It’s the 5th anniversary of lockdown. Which means it’s the 5th anniversary of the avalanche of maudlin claptrap, the torrent of twee, that accompanied it.
As a keen spotter of the slushy scene in general, I opened up a dedicated folder of lockdown-related goo on my computer in spring 2020, where I preserved some of the worst examples. I knew I had to log this stuff, or I’d forget. Or simply become blinded by hindsight and never be able to appreciate the depths of the saccharine mine to which we plunged as a nation.
So this anniversary feels like an appropriate time to get some of it out again, and go back to those days when we lost our liberties and many of us lost our marbles.
What strikes me first as I swipe through my lockdown souvenirs? An inability among far too many to respond in any way appropriately to the seriousness of what was happening. That, when tested, the deracinated Britain of 2020 responded with a carnival cocktail of the tacky, the hysterical and the meaningless.
One of the bigger examples we all still remember was the weekly ‘Clap for Carers’, where we were encouraged to stand on our doorstep clapping or rattling kitchenware for the doctors and nurses of the NHS (the less-glamorous ‘essential workers’, from wastewater-treatment operators to delivery drivers, didn’t get a look-in). Where previous generations would have been united in prayer, we stood in the streets every Thursday evening and clattered cutlery – thoughtful silence replaced by meaningless noise. Our strange relationship with the NHS as exposed in the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony – as if we lived in the only country with hospitals – was on full view again. And then nurses began to choreograph dance routines to go viral, which was supposed to cheer us up but looked oddly flippant, considering all the sickness and death.
They weren’t the only ones trying to lift our spirits. Lockdown celebrities soon emerged – Captain Tom in his garden, Joe Wicks and his physical jerks, Sophie Ellis-Bextor with her kitchen discos. What was so strange about all this was that it assumed that we are a society that is normally engaged in large communal activities, for which we now urgently needed virtual replacements. But nobody ever went to the gym or a nightclub, or for a walk in their garden, to feel community spirit.
Then there was the fetishisation of silence and emptiness. ‘Nature is healing’, which though it very quickly became an ironic meme, was a virtuous slogan for a while. Attached to videos of planeless skies or empty parks, it was a telling sign that too many viewed normal human activity as being somehow unnatural, a besmirchment.
Throughout that first lockdown, online socialising was ceaselessly championed. There were the endless quizzes, the Zoom reunions of the casts of every old TV show you could think of, which got tired very quickly – ‘oh look, there’s DJ Jazzy Jeff looking slightly older’. Worst of all were the perpetual listen-a-longs and watch-a-thons, where thousands of people listened to a record or watched a TV show at the same time and poured out their thoughts. Did this actually create a sense of fellow feeling and community? No, not really. It felt very much like the scrolling tsunami of a comments section during a big livestream, with everybody talking and nobody listening.
Some other memories from my folder. There was an outbreak of amazingly awful poetry on Facebook – ‘No visitors can come to me, No flowers will pass my door, For a virus has come for us, That makes our chest, throat and head sore’. And we were bombarded with video ‘content’ from bored celebrities, who confirmed our worst suspicions that they literally cannot function without being seen. The worst of these came early, with one featuring Hollywood stars taking a line each of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, the most depressing and vacuous hymn in our secular canon.
There was often a ridiculous lack of perspective, too, not least from members of my own profession. ‘I feel like I’m living in The Handmaid’s Tale’, a Times writer wailed, because she had to do her own housework. ‘I crawled in bed and cried for our pre-pandemic lives’, tweeted CNN’s Brian Stelter. ‘Tears that had been waiting a month to escape. I wanted to share because it feels freeing to do so. Now is not a time for faux-invincibility. Journos are living this, hating this, like everyone else.’ Thanks Bri – I’m sure everybody was really worried about journalists.
In fact, many news journalists were having the time of their lives. The excruciating daily government press conferences were always followed up by inane questions from the floor. It later turned out that none of the right questions about lockdowns was being asked. (And, as the Covid inquiry has shown, these questions still aren’t.) There were times when you could get a clearer idea of the day’s events from watching the 533rd showing of Carry On Girls on ITV3. It couldn’t leave you any less informed than Beth Rigby whinging like an adenoidal Goldilocks that the new lockdown guidance was too soon / too late / too much / too little / too confusing / too simple, ad infinitum. And then there was Robert Peston’s wibbling. ‘What does two metres apart “where possible” mean? Shouldn’t it just be “two metres apart”?’
People forget how hysterical and madly irresponsible the media were, and how much conflicting information was out there. Previously reputable and reliable sources turned out to be peddling bunk. Certifiable loonies suddenly seemed to be nearer to the truth. The hysteria and the party-political shrieking ratcheted up and up. The one time we really needed some careful, calm journalism – and the press were running about like Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army.
We had lockdowns because, well, everybody else was having a lockdown, and the media across the Western world went bananas, exercising power without responsibility or accountability. The contagion of lockdowns spread. Unseen, unremembered even now, were the awful, needlessly solitary deaths and empty funerals. Terrible things blotted out in the tsunami of schmaltz.
Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter, author and novelist, best known for his work on Doctor Who.
