Lockdown Reflections

This is the fourth week that I’ve been at home since the Lockdown started. Monday to Friday I’m normally on my home until my partner gets back from work, which is usually around lunchtime. Most days I’ve been working from home, I’m lucky enough to be able to do that. Still being at home gives you time to think and as I’ve been adding material to my sketchbook I’ve found myself going back through the pages and annotating it with my thoughts.

After the first two weeks I decided that I needed to get myself into a routine and so I set up a schedule for myself. Nothing to fancy but it provided a bit of structure to the day.

This week I’ve not set myself up with a schedule, I don’t really need it because I’ve taken a few days annual leave, and the company I work for have reminded all staff that even though we are working from home for now, we should still use up our leave because having breaks are important to our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

On some social media platforms people have been sharing posts and tweets about how the Earth has finally decided to heal itself, and the Pandemic is it’s way of doing this, by forcing Mankind to hit the pause button, to stop travelling, to stop doing damage to the environment.

It’s nonsense but it has been nice seeing images of animals like goats and deer wandering around town streets. Seeing skies that have a marked absence of contrails has been nice, as has being able to simple pause and listen to the outside world and not hear the constant hum of traffic or people.

I do think that we are at a point in history where, we have the chance to look at our world; our civilization; the way we live and to decide whether that is the way we continue, or whether we take the opportunity to change.

It has been clear from the groups that have been set up in towns to support those that are unable to look after themselves fully, because they are vulnerable, or are busy putting their own lives at risk, that people are, at heart decent individuals. Events have shown that we are connected to, and depend on, each other in so many ways.

What harms one group, can no longer be taken as something that does not affect us all. Only a century ago Spanish Flu killed between 50 to 100 millions people around the world. It is likely that Coronavirus will not lead to a similar number of deaths but once again we as a world are facing deaths on unimaginable scales. Very few people around the planet will be left untouched by this disease.

Is this the point where Mankind changes and finally starts working towards ensuring the safety of all people, not just those who live in countries where they are relatively safe and not faced with famine, war or disease? Or will, if we survive as a species that long, find ourselves in 2120 facing another Pandemic that threatens to wipe out large numbers of the human race.

Over the years I’ve read novels and watched TV programmes and films where mankind is facing an apocalypse, whether through disease, war or alien invasion. Never did the writers of those stories every mention shortages of flour, toilet roll, pasta, rice, pasta sauce and hand sanitiser. Neither did they mention people spending their time baking bread and cakes or exercising whether outdoors or in front of TV and computer screens.

I wonder what HG Wells would have thought about how our world and its people are dealing with this crisis.

Flicking through some photography magazines I found the article above and separately the image of pawprints. I had to include the two together in my sketchbook “leave nothing but footprints” is how we should be treating nature.

Being under lockdown has given me time to think about things, about my plans, my goals and provided the chance to figure out what is really important to me going forward.

Again, while leaving through a magazine I found an article that resonated with me.

Since I started studying photography on the Foundation in Photography and now the degree course I’ve learned a lot about the subject. Its history, the different techniques that have been developed over the decades, different photographers and their work, and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

I do, however, find myself doubting the quality of my work.

Reading the article helped me to gain a bit of perspective and to appreciate that I’m not the only person that feels like that.

When my son passed away in September 2017 we had been lucky enough to have known he was ill and that there was a chance that he might not make it through the surgery and radiotherapy that he would need. When in the May we found out that his condition had grown worse and was now terminal we still had five months during which to make memories.

Like the photographers mentioned in the article, and several others who have explored what it is like when a close family member dies, we were lucky. So many people around the world aren’t having that chance, aren’t able to make final memories, aren’t able to be with their loved ones when they pass.

When Rhys died I wasn’t at the hospice with him. I’d taken the opportunity to go out for a break. By the time I returned he had gone. Dealing with losing him, dealing with not being at his bedside at the end, has taken a lot of working through, and its still not complete. It never will be. We had time though, we made memories that will last forever, we were able to be there with him, his Gran, Grandad and my wife were there with him at the end. He wasn’t alone or with just a nurse to hold his hand.

What we are experiencing today is going to have effects for many, many years to come, as people around the world deal with the aftermath. For once, we can’t just tell ourselves that something has happened in another part of the world, and be thankful that it doesn’t directly affect us. Now, we can all appreciate just how small our planet is, and how easy it is for us all to be impacted by events.