, instantly, you could tell something was different. Where were all the people?  Where was the bustle and the noise? In some of the rooms there was only a guard and no punters. It was very strange. I'd suspected that it would be my last visit into central London and it was. I went to the London Graphics Centre for some art supplies, Fopp for a couple of DVDs and to Foyles for a couple of books then got the tube home, popped into a supermarket for bits and bobs and got home, shut the front door and decided that that was it. I was now in lockdown.