I'm staying in lockdown at an undisclosed location somewhere in county Galway until my hair grows & the second wave passes

My article in this week's Connacht Tribune👇
https://connachttribune.ie/mastering-the-art-of-walking-and-cutting-in-straight-lines/

“Who’s that?” says Gobnait (not her real name) whose house I used to pass on my pre-lockdown walk. “It’s me”, I’d say, lifting my sunglasses to prove I’m not Lady Gaga incognito.

It’s her way of telling me I should catch myself on for wearing sunglasses in the middle of January. I could tell her I have light sensitive eyes but she doesn’t suffer fools gladly and I admire her astuteness.

I’ve changed my route since lockdown because the road isn’t wide enough to accommodate my ego and social distancing. That’s what Gobnait would say and I miss our daily dalliance. Despite that, and with the easing of lockdown imminent, I find myself reluctant to relinquish my newfound bubble, for various reasons.

My DIY haircut with blunt scissors didn’t go as planned. Just cut in a straight line, what could possibly go wrong? Everything. One side was shorter than the other and in a scene reminiscent of Father Ted’s dented car sketch (I’ll just give it one more tap), I kept cutting until one side was aligned with my upper ear while the other hovered in follicular limbo just below the chin.

Panicking ahead of a Zoom meeting, my options included the following: a bandana (a la Duran Duran), a balaclava (a la bank robber) or a baseball cap (a la who’s that eejit?). I went with the latter and kept my head down until someone said, “who’s that in the baseball cap”?

I also haven’t mastered the art of making sourdough bread (my heart’s not really in it) and, while the rest of the country has been spring cleaning since March, I haven’t even started.

I’m not ready to stop listening to the sound of the cuckoo, carried in the wind from the Burren across the bay and the butterflies of giddiness it unleashes, leaving endorphin infused contrails in their wake.

Whilst I cling to lockdown like Paschal Donohoe clings to his ministerial salary, many are chomping at the bit for freedom.

A vexed psychologist on RTE, warned of the psychological impact of children not being able to hug their grannies. If there’s a second wave, as already seen in Germany and China, what about the psychological impact on the child if granny dies of coronavirus?

What about the psychological impact on the doctor working with dwindling resources who has to decide who gets the last ICU bed and/or ventilator? And what about the psychological impact on the nurse who has to tell the family that their loved one has died.

At time of writing, 30% of the people diagnosed with coronavirus are previously healthy Health Care Workers. What of the psychological impact on them and their families who risk their lives to save ours? The shortage of PPE is an ongoing worry for healthcare staff with reports of post-traumatic stress disorder emerging, unsurprisingly. If there is a second wave, our capacity to respond could be significantly depleted.

Meanwhile, having spent six weeks in lockdown, leaving many financially destitute, it emerged that people continued to enter Ireland and the safeguards, such as self-isolating and filling in contact tracing forms, weren’t actually mandatory and therefore as effective as a chocolate tea pot.

Data from one week alone revealed that more than a third of passengers arriving at Dublin Airport and a quarter of those coming in at Dublin Port who were asked to self-isolate did not respond to follow-up calls, many were untraceable.

When confronted with this revelation in the Dáil last week, Leo Varadkar said that mandatory quarantine might be forthcoming but warned about the impact on tourism. The elephant in the room of course is Britain. Our nearest neighbour, which has the second highest death rate from coronavirus in the world.

In non-lockdown conditions, one contagious person can infect, on average 3 people, who will then potentially infect another three. By the time you multiply that variable 10 times, exponentially the original person could have infected over 88,000 people.

That’s why New Zealand’s premier, Jacinda Ardern locked down early, quarantining everyone entering the country and rolling out rigorous contact tracing and testing regimes. After one month and twenty deaths, she reduced the infection rate to zero enabling the safe easing of lockdown.

As long as Ireland’s border strategy against Coronavirus remains that of voluntary quarantining, I’m staying in lockdown. 

Gobnait and I have started a Zoom book club and our first book is, “Who’s that” by D.O Lally. It’s about a girl with lopsided hair who wears dark glasses in January and goes cuckoo trying to make sourdough bread in a ramshackled kitchen, somewhere in county Galway (recommended reading age 0-3mths).

Lockdown insomnia is a nightmare & it's keeping me awake at night

This was published in today's Connacht Tribune:
https://connachttribune.ie/insomnia-mixed-with-nocturnal-terrors-of-simon-harris-mummified-in-loo-roll/

As a parent, there’s always something to keep you awake at night. The existential questions, such as, “What if my child falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes a serial killer”?

There was a time, when he was six that I worried about his moral compass. We had a stand-off outside a food bank which had been brewing since before we left home. He was having second thoughts about “donating” some of his toys, which were thrown in (by me) to make the box of food look less meagre.

In child development terms, he was still at the “id” stage (world revolves around them) meaning guilt trips are futile. Nonetheless, I gave it a go.

 “Think of all those children whose parents can’t afford to buy them toys. Don’t you want them to have a toy to cuddle when they lie hungry and cold in bed”? “And”, holding up exhibit A, “You’ve never even played with this one”.

He thought for a moment and replied, “Yes, I want them to have toys to cuddle but not mine and I did play with that toy (exhibit A) once when I was 5 AND by the way, you said Santa brings presents to ALL children so it doesn’t matter if their parents can’t afford to buy them any, does it?”. In that moment, I thought, he’ll either grow up to be a prosecution lawyer or a serial killer.

During lockdown, he has gathered kindling, bought Easter eggs with his pocket money and made cards, all for cocooning neighbours. He also has a proclivity for harvesting mint from the garden to make tea with tepid tap water and because I’m his mother, I drink it. Not the modus operandi of a serial killer and yet sleep, like the ability to crochet, escapes me.

Coronavirus has seen the rise of insomnia and “lockdown dreams”. My problem is the recurring google induced face visor nightmares. I never share my real personal data when solicited in order to access apps. I input something different every time.  

As a consequence, I get ads targeted at a transgender 19-70 year old, which can be anything from denim hot pants to dentures.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been aggressively targeted by a face shield advert that follows me as I scroll down the screen and is so ubiquitous it has become the stuff of nightmares.

The other night, I dreamt of being chased by a visor clad Simon (“I made an awful boo-boo”) Harris, mummified in Lidl toilet rolls and rapping: “Stay at home, read a book - get wizer. Don’t bulk buy the aul’ hand sani-tizer” [If a mic drop emoji existed, I'd insert it here].

Our immune systems depend on sleep so that became this week’s mission. As someone who only has to sniff alcohol fumes to be inebriated and knowing that it’s a depressant and therefore not helpful dealing with insomnia, I went for the toddler cure instead: Tire yourself out during the day and wind down before bedtime.

My YouTube workout in the garden had to be aborted having been sabotaged by my son mimicking the American instructors, “Go Barbara”!” and “Gimme 5 more of your best Betsy”, resulting in me rugby tackling said child to the ground with an uncontrollable attack of the giggles.

Next was a family ball game of HORSE (what bright spark changed the name from DONKEY)? When himself and son with English accents shout, “You’re a “HOR” at an Irish woman, it didn’t go down well with the older neighbours who were walking past. “She dropped the ball – 3 times” the lads explain in unison, but the neighbours only ever played DONKEY so they walk away mumbling, “That’s no reason to call her a whore, like”.

The thing my son misses most about school is his friends, who are particularly important if you’re newly arrived from England and your Irish accent needs breaking in before secondary school. He had just nailed, “Cawld” and “I’m the fineisht”, before tutorials were cut short.

When he first started school he thought his teacher was picking on someone. He didn’t know who it was, just that she kept shouting “Wrong O’Shea!”. I explained that she was saying, “Rang a Sé, which is Gaelic for 6^th Class”!

In the evening, I did a few laps of the garden before practicing meditation, then, noticing the clear night sky, I woke my son and, lying barefoot and in pyjamas, wrapped in a blanket looking up at the Milky Way, I thanked my lucky stars for these stolen magic moments of childhood.

That night, safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t spawned a serial killer, I slipped into sleep like a stockinged foot into a silken slipper.

Negotiating public spaces in a pandemic

This was published in today's Connacht Tribune
https://connachttribune.ie/negotiating-shared-spaces-in-the-midst-of-a-pandemic/

I lost a friend to Coronavirus this week. That’s a sentence I wasn’t planning to write and one I hope you never have to say.

My deceased friend is survived by his partner, who is also my friend. They only had each other and now her soul mate is gone. No doubt a walk on the beach would do her good but she has to settle for a backyard the size of a postage stamp, the walls of which close in with each passing day, in lockdown. In agonising grief.

Another friend is a medic living in a flat with no garden and is going stir crazy. She’s afraid to use the park 50 yards away because of unleashed dogs approaching her dog and toddler. Once, after 7 days of 12 hours shifts, she broke down in tears pleading with someone to put their dog on a lead.

I told a mutual friend that I was worried about both of the above women being isolated and vulnerable, but he was more concerned about his own mental health.

He lives in a house with a garden in the countryside. Yet, is “compelled” to drive beyond 2km to take his dog “for a run off the lead,” on a beach where unleashed dogs are not allowed. Ever.

As empathetically as I could muster, I pressed him to reflect on his behaviour. What about dog owners and parents with children in high rise flats in cities? Is your mental health more important than theirs”? “If everyone behaved like you the roads and beaches would be full…”

Realising that he wasn’t responding to the intravenous dose of compassionate truth I had administered, I pulled the plug on our friendship.

This isn’t dog owner vs non dog owner. It’s irresponsible dog owners vs everyone else. The above (former) friend’s justification for not using a dog lead was, “There’s no evidence that dogs can infect humans”.

There are far more unknowns than knowns with regard to Covid-19 but we’ve always known that this is a highly contagious, deadly disease for which there is no vaccine or cure. This should have triggered what scientists call, the precautionary principle, which means erring on the side of caution to prevent widespread infection and preserve life.

Instead, our politicians unleashed 3 words which I believe, served to fuel the deadly pandemic: “There’s no evidence.” At various times, these words have been used in relation to the following, all of which have since proved gravely mistaken: the apparent lack of community contagion, there being no need to restrict nursing home visitors, racegoers returning from Cheltenham not being advised to self-isolate unless they show symptoms despite warnings that people can be asymptomatic and contagious for 14 days. I could go on.

The absence of evidence should not be confused with evidence of absence. It just means the testing isn’t happening and/or data isn’t available. With residents of nursing and care homes representing almost 60% of all Coronavirus related deaths, this is surely evidence that the precautionary principle should have been invoked sooner by Tony Holohan.  

The World Organisation for Animal Health warns, “Now that COVID-19 virus infections are widely distributed in the human population, there is a possibility for some animals to become infected through close contact with infected humans. Studies are under way to better understand the susceptibility of different animal species to the COVID-19 virus and to assess infection dynamics in susceptible animal species”.

A number of vets have cautioned that dogs’ coats, like any other surface, can carry viruses to humans and the ISPCA, the Dog Trust, Veterinary Ireland and Galway County Council are all stipulating that dog owners keep their dogs on leads at all times in public spaces. In the same way that social distancing and unnecessary travel is obligatory (not discretionary), so too is keeping dogs on leads in public places during this pandemic.

Not all laws and rules can be policed. For society to function, it requires shared social norms, collective responsibility and community compassion. Never before has our behaviour in shared spaces had a more profound impact on the lives and wellbeing of others. At a time when space is so limited and freedom of movement so restricted, encroaching on that of others is no longer just selfish, it’s reckless and anti-social.

Either lockdown applies to everyone or no-one. The choices we make today will determine the extent to which lives and friendships will be lost to this pandemic tomorrow.

This article is dedicated to the people worldwide, my friend included, whose lives have been claimed by Covid-19. Suaimhneas síoraí dóibh uile.