I wrote the majority of this in 2020. To be honest, my dashboard is full of drafts I’ve written and never published. I have added some small edits to this, but have left the rest intact. It is revealing to return to what I was thinking about, what I worried about, what I missed, and what I remembered.

1.

I decided to migrate over from tinyletter to Substack last summer. I remember the day I did so: I was shadowing a campus thesis boot camp, I was writing a draft of a book proposal, and a draft of a conference seminar paper. According to the sole other post on this substack, my sinuses were acting up, but I don’t remember that. I do remember leaving that boot camp to get on a train to Sallins that evening, and whereas the train was perfectly insufferable it was a lustrous sunny evening all the same: the pollen count was probably why my sinuses were hurting. Anyway, before I made my journey, I posted on facebook inviting people to subscribe to this new substack. Over the following months I thought about what would make a decent piece of writing to post out. I thought about listing all the music I listened to in 2019, and I thought about writing about how it made me feel. You know, stuff like ‘at number nine, here’s how MUNA’s Saves The World soundtracked a really bad October, and a really bad November at that too’, but hopefully better phrased than that. I thought about probably naming it ‘New Love Cassette’ as a nod and a wink to one of my favourite albums from that year.

And then I never posted anything at all.

2.

I think about, before this pandemic shut down the country and most of the world, how I spent hours on buses and trains commuting to teach university students every week. I love teaching, but I didn’t love the travelling. In the few days before Leo Varadkar announced that all colleges, schools, and public institutions were to close, public transport became an ever more fraught experience. My mother sent me off on that Sunday evening (I lived at home when I wasn’t teaching) with a Ziploc of disinfectant wipes, which I kept in my handbag along with a small bottle of hand sanitiser I had brought home from America the year before. One of my bus journeys, thankfully the longest bus journey one I had to take on my commute, was empty enough that I had a seat to myself. Some of these journeys, on the shorter inner-city buses, obviously weren’t as empty. I would sit down on one of these buses with my bags, tensing my entire body up in an effort to not touch anyone. On my train journeys, I would wipe down the table and my laptop before the train would leave the station. It is 2022 now, and I still do that. At least on the train, you can go to the bathroom every now and again to give your hands a wash. But this doesn’t help my compulsive thinking, you see.

3.

It’s fairly strange how, living in the countryside on the west coast of Ireland means that I am isolated from a lot of my friends and loved ones, but it takes a pandemic for me to really appreciate how sequestered I am.

4.

Everyone jokes about how no one has heard of Zoom until this pandemic hit, and that it is all a ruse for Zoom to make money. Honestly, Zoom makes me regret buying this cheap laptop in the January sales.

5.

The last time I was really, truly, very happy was early February 2020. I flew over to London for a Carly Rae Jepsen concert, and then surprisingly a job interview (in short: I didn’t get it, but one of my best friends did, which is always a win). The evening I flew in, R and I sat in a pub in St. Pancras, and while he went to get us a round I felt overwhelmed with this strong, happy feeling that I was back somewhere I belonged. It might have been the ale, but I also think it was being in London with one of my best friends, and being in a place where many of my close friends are. We got on a train home — I bought us tinnies from M&S, because that’s what we always do on a train back to R’s — then wandered around Tesco, and came back to the house to watch Gosford Park. Gosford Park is immense fun when you’re drunk and eating Mini Cheddars, by the way. It is also immense fun when you’re sober the next day and are wondering why on earth Lady Sylvia McCordle is married to Sir William and bonking Ryan Phillippe when she is clearly a lesbian.

6.

In the early days I sometimes went for walks with my mother. The surrounding land is isolated enough that we rarely saw anyone around, but I still got nervous if the wind sounded like a car bolting down the road behind us. The roads are narrow: if you wanted to stand two metres apart from someone walking towards you, you would have to start edging yourself into the hedgerows. Before the lockdown was announced on 27 March, my mother took me in the car to Mullaghmore, just to get us out of the house. Mullaghmore, for those who don’t know, is a seaside village in Sligo: on a good day, people walk on the beach, along the pier, and eat ice-creams while strolling around the vivid green. It’s beautiful. Lord Mountbatten also got blown up there, so I sometimes wondered how they’re going to re-enact that in The Crown. (My mother assures me that they recreated Mullaghmore quite faithfully in that episode. Apparently the place looked quite different back in the early 80s.) His castle, Classiebawn, is still there, if you look carefully when you’re driving along the route that goes into the village. I asked Mum if we could take the scenic route: that is, you take the back roads that loop up back towards home, but along the way you can see the sea vistas, the stretches of brilliant blue that go up to Donegal. We stood on the grassy edge, looking at the coast and at the sea crashing on the rocks. I took some photos of the sea and the cliffs to send to a group chat of my friends like I said I would. A group of people, a few metres away, were walking along the road, one pushing a pram. I say, warningly, Mum, there’s people. She says, They’re not aliens.

7.

A few days later, R and I went to London again, to meet up with some friends before I went to L-C and J’s for the rest of my stay. I don’t remember the name of the pub: it’s somewhere near the British Library, and their Guinness wasn’t too bad either. (Before I quit drinking, I always found myself pleasantly surprised when English pubs manage to do a decent job of pouring Guinness.) But I do remember sitting at that table with my friends, in close proximity to each other — being in close proximity to friends, reaching out to hug someone, pass someone a glass, now isn’t that something you take for granted! S lives in the same neighbourhood as L-C and J, so she caught the DLR back with me. I remember the two of us now, collapsed onto the train with my cumbersome pink suitcase. I think it was my first time ever taking the DLR, and S was very forbearing of how much of a novelty this was for me. (Note: most things are a novelty for me, I suppose. I get excited when I see lighthouses, and also trawlers. You get the idea.) It was a late Friday, it was a pleasant train journey with a dear friend, and then I was delivered into L-C and J’s care, where we sat up till 1am at their kitchen table. I made everyone listen to Titanic Rising, then J played some Arthur Russell, I was drinking a craft beer that I don’t remember the name of, there’s a lovely picture I took of L-C and J that night that’s lit only by candlelight. Eventually I drank some very effective sleepy tea, the one with the bear in a nightcap nodding off in his armchair, and I fell soundly asleep on their futon. As far as I can recall, it was the fastest I have ever fallen asleep in some time.

8.

I have started doing yoga most days now, and so has the rest of the world. I sometimes think about how my younger sixteen-year-old self, obsessed with being thin, made herself do several plank exercises every single day. These days, I am fatter and happier about it, but Adriene sure was keen on doing the plank pose the further I got into this thirty-day programme. I struggle with these planks now: my entire body begins to tremble while I try to steady my breath. I much prefer when I get to do the warrior poses. That’s not a hackneyed metaphor, by the way: at least with the warrior poses I can stand up for a bit.

9.

The next day, L-C and I walked to a bus stop somewhere near Greenwich. She took me through the Foot Tunnel: one thing that strikes me now when I try to remember it is how the tunnel is lit. We said that it was lit like it was in a movie, and because I have a visual memory all I can see in my mind’s eye is myself and herself walking slowly in this sickly dim yellow passage. While other people ran, walked, generally kept their distance, I tried to imagine the weight of the Thames above us. I try not to imagine trying to practice social distancing while walking that tunnel.

10.

I sometimes joke to my friends that ‘when I said I was getting tired of commuting, I didn’t mean like this!’ I think an awful lot about the Simpsons episode, ‘Treehouse of Horror II’, and about Bart’s dream — it’s one of the few Treehouse of Horror episodes that don’t name the specific segments — about the mysterious monkey paw that grants wishes with a price. (In fact, having seen this recently I don’t think I’m the only one.) After Kang and Kodos have invaded the world, Homer grabs the paw and wastes the family’s last wish on a turkey sandwich. ‘I don’t want any zombie turkeys, I don’t want to turn into a turkey myself,’ he instructs the monkey paw, ‘and I don’t want any other weird surprises. You got it?’ Despite the ‘nice hot mustard, good bread, the turkey’s a little dry… the turkey’s a little dry!’

11.

That Saturday night, I go to the Carly Rae Jepsen concert. It is perhaps one of the most joyous live music experiences that I have ever attended. I gulp down my water, flail my arms around, sing along loudly to every song. I had been dancing and singing with my friend M’s friends — Carly’s music is that much of a leveller, it’s something to bond over. Carly returns to the stage to the sound of all of us singing the post-chorus ‘ah-ah, ah-ah’ from ‘Party For One’ back at her. While I walk towards the exit to meet L-C and J so we can go home, drink tea, and watch Simpsons episodes, I whip out my phone to check twitter. The Irish election exit poll shows Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Sinn Féin all neck and neck, indicating that for the first time the two-party system has finally broken. I sometimes wonder if anyone noticed the Irish woman in the Pillow Queens shirt and pink skirt, screaming ‘FUCKING HELL!’ as she looked at her phone.

12.

As Richard II says in Shakespeare’s play, So much for that.