About three weeks ago, two weeks later than my native country Belgium, the UK government decided to mandate full lockdown. Schools closed, pubs closed, shops closed if they weren’t essential. Bath turned from a flourishing shopping town to a near ghost town, tumbleweed blowing through the street and a shutter slamming open and closed in the wind somewhere. Only slightly exagerating.

We’re asked to stay home if our work allows it, leaving only once a day for exercise. We’re part of the middle class lucky people who can actually go into lockdown. None of us are ‘key workers’, none of us have to be out there for hours on minimum wage because we still have to pay rent and buy food. My livelihood isn’t threatened, I can work remote fine, Joe’s is only slightly compromised (showcases and exhibitions will have to wait until autumn) so we just have to bear with it until it’s over.

The appartment is both reassuring, safe surroundings and high-end jail. We’re your standard introverts, our idea of a good day includes reading a good book, playing a board game or a video game. Seeing people is optional but not required. Even so, what is denied suddenly becomes attractive: a chat with an acquaintance, a drive to a nature area, a wander in Bristol, checking out an exhibition, catching a movie seem highly desirable even though we often couldn’t be fussed to go out and do them when we could.

We stay in touch with family and close friends, the screen a window into another place, and we exchange worries and stories. We wish each other well, and wish we could reach across the internet for a hug.. We hope our elders won’t catch the virus, but are completely powerless. My parents are doctors so well placed to use an informed judgment, but I also have a relative with a compromised immune system, and she’s often in my thoughts.

Non-parents hail the absence of commute, the sudden oceans of time allowing them to hone their skills, acquire new hobbies or get loads done. Not so for people who had the misfortune to procreate relatively recently: we suddenly acquired an extra job. Our week days have become hectic and tightly scheduled. Again, we are lucky: our little person is seven years old, which means she is fairly self-sufficient. She’s not four and requiring full-time attention, or 14 and horrified at being locked in with the most cringe-worthy people on the planet. Even so it’s hard work, become a combination of teacher, entertainer and ersatz friend on top of everything else. No new hobbies for us, unless you count papier mache, cosmic yoga for kids or and times tables drill master. In the last few months, I’ve reflected that I’d like to spend more time with my little person while she’s still young, and I’d also like to get more sleep. Well, the universe provided - I do get a little bit more sleep, and I definitely see a lot more of her. She seems to enjoy it. I guess I should enjoy the good since there’s not much I can do about the bad.

There’s added stress, and not all from the crazy schedule: I’ve heard it said that this whole situation, the virus, is uniquely suited to make us anxious. It’s an invisible, mostly unquantified enemy we have trouble assessing. It triggers fight our flight in our stone age brains, but none of these reactions are appropriate, and we’re left with excess hormones and nowhere to go. The daily outing for exercise becomes a necessity. I’ve started exercising every single day - a controlled outburst of frustration and anxiety and a measure of freedom all at once. At least the weather has been fantastic. One day out of two I run, and the other day I hook up the little person’s bike to mine and we wander through streets we haven’t seen before, just to get a touch of adventure. Keeping a careful distance from everyone else.

Food shopping, never enthralling, is now no fun at all. Food delivery, my preferred option, is out - it is now, quite rightly, reserved to the most vulnerable. Once a week, I painstakingly prepare a shopping list, get some disposable rubber gloves on (that we had from before the epidemic, obviously) and go in. At the start of the lockdown the shelves were bare, but they’ve rationed things, and now you can get most things except flour and eggs, because everybody seems to be baking things. Which is not a great hardship since you can buy actual bread and cakes. I take the biggest size of trolley and join the queue - because there are queues at pretty much any hour of the day now, since the number of people in the shop is strictly limited. The shopping experience itself is a bit weird, some people seem to be completely oblivious and some are looking at fellow humans with more than a touch of paranoia, almost pressing themselves into the isles in an effort to avoid others.

I don’t know what to think about the clapping for the NHS every night. It’s good? I think? Definitely thankful for the existence of medical personnel and their dedication to the job. But really, we should pay doctors and nurses better, and make sure hospitals are stocked up with all the equipment they need. Money where the mouth is and all that. I wonder if we’ll do a better job of that after this disaster. I’m increasingly wondering whether this will change us as individuals, or whether it will change society. I’d like to think it will, for the better: that we’ll appreciate ‘key workers’ more, and that they’ll get rewarded for their efforts. It partially depends on us: if popular opinion drives change, politicians will follow. But then I’ve lost faith in my fellow citizens and their ability to distinguis pearls from big piles of steaming shit, so I’m not holding my breath.

But first, Let’s see how long this lockdown lasts, and how sane we all are at the end of it.