My isolation reading list

A psychiatrist once told me that it takes one’s subconscious about three weeks to catch up with a significant life event, and that is certainly holding good now. We have gone through shock and disbelief while simultaneously accepting the situation. Mostly we have also accepted the rules and restrictions, and I wonder if many who flocked to holiday places on the first sunny days of school closures and went dozens abreast in parks and on beaches were not deliberately sticking up two fingers to the virus or the law, but simply in denial. It took more deaths, especially among the young and otherwise fit — plus the Prime Minister’s television address giving not advice but orders — for it to hit home.

My own catch-up moment came early one morning. It is always quiet in this tiny village, but now the quietness had a different quality; it seemed to have thickened in spite of the birdsong, and in the quietness my subconscious awareness zoomed to the surface.