The novelty is wearing very thin now. It is in fact the only aspect of lockdown that is thin, since Melanie and Mike have each gained several pounds by doing almost nothing for several weeks except eat.
What for Melanie began as a welcome interlude from the frantic bustle of daily life has become a nightmare of suspended animation. She can’t wait to return to the job she loathes with the boss she despises and the colleagues who bore her rigid. On the other hand she needs lockdown to continue for at least another month to give her time to lose all the weight she’s put on. However unless restrictions are lifted soon she will certainly be arrested for breaching the peace in Sainsbury’s. For Melanie is finding it increasingly hard to muster the docile submission required to obey the ubiquitous signs and arrows and uniformed supervisors and public-address instructions and tape-marks on the floor that now control her weekly shop. She watches the other shoppers moving in silent slow-motion like scuba-divers over the ocean floor, and she longs to break the Zen-like calm by charging up and down the aisles shrieking like a banshee and sweeping loo rolls off the shelves.
While Melanie resists morphing into a Stepford-wife, for Mike the formless days of lockdown stretch ahead like a barren landscape. He missses his mates. He even misses the office. But Zoom and Houseparty offer no relief from his lonely besiegement: Mike is a man – he doesn’t chat. Not unless he’s doing something important at the same time, like playing golf or cycling. And even then he only chats about sport. Melanie doesn’t understand that his long silences signify that he is in mourning for lost Arsenal fixtures. She just thinks he’s being grumpy. Mike has been in captivity for so long and is so desperate for male companionship that when he sees Michael Gove on the Daily Briefing he develops Stockholm Syndrome and starts praising both backstabbing and QPR. This has Melanie thoroughly alarmed and the moment B&Q reopens Mike is sent there to be cured, like the faithful to Lourdes.
Shuffling around the B&Q carpark for several hours with hundreds of other men and discussing the future of the 5-day test match with his queueing neighbours does the trick, but it was a close-run thing. To think he was once contemplating early retirement – Mike is now grimly resolved to work until he drops down dead. He never again wants to feel that way about Michael Gove.
© C P Jenkinson 04/05/2020
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