This Time Last Year

/* I have to choose a featured image for this blog and the most disastrous looking photo in my phone lately is the aftermath of a ram raid at Chelsea few days ago. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE. */

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As Malaysia goes into a period of lockdown from 18th to 31st March, I will be publishing a new post on this blog everyday to keep all my friends back home company. This post is part of the #Lockdown series.

Where were you this time last year?

This time last year I was sitting at the airport, waiting to board a plane from London to Kuala Lumpur. My Amazon basket had 150 sheets of dry wipes and two books. One titled The Positive Birth Book: A New Approach to Pregnancy, Birth and the Early Weeks, and the other was How to Grow a Baby and Push it Out: No Nonsense Guide to Pregnancy and Birth. Under the Save For Later list, there was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. I cannot imagine a worse combo.

But no, don’t judge the blogger by her books. I wasn’t pregnant, neither was I bitter nor angry about life. Everything on my Amazon then were gifts, except the dry wipes, of course. No one in my circle of friends is more obsessed with cleaning than I do.

This time last year, everyone was going about their days, happy and angry and learning to mediate. No one gave a flying fish when you coughed in the plane. Friendship had temperature. And the thing that was constantly in short supply was time.

Where are you this time this year?

I am in my bed. My Amazon basket is waiting for 150 masks to suddenly become available. My Save for Later list consists of 150 five-ply loo rolls and another 150 cans of fresh air collected from all over the world.

How were you this time last year?

I was about to qualify as a solicitor. I was learning more about meditation and finding ways to juggle work and social life with the birth of my two-month old back pain.

I wasn’t entirely happy, because many things weren’t at a good place. I struggled to get out of bed in the morning, and I didn’t want to go to sleep at night. But I was mobile. I was running around town and quite literally all over the shop.

This time last year, the only reason that would stop me from going out on a Friday night in London would be that I was not in London.

How are you this time this year?

I have qualified as a solicitor. And everything in my life is so good. I am filled with so much joy and gratitude that all my succulents have names and pigeon droppings on the window makes me feel closer to nature.

But Houseparty now means a bloody app and everyone is intoxicating not themselves but their hands. Weddings are postponed. Birthdays are cancelled. Today is the same as yesterday and tomorrow as well as the day before and the day after and perhaps the week before and the week after and I am not even talking sense anymore.

We now have plenty of time and there are more government’s orders flying around in the sky than airplanes. It’s only been 5 days of isolation and it’s starting to feel unbearable. No one knows how long this will last and things are getting boring. It’s not fun.

Please, could somebody take Covid out on a date, because this very frustrating man really needs to get laid.

With love x

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