Rotten tomatoes for the young


Shut the front door. Something actually happened last weekend. 

 

It wasn’t anything cataclysmic, but it was lovely all the same. Robbie came home for Mother’s Day - and also because he had some stuff to pick up.

 

So the three of us enjoyed a weekend together, complete with the full Quarant Inn experience. And having a twentysomething in the house again made me look at the lockdown from a whole new perspective.

 

It’s absolutely true what they say about COVID-19 being hardest on the young.

 

It’s been nearly a year since we all put our lives on hold for the first national lockdown. Brian and I have mostly been okay - when you’re in your sixties, a year passes by in a nanosecond anyway. We don’t expect anything new to happen from one year to the next apart from maybe the appearance of another wrinkle or chin-hair. But for someone in their teens or twenties, a year is potentially life-changing. 

 

This could be when your schooldays end and your university adventure begins, or when you land the job of your dreams. Or perhaps you will meet your future partner, decide to get married or have a baby. 

 

But most of these possibilities have either been watered down or shelved as today’s youth are reduced to limping through a monochrome, substandard version of life in which they work, eat and sleep and have nothing else to look forward to.

 

Robbie described it at the weekend as “life without texture” and I know exactly what he means. All those little things that used to give us joy, comfort, amusement or diversion have all fallen by the wayside. And after a year of this we’ve become so numb and exhausted that we hardly remember what we used to do or how it made us feel.

 

It’s like tomatoes. You buy those pre-packed salad tomatoes, six for a pound, because they’re cheap and tomato-shaped and brighten up your salad. They have no taste whatsoever, but once you’ve become accustomed to these watery, pappy orbs you forget all about how tomatoes are supposed to taste.

 

Take heart, young people. It’ll soon be time to get back into the world and savour the sweet, sweet taste of those metaphorical home-grown Gardeners’ Delights.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let’s play nicely this time

Image
Change is in the air. You can feel it on the streets, in the parks and on the common. Things are gradually easing up and the excitement is palpable. Everyone has responded gleefully to the decree that we’re now allowed out to exercise as many times as we want. People to whom the word “exercise” was once an anathema are now swarming to the nearest open-air space to jog, walk, throw frisbes, kick balls around, ride bikes and generally run amok.  Meanwhile the garden centres have opened at last - to the boundless joy of us older folk for whom the urge to grow stuff seems particularly strong. I went to a nursery last week and joined the queue of happy seniors snaking around the perennials, scooping up bedding plants like gasping nomads who had finally happened upon a water source in the desert. And socially-distancing friends are now allowed to meet up in pairs, provided they walk two metres away from one another. Ha. Doesn’t work. My friend Sue and I tried it the other da
Read more

Google sees inside our soul

Image
Regular readers will be aware of a few facts about our little lockdown bubble. These are a) that I’m exercising online with Joe Wicks; b) Brian and Robbie are working out regularly with weights and c) I’m trying     - not altogether successfully - to grow vegetables. Turns out everyone else is doing pretty much the same thing. According to recent Google search data we’re a resourceful nation with great plans for using this lockdown time to good effect. The gyms may have closed, but not to be thwarted we’ll carry on exercising the best we can in the space we have available.  Not surprisingly, then, the search term “rent gym equipment” is going through the roof. In fact it has mushroomed by a whopping 3,600 per cent over the past 90 days while “yoga online classes” has risen by 800 per cent and "home workout” by 700 per cent. Google also reveals that we won’t be put off by food shortages in supermarkets: instead we’ll grow or bake our own. The search term:  “grow pl
Read more

VE Day takes on a particular poignancy

Image
Tomorrow is the 75 th  anniversary of VE Day. By the time World War Two officially ended, people had been struggling for years with food shortages and restrictions. Their love-lives had stalled and their careers had been put on hold. And many had lost family members and friends.  So VE Day marked a bitter-sweet occasion when some were able to celebrate the return to a new normal while others reflected on what they’d lost. Sounds familiar? It seems entirely fitting that we’ll be celebrating the 75 th anniversary of VE Day in our own homes, under lockdown and with our careers and lives on hold. And weirdly, the occasion also happens to coincide with the expected easing of lockdown conditions due to be announced on Sunday. Every November we observe a two-minute silence for our war heroes before immediately resuming our Sunday routines. We head to the shops, go to the pub or get together with friends. So until now we have had little in common with the wartime generatio
Read more