Catherine Queen

I become aware of two things around the same time.

One: there is a virus coming for us. It’s been in the news for weeks, the girl next to me in the office becoming increasingly hysterical, whereas I was rolling my eyes. “It’ll be another Swine Flu,” I said, remembering how I was quarantined in my tiny bungalow in Afidnes for a week before I was allowed to teach, and then every kid in the school got sick anyway by summertime. Or another SARs, a disease over there that fizzles out before it gets over here.

My cynicism is punctured when my friend Dennis texts me from Germany in mid-Feb. He’s half-Italian and just came back from a research trip to a village there. He’s worried about what’s happening. For some reason, his is the message that makes me stop in my tracks. I stockpile pasta and tinned tomatoes and Dairy Milk with a racing heart. Nobody else is buying for disaster, yet, but it’s simmering in the background.

Yet, at the same time, my mind is consumed by two: the dawning realisation that this pipe dream of casual dating is simply not going to work.

I thought I’d have a few months of meeting people, being cool and aloof about it all while I breezed through a newly single lifestyle of dinner dates and nice cocktails.

But my very first date turned out to be really, really good. And the second. And the third…

This morning, I ran almost 10km from my flat in Islington down through the West End and to Whitehall, curving back round along the Victoria Embankment to Blackfriars before looping St. Paul’s to add a few more steps to my count. My feet were leaden by the time I puffed back up Farringdon Road; my lips burned with a mixture of suncream and sweat. But I had enjoyed the run, listening to the history of Chinese food in New York and a BBC documentary on shootings in Chicago.

Yes, I enjoyed a 10km run. And yesterday I enjoyed a 50 minute workout that left me gasping and jelly-legged. If you had told me some years ago that I’d one ay be a committed exerciser, I would have laughed.

There are few pleasures to be had, here in ‘lockdown’ (barring, of course, the warmth of a sunray on your leg as you work by the window). Food becomes the only connection to the physical.

Before the virus, I was trying to be more ‘flexitarian’. Tofu, beans, curries made with those little spice kits you can get from the supermarket. I ate breakfast and lunch at work, and sometimes dinner, too, snaffled at my desk before dashing out to a dance class or a gallery late. Salads. Those slightly slimy falafel wraps from Tesco that made my stomach cramp. A bag of Jacob’s Crinklys, lip-smacking food of the gods. An overpriced pain-au-chocolat as a Friday morning treat.

My food habits changed rapidly. In mid-Feb, I put aside a small stockpile of canned and dried goods just in case. I’ve been reluctant to touch them, but it’s good just to know I’ve got a tin of rice pudding if I’m desperate. My last meal out was a last-minute, ‘if this is my last supper, let it be a good one’, dive into Shake Shack for the deep indulgence of burger and chips.

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I was fourteen and going through a messy argument with a school friend. You know the sort. The final straw for me was when she said, with real vitriol, “Your mum forced me to wear eyeliner to the disco!”

Now, you can come for many things but come for my mum and our friendship is done.

What my mum had done, generously, was offer to do our makeup for the evening. She did a nice green eyeliner for me, with mascara and a coral lip to go with my blue halter top and pleather flares. It was 2001, man. Dark times for fashion. But whatever, I looked fly and a guy I couldn’t see properly without my glasses tried to put his hand on my bum when we slow danced for thirty seconds, so I guess someone else thought so too.

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