One of the greatest things about London are the many and massive parks dotted all over the city and if you don’t have an outdoor space your local park has been the ultimate sanity saviour since lockdown descended. Gyms not open? No problem – welcome to the new franchise of outdoor exercise spaces with zero membership fee and no sweaty changing rooms..
Everyone has clearly been trying to stay fit since Corona descended and this pursuit of cardiovascular activity in the absence of everything else might have irreversibly shaped the nation. Will people just give up on their healthier lifestyles now that normal life has resumed? Will you no longer see people who have clearly never jogged before, puffing and panting their way round, seemingly always on the verge of ‘breaking thru the pain barrier’ or having a full blown heart attack? I already miss those sneaky little fakers who, when you could only leave your house to exercise, were just pretending to do whatever so they could hang out in the park, occasionally lifting a leg to the sky in case the odd cop strolled by.
I actually find just watching people exercise exhausting let alone doing it but I commend their attempts nonetheless. It did appear that everyone had come to the same conclusion which was basically, if I am fitter maybe the evil virus won’t get me. What I find kinda strange is how many people have taken up boxing. Everywhere I go there are people ‘boxercising’. As if they can literally ‘beat the virus’ into submission. Either that or they think they need to toughen up in case society completely falls apart and we have to start fighting each other for food. I don’t know how likely that is anytime soon but out of all the sports to take on at this moment, it’s a weird one because it is impossible to do and keep a distance and not have contact.
I do however love this appropriation of public space and even though they are busier than probably were before lockdown they are still calmer and more relaxed places to be than on the streets. Next week I will feature other activities that the parks have absorbed since everything closed. The question will be, when things reopen will people return to the established venues or continue with this alfresco approach to everything? It will be weather dependent but it looks like its going to be a long hot summer…
We have had a lockdown “of sorts” in this country. Unlike other countries in Europe, like Italy, France and Spain it was far less strict. We’re actually allowed out of our house and we don’t need a certificate to prove reason when we do. We could simply be out on our daily allocated walk. In the above shot, taken in Holland Park, coppers were telling this guy who was having a picnic with his daughter that he shouldn’t be there and rather than move on he gave them a bit of lip back and they actually took it and left. The entire police response to the lockdown that I have seen has mostly been limp, ineffectual and almost pointless.
In Hyde Park, where a lot of the shots from this week and today were taken (and all since the lockdown) you would never even know there was a lockdown on. Actually you can tell, because it’s busier than normal. And people aren’t just exercising, they are hanging out in groups, sunbathing, doing whatever they wish and the police just cycle past and do nothing. I can only come to the conclusion that they have either been told not to interfere or they don’t believe they should. Either way it is not being properly enforced and the general slackness in adherence of the rules from people out and about and the casualness of the U.K approach here does not reflect us being the worst hit country in Europe with the highest death toll.
They said that what happened in Italy couldn’t happen here but it did, and worse. And still our actions do not seem to correlate to the severity of our situation, other than our half-heartedness to dealing with Covid 19 is undoubtedly the reason why we have such a high percentage of fatalities.
It feels like, in the U.K, we cannot marry what we are seeing on the news with what our daily lives consist of. Cognitive dissonance in full effect. It’s like we are in a daze, sleeping walking through this disaster. Either that or we just don’t give a fuck about anyone but ourselves which am starting to think is the case. Our sense of community in this country is so utterly eroded by Brexit and the divisions that it created it also appears to have destroyed our ability to empathise.
I have spoken to friends and family over in Ireland (north and south) and they all say how courteous and respectful everyone is over there to each other. They make sure that they all give each other plenty of space when walking past each other and in London it is the opposite. No-one budges an inch for anyone. It is as if to alter their trajectory one iota would be an insult to them and if you give them a wide berth they seem to take that as an offence. Londoners also have this notion that they are like sharks, if they stop moving they will die.
And am also sick of couples who will not break into single file to walk past you. Surely your relationship is strong enough to be able to handle a moment of separation? And its even worse in the shops, everyone brushing past you to grab something, you turn around and someone is literally on you. And when you flash em the evil eye or ask them to back up (which have done several times) they look at you either oblivious or with indignation, like you are the one with the problem.
I just think if we have been given this luxury to be able to go out on a daily basis the least we can do is try to maintain distance from each other. It’s ironic but I used to go to the parks to get away from people and now there are more people there than on the streets. We all need to get out of the house to not go 100% stir crazy, but we have been given the responsibility to make this lockdown effective in reducing the spread of the virus so we should at minimum do that.
No-one likes to be told what to do but we need to not act like teenagers and accept this is necessary and if it isn’t done properly there was no point in doing it in the first place and our inability to adhere to the rules will just make this go on and on. I guess I should be grateful at least that we don’t have protestors here armed with assault rifles demanding an end to the lockdown. Although there have been occasion when I could have done with an AK-47…just to fire off a few warning shots naturally ;) I obvs don’t want to kill anyone and that’s kinda the point of all this isn’t it? Isn’t that why we’re doing all this?
P. s Some of you might have noticed I have reverted back to colour. I went into black and white at the beginning of the year because everything seemed so despondent and hopeless and that was before Covid (!) I’m not saying things have improved but now I need to steer away from the doom and gloom as a matter of self-preservation. For me colour is optimism. Colour is hope. Colour is the beauty of nature. Colour is a better future. And the skies are just so fucking blue because there is no pollution in the city right now it would be almost masochistic not to show that….
