“Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today”. That was one of my mother’s many mantras. One day into lockdown, I realised the wisdom of those words. When my son looks back on the photos, he’ll never forgive me for missing his barber’s appointment. He already looks like a cross between Terry Wogan and Che Guevara and he’s only twelve.
Bad hair is one thing, but running out of medication is
another. The prescription that could have been renewed anytime in the last six
months, was about to expire. Given that I’d rather poke my eye out with a
sausage than cross the threshold of a pharmacy in the midst of a global
pandemic, the oversight unhinged me.
We parked in front of the chemist, which was opposite the
bank. As I alighted the car, donning dark glasses, a snood pulled over my face
and a hat bearing unfortunate similarities to a balaclava, I shouted at my
husband, “Keep the engine running. It’ll need to be a quick get away!” (we had
a click and collect slot booked in Eurospar afterwards).
There I was, in the middle of Gort high street, looking for
all the world like a drug addled bank robber on the verge of a panic attack,
wondering why people were staring at me.
I had emailed the prescription in advance and explained that
I didn’t want to go inside, so the pharmacist kindly arranged to meet me at the
door when she opened after lunch, at precisely 2pm. For the deal to be done as
precipitously as possible, I just had to keep a cool head and have the exact
money ready.
Grappling with coins in gloved hands is a bit like Carlow’s
quest for the Liam MacCarthy Cup. If you stick at it long enough it might
happen, but the odds aren’t great. Knowing that Covid-19 can last on surfaces
for several days, touching the coins was not an option.
At 1.55pm, I upturned
my purse on the pavement and got down on my hands and knees to count out €7.30.
Onlookers weren’t sure whether to call the guards (the balaclava) or the men in
white coats (all of the above).
By 1.57pm, I was upright again and, although I thought I had
clawed back a semblance of composure, people were still staring and I’m pretty
sure I caught my child exchange a conspiratorial eye roll with a passer-by, as
if to say, “Who’s your one”.
I wasn’t always embarrassing. There was a time, pre Covid-19
(and motherhood), that I was borderline cool. I once blagged a meeting with the
British media’s equivalent of the Dali-Lama, by telling his PA that I was a
Colombian drugs mule. Like all white lies, there was an element of truth to the
story.
I did live in Colombia, where I had ridden a mule and, on my
return, I was stopped by security at Gatwick for acting suspiciously. I was
wearing dodgy dark glasses and surreptitiously sniffing suspected narcotics in
the baggage area. Fortunately, Vicks nasal spray is not deemed a class A drug
in Britain (though that could change after Brexit), so I was released without
charge.
At 2pm sharp, the pharmacist gingerly made her way to the
door and the deal was done. Inexplicably unable to move, I stood there, unravelling
like my granny’s woollen shawl, when a middle aged woman smiled from afar and said,
“You’ll be grand, love”. That was another of my mother’s mantras and I realised
that, in the panic of lockdown, I had forgotten the anniversary of her death.
That gnawing, barbed wire feeling in my belly was unadulterated grief, which,
buried under and exacerbated by Coronavirus, was debilitating.
I can bribe my family for hugs, so I’ll be grand, but what
about friends, neighbours, homeless and those in direct provision, who are
alone? The world is in lockdown but isolation, though crucial, amplifies
loneliness, which presents the humanitarian challenge of finding new ways to
reach out to the vulnerable in our communities. Be it a smile, a phone call, a
kind word or deed. “There...”, as my mother would say, “...but for the grace of god, go
I”.
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