Eighty One Minutes in the Life of Craig Barr-Green
Have you ever seen Mary Poppins? The old one. At the start of the film, Bert (played by Dick Van Dyke) is walking around a small London park, equipped with the apparatus to play a one-man-band. Off duty, he walks with a persistent clunk-clank, boom-crash-smash of percussion. On duty, he prances and lollops, wheezing an accordion and blasting horns. My brain is Bert’s one-man-band. Even off duty, my mind is a chaotic clattering. All instruments played at once: none well.
I have Aspergers and ADD. In some ways, my techniques for feeling balanced in this crisis are the same as I used before. Only now, the rest of the world seems to have joined in. But that doesn’t mean that my techniques are very good. It was still a seismic shock to watch the world judder to a halt and shut down so completely. It all happened so quickly in a blur of emails and headlines.
I spent an early night of lockdown pacing like a pigeon in a prison yard (doing time for a crime it didn’t commit). Bobbing head, blinking eyes, the scent of freedom still on its wings. My wife is used to my pacing. Sometimes it’s more lost tourist, sometimes more BFG, but it turned out that in times of global crisis: pigeon.
We formulated plans. Studied Italy, Germany, France. We worried about family and food and money and schools and the elderly and cancellations and every possible outcome.
Skip forward a few weeks from that evening of pigeon pacing.
It is 10.04 on the 11th April and I am in my garden: a small, grey square dominated by a whirligig washing line and moving shadows. The concrete floor is cracked. The furniture has been curated in the style of ‘1990s knackered patio’. The sun is blazing. I have a nice pot of green tea brewing in a nice Norwegian glass teapot. I am amused by how Middle Class that feels, and how Middle Class I have become. This would have appalled the younger me. The stream (or is it a river?) is positively whoooosssshing past our back garden; as gleefully giddy as a child, high on Haribo, zipping face-first down a slide. In the smothered-by-blankets lockdown silence, the sound of the river (or is it a stream?) is amplified. It is happy, and it knows it and is clapping its hands.
The neighbours’ dog is barking at the breeze, or an ant, or a thought, or god-knows-what, but that’s ok. We are in this together. Breathe in love and all that. A bushy-tailed black cat is perched up high on a wall and giving me a look midway between ‘what?’ and ‘fuck off.’ Good for them! What cats do is none of my business so long as they aren’t kidnapping my guinea pigs for questioning or defrauding the elderly. Cats have it in them.
Our house, which today looms over me like a kind Disney bear, is quietly enjoying the peaceful sunny atmos’. Somewhere inside, and way up high, my clever wife is conjuring a new novel. The children won’t stir for some time. My arms are worryingly pink. I burn easily: sometimes a bright room or a stern look is enough to singe my skin.
When lockdown began there was too much pressure to do new, incredible things: whittle a kayak; learn the bassoon; get a six pack and shoulders like Ryan Gosling; practice origami; paint paint paint paint paint; fill every hour with new skills and new crafts and learn a language, you, and for god’s sake finish your novel you lazy bastard!
Said the internet.
So I avoided all of that. I slowed down. I am breaking the day into chunks. I try to be incredibly busy in the morning and not eat until midday. This makes the afternoon shorter, somehow, and the arrival of the evening as a pleasant surprise. Take that, mind. I tricked you. Who’s the boss now? Eh?
I have become (whisper it) productive. I have been writing. Plays and treatments and children’s stories; pulling old ideas out of digital drawers and questioning their abandonment. Discarded ideas have prooved like dough in my mental cupboards. Still haven’t sorted the novel, though.
I have craved input. I have been reading more. Books. Essays. Draft manuscripts. I have a reading pile! I’ve been munching through culture like a post-pub pipe of Pringles. (Oh god I miss pubs!) I’ve binged on podcasts and ploughed through music. Just before lockdown, to slow myself down I bought some old cassettes. I wanted to hear the satisfying clunk of buttons and to be burdened with the analogue chore of rewinding. I wanted to hold the art rather than absorbing it digitally. My dad bought me a cassette player, noting that I didn’t actually own such a thing, which was the flaw in my plan that I hadn’t noticed. I do jigsaws, slowly. I commit to every activity.
We have been making curries and chutneys. We have used that massive Italian cookbook, and planned our meals. The children have been baking bread that I can’t eat but that smells incredible. I am trying to put meaning into everything here to counter the absence of meaning everywhere else.
I check the news like one might have checked the news before the internet: in bulletins. In quick lungfuls. I swallow it down quickly like a foul, fat pill. The plight of NHS workers is overwhelmingly distressing. I check the stats and the charts and the predictions. It makes my fingers tingle: the magnitude of it all; the micro and the macro; the ripple down effects; the fury and the blame and the impotency and the wild frustration. I desperately try to find balance: to be informed, but not to sink into analysis paralysis. To understand but not to hypothesise every possible worst-case scenario. It’s an impossible balance. Guilt resurfaces every few hours.
My laptop keys are warm. I can hear dog walkers and a small child somewhere far away. Sound carries far, now. I resist the urge to pedantically estimate the numbers involved and whether rules are being flouted.
Balance.
The other day, while running along a countryish track, a fawn ran past me before skidding away in the undergrowth. I saw a red squirrel in the trees behind my house. The dolphins are taking a spring break in Venice and the goats are having a lovely time wandering Llandudno.
It is now 11.25. Since staring this piece I have checked my phone twice: once to look at Instagram (guilty!) and once to text my wife, to ask if she would like a coffee. The river is still on the slide - still happy. The dog is still barking, but the yaps are more playful. Gentler. It has given up and given in and is finding peace in its own garden. It will get a walk some time soon.
At the time of going to press we are healthy and there is food and I am looked after and have others to look after in return. I appreciate that I am extraordinarily lucky and millions are not. Having a garden, however small, is such a privilege. I think it’s ok to enjoy these small moments of calm. To celebrate small victories. To be thankful that the children that are coping. To be part of a work community that genuinely cares. To smile at an unexpected, kind message. To appreciate being safe. Feeling loved.
My mind is restless. The one man band is striking up for a tune / tuning up to strike.
One day at a time.
I’ll make the coffee.
by Craig Barr-Green