‘Stopping the diary/’ wrote Philip Larkin, ‘Was a stun to memory,/ Was a blank starting.’ I never really understood those lines until Covid. The pandemic has turned my diary into an acre of white space, like the gymnasium wall at school just begging for some adolescent graffiti. ‘PARTY,’ I want to scribble. ‘SMALL FLAT, 100 PEOPLE, 8 P.M. BRING A BOTTLE.’ The damping down of all social activity this year has made the question ‘What did you do over the weekend?’ crassly offensive, or even something more sinister. Am I being asked this by a member of the new Stasi trying to catch me out? Before the pandemic I used to pretend to have an interesting life. Now I admit to a boring one: ‘Nothing,’ I reply.
Time and again, I have heard sentences that start: ‘2020 has been the worst year since…’.
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