Lockdown - One Year On

No doubt the internet will be awash with journalistic analysis of a year in lockdown. For my own sanity I’ve collected my own thoughts in a huge big post that I wouldn't encourage anyone to read. I just don’t want to forget some of the elements of this unique part of history. Simultaneously the most interesting and boring year of our lives.

Covid-19 dribbled into the public consciousness sometime at the end of 2019. Like SARS, Bird Flu, Pig Flu and all the other flu’s before it, it didn't mean much to us. In the wedding band, we laughed at our sax player Gordy who was starting to carry anti-bacterial gel around with him. I’d stand playing the Trumpet wondering who in the band was stinking of vodka.

On the 14th of March, Rachel finished the second of two sold out dates at the Glasgow Comedy Festival. Events were starting to be cancelled, but the general consensus was that it was going to be okay as long as there was anti-bac gel provided.

Holiday of a lifetime

The plan after that was to go to the states for for 5 weeks for my 40th. Austin for SXSW to New Orleans to Mississippi to Memphis to Nashville and home. SXSW had already been cancelled at the start of the week, but we were still hoping that we’d make our flight on the 16th. We’d managed to get a better hotel for a steal, and Franklin’s BBQ was still open.

Over the next few days things gradually got cancelled and disappeared. We had the holiday of a lifetime all booked and paid for and it was gradually slipping out our grasp. We held on to the bitter end determined to make it over there, but eventually Trump announced that UK nationals weren't going to be let in. We didn’t know what state the country would be in by the end of the 5 weeks - if we were going to be able to go anywhere, or if would end up in a refugee camp in Mississippi in the midst of Trump’s impending race war not able to chose the side we wanted. The Deep South wasn’t really the place to be re-enacting the Walking Dead.

We now had to work out what our rights were. The insurance companies sent us friendly messages to let us know that we weren’t covered. Booking.com, airbnb and Budget car rentals were great. Full refunds. No questions. All sorted. British airways was another story. I was spending hours and hours on the phone to them. Until the flights were cancelled they weren’t obliged to do anything. Then they wanted to give us gift vouchers and air miles. After months of stubbornness, I eventually got a full refund about 3 months after it was promised.

The holiday had taken the best part of a year to plan. We’d looked forward to it while watching documentaries about fried chicken and Blues music and New Orleans witches and all sorts. To say we were disappointed was an understatement.

Heading North

We decided that since we’d cleared all our work schedules anyway, we’d drive north to see some nature as a consolation prize.

It was a strange feeling, we had pockets full of holiday refund money, but we had no idea how our incomes would be affected and for how long. On one hand it seemed reckless spending money, on the other hand I’d already been called a pessimist for suggesting that events could be cancelled in April as well as March.

We decided that we’d looked forward to a holiday for so long that we'd treat ourselves. We had a night at the Kingshouse Hotel in glencoe.

Chateau Briannd and expensive sheets were the perfect place to plan our next movements. We decided that we’d not make decisions. We’d book airbnb and hotels day by day - roughly heading north. We were going where Covid hadn’t been yet, so we felt it was as safe as staying at home. We roughly headed up the north coast 500 and found ourselves holed up in Mallaig. We were starting to be the only people in hotels.

From Mallaig it was on to Skye. Listening to news reports and watching things slowly close down around us. We found a wee bolt hole in Skye with a log fire and plenty cuddling space and a decent internet connection and then spent three days climbing mountains and driving round the stupendous scenery. We definitely saw some more obscure corners that we wouldn't have seen if we’d just been rattling round the North coast 500.

So Rachel had a TV friend that had retreated home to Orkney. We toyed with heading there for a wee while. We had a car full of pot noodles, dried pasta and bog roll, so we weren't depleting local resources, but the general consensus was that people shouldn’t be on holiday in remote areas or climbing mountains or anything to ease the burden on the NHS. We were also spending money that we might need in future months, cos this thing wasn’t going away. Skye was starting to fill up with English number plates and camper vans. The lay-bys were getting blocked off by the local authorities and we decided we’d not add to the problem.

Back to work

We headed back to Glasgow. It hadn’t been New Orleans, but it had given us some headspace to work out how we were going to deal with a global pandemic. We’d gone from earning enough in the creative arts to afford extended holidays in the US and one planned for India in the Autumn, to not knowing where the next wage was coming from. The advice from the media was to start the process of applying for universal credit. The website told of a waiting list of several months just to get to enter your data.

Rachel had launched her own production company with the pantomime at the comedy festival, so her next few weeks would be focused on pulling her people together for podcasts and work out how much could be done in terms of sketch writing and production from home. This culminated in a half hour of sketches created during lockdown. The podcast is ongoing, but eventually there was enough telly work back and up running that her “solo” projects were going on less furiously.

I had deliberately tied up all my work for a holiday, so it was a case of restarting it. I put out a few posts offering up my services. I didn't really know whether I would end up doing lots of zoom teaching, or online gigs or what. I quickly had a handful of clients taking the bait and was able to work out what was possible working remotely.

It was fascinating watching how all the fellow creatives dealt with the new environment. I found my creative energies were really ebbing and flowing. Sometimes I was furiously working away until the early hours and questioning whether I’d drank some bad milk that had an amphetamine effect. Other times I’d struggle to complete the most mundane tasks and think “if only I could go to the cinema…..”.

There were two types of creatives. There were ones that really levelled up and learned new skills. Audio interfaces and ring lights were flying off the shelves. There were others who even now are still just grumpily waiting for things to get back to normal one year on so that they can play gigs to empty rooms on Sauchiehall street again.

I realised that I had to facilitate content creation from the ones that still wanted to create if I wanted to keep working. I gave out tripods and cameras and lights and recording equipment and microphones to various musicians. My studio window became a portal for musicians passing in and out SD cards.

As a performer my two main instruments are Trumpet and Drums. You’d struggle to come up with two instruments that are less suitable for rehearsing, performing and recording in a flat. For the trumpet, I started going out in the car and recording in lay-bys in the middle of nowhere with a laptop and battery powered audio interface. For the drums, I filled them with jumpers and hoodies and created a “Dead kit”. I then used this to trigger midi samples. I was really chuffed that I’d pulled this off and I used it on a few tracks that got released, but it only works for certain tracks and mixes.

Once I’d crossed all those bridges, I’d created the tools I needed to work and to offer clients services. The next stage was to manage the working environment. Usually I get the whole house to myself to make a mess, but Rachel was doing the same; Making sketches and producing telly. This meant that sometimes I’d surface from the studio(or spare bedroom) at 8pm at night and the living room had been commandeered by her content creation. We rejigged things so that the living room was more living space and less working space and dismantled drum kits and studio outboard to fit both of us in the studio. This let us shut the door on work and enjoy each others company in our own house. This resulted in me having a TV in my house for the first time since about 2005. Covid rings the changes :)

Downtime

Previous generations had been asked to make various sacrifices to history. This generation spent a year watching telly. It became the main discussion point when you caught up with friends online.

“have you seen any good documentaries or films?”

Less telly was getting made. Studios didn’t want to put out films and content and waste it on digital releases. Everyone was sharing tips for what to do when you’d re-watched all of Line of duty or the 5th time.

An early success of this was Tiger King. Any other year and Carole Baskin and Joe Exotic wouldn't have become household names and memes. After this we didn’t really know where to look for content. It’s become a year long ongoing challenge to occupy our downtime. After accepted the situation, we only needed a 10 minute update rather than 24 hour rolling news of the latest pundit chat on Covid and vaccines. In contrast, the American presidential election became a spectator event like never before. I would trawl twitter(I was never a big twitterer) and shout “trump’s woke up!!!” from the other room just about lunchtime.

In an attempt to feel less guilt at watching so much telly, I started to collect lists and books of old films. The downtime became a bit of a study for music video ideas. I was finding it easier to turn off to Powell and Pressburger classics and Hitchcock than it was to formulaic real crime documentaries after a while.

We tried various alternatives. We will be the only generation who will ever know what they wouldn't have done with infinite downtime. I now know that I won’t learn French, or finally learn to play the piano or develop a six pack if left in a home on my own with loads of downtime. It’s quite freeing. I don’t know if it was serendipitous or by accident, but Pixar’s film of the year was ‘Soul’ which followed the main character’s discovery that maybe music wasn’t his true calling. I wonder how many creatives waiting for the pubs to open again thought that hit a bit too close to home?

I bought pencils and paper and had visions of drawing. It’s happened twice, and one was for music video transitions. I looked out some boardgames. Are they really that fun with two people? Eventually I got far more into reading, but it was really a ‘month 10’ thing. The world all tried to learn to cook the perfect home loaf. I was no stranger to this. I cultivated my own sourdough starter and bought special flours. It really just became an excuse to eat copious amounts of butter. I don’t think I ever succeeded in creating anything that couldn’t be bettered by bakeries that were 5 minutes walk away.

Cooking used to be my relaxation. I enjoy spending 30 mins chopping veg for a simple soup. That kind of got taken away from me. I was running out of cooking ideas and getting bored with my own creations. We embraced hello fresh and then gousto for this. Gone were the sigh’s of frustration as you tried to remember which one of your three pasta dishes you cooked last.

Early in the lockdown, supermarkets became a challenge. If you could get a home delivery, you were probably depriving one from someone more vulnerable and needing than you were, but at the same time you had to try and minimise how much contact you were making with other people. You would get a “big shop” in like a military operation only to realise you’d forgotten something. You’d judge shops that were open as you wondered how essential posh candle shops were, but after a while you realised that a posh candle could be someone’s escapism, or the walk to get it could be their solace that prevents them falling off the wagon.

Exercise

My first reaction to home exercising was that ‘we’ would do yoga every morning. Rachel quickly told me that her yoga practice was a solo thing and that I wasn't getting involved. She clearly didn’t want my downward dog showing hers up.

I think I can count on one hand how many times I yoga’d.

We were encouraged to take daily exercise while also discouraged to not leave the house for too long. Our daily walk and/or run became a people watching adventure to our stimulation starved minds. You’d see a lot of old men wandering around aimlessly; their past 20 years spent propping up bars and hiding from their wives. You started to realise how important these places were for elderly male mental health. Even a year on, we regularly see people sitting outside them with a wee ‘Pocket can’. I can’t quite work out why sitting outside an empty pub is their location of choice. Is it the off-chance of a wee lock in? Old times sake? Is it less illegal to drink in the street if it’s outside a pub?

The daily run became a thing of hilarity. As a slow runner with a high BMI, I’m no stranger to unfit people running, but watching some of the fashions bobbing round Kelvingrove park was hilarious. Headbands, 118 fashions and summer clothes of yesteryear became the norm. We even saw a few people running with their shopping while looking over their shoulder - unsure if ‘one trip out the house a day’ was for your shopping and your exercise.

The number of run reports on Facebook sky rocketed. People who hadn’t ran before had surprisingly good times and people had been running for years tried to work out if they were cheating or not. Turns out that some people’s base level fitness was higher than we thought it was.

I have managed to stick at the running. I got better and better during the first lockdown and then my back went. 10 days in bed and then 3 or 4 months of not running before I got back at it again. I managed to keep my calorie and wine intake at the same level as it had been while I was running.

The running became a habit again in 2021 and I actually get excited when I think about an album from back in the day that I’ve not listened to in a while.

Rachel started wild swimming. Out to the middle of nowhere to jump in a muddy loch in a wetsuit. It will be interesting to see if it’s a habit that continues once she’s had the chance of being back in a warm pool and a Sauna.

The online gig

One of my early activities to work out my work possibilities were to investigate online streaming option. I setup a multi-camera home video studio connected to live sound from an 8 track audio interface all controlled by OBS. It meant I had to do all sorts of jiggery pokery before I could even answer zoom calls and then I never used it again. I had investigated the concept though and understood how to talk people out of it when they asked if their band could all play together remotely but in time. The answer is you can’t really, but people are still asking me a year on.

Several soloists ran with the idea. Some nights there were as many people going live on facebook as there used to be gigs in Glasgow. The quality of these feeds varied greatly. A year on, the ones that invested in their technology know-how have stuck it out, and it’s now not unusual for us to cast a facebook live feed to the telly for some entertainment. The idea of this as a revenue stream is still pretty tenuous. Paypal tip jars became common place, but I knew very few people that were getting triple figures for a gig, and the more you “gigged” the less value it had.

Similar things were happening in the comedy world. Rachel was across a lot of these things. The difference with comedy was that without audience feedback, the format had to change. We watched numerous stand up comedians do sets online without any feedback and just bomb. So comedy adapted into funny monologues and sketches and zoom plays.

The culmination of all this for me was being involved in the Scottish Alternative Music Awards online, which I think took the best that was available an created something that was worthy of being on the telly:

Zoom

It’s strange to think that I hadn’t heard of zoom a year ago. If someone had asked me if you could have multiple participants in Skype or FaceTime, I would have answered “maybe??”. It feels strange that it had never come up.

Zoom meetings became the norm. Rachel was spending hours a day on them. I started out with quite a few for work, but it lost it’s novelty and everyone seemed to go back to email and facebook messenger. My sister is in the states and my grandmother is isolating in the highlands, so it’s come in really handy for family stuff. I find it strange we’d never discovered it before.

My Dad has really ran with it, he hosts several zoom social events a week. Him and my mum have been shielding for a year now, so it’s become an essential tool. He’s even started a podcast off the back of it. Lots of his friends and colleagues from the Burns world share poetry discussions, whisky drinking notes and the best way to toast cheese on weekly events that get well into double figures. This has opened up a new world to many and strengthened friendships. Periodically there’s events like the annual Burns supper which edge towards 100 participants and I don the suit and use it as an excuse to drink whisky and eat cheese.

Mental Health

Once it became clear we were in this thing for the long haul, it was obvious everyone was reacting to it in different ways. We were very glad we were a couple that loved each other’s company. The single life or a tumultuous relationship didn’t bear thinking about. That’s before you add entertaining or teaching kids to the mix(My friends with children unanimously agree that teaching is not as easy as it looks). We made a point of checking in on all our friends regularly. Strangely it was the ones with the mental health issues who dealt with the situation best. They had already developed the tools.

On a wider scale we watched other people’s mental health issues from afar. Grandiose conspiracy theories were developed about the cause of Covid and the dangers of 5G. Handfuls of people went on marches. People burned phone masts. Out of work actors started political parties. No matter how bored you were with your own home, you could always lurk on these Facebook groups. 5G gave way to facemask conspiracies and then vaccine conspiracies and then Q-Anon.

Mental health became the catch all solution for anyone who wanted to simultaneously flaunt lockdown rules while sharing their entire life with the internet. People don’t like you having Cocktail party with your girlfriends and putting it all over instagram? Mental health made you do it. Rattling your way through Tinder? It’s was my anxiety. Lock in at the pub? Group therapy.

Early doors the people that were taking the piss in breaking lockdown rules are etched on my brain for ever more. People tried to justify their political protest while admonishing football fans for celebrating wins, but after a year of it I was a lot more willing to give people their transgressions if it helped them deal with whatever they were going through. I’ll just stay away from you post-coke-orgy and hope we don’t share a supermarket.

If it’s big enough for a deck chair, it’s a garden

For my actual 40th birthday, Rachel pulled out all the stops that were available to her and created a garden party for 2 for me. We’ve got a kind of open backcourt, but with bunting, and deckchairs, and some cocktails and a log burner the space behind our bin cupboard became our little sunny solace. I was meant to be playing a wedding on my actual birthday and hadn’t quite worked out what to do about that or a party. If covid was good for nothing else, then it let me postpone the booking of a local bowling club for a private party until my 50th.

Thankfully it was near the start of lockdown and people hadn’t got bored with sending people video messages yet. I had a wonderful compilation of all these videos to watch with my morning mimosa.

Our “garden” developed like never before. Suddenly we had much more need for the space. We planted flowers and the neighbours did the same. We even had a pianist neighbour perform makeshift concerts for us and all the neighbours joined in out the windows. Sitting drinking a chilled wine with a bowl of Pasta at our little table for two made it feel like some sort of swanky European holiday.

We did manage to get a wee holiday in July when we popped over to Arran for Rachel’s birthday. Nothing was open, but we climbed goat fell, cooked ourselves some fancy local produce and generally enjoyed being outside the confines of our local area.

A late summer reprieve

We were given a wee reprieve late summer. The first thing we got was “takeaway pints”. Your lager of choice in a plastic cup with a little lid so that there was a united pretence that you were taking it home to drink. We partook in this agreed subterfuge with Inn Deep on a few occasions. They were some of the best pints I’ve ever tasted.

After this came the “eat out to help to scheme” where the government bought half your dinner. History might view this differently when they see the graphs and data, but we ticked off a list of eateries that we’d always fancied trying and the government paid for our sides.

This gave way to being allowed to go to the pub with another household if you gave your name and number at the door. It was really weird. We all rushed at it like it was what we were all missing. Then you realised that being confined to a table and guaranteed not to meet any random who you then joined on a random adventure took the pleasure out of it a little. Previously there was less than 1% of this happening, but that we chance that the night might get wild apparently held some previously unforeseen value.

We even managed to go to a gig at SWG3. Last night from Glasgow put on a line up that was outside but covered. you had to stick to your own table and and order on an app. We had a great night, but I think the food became an important component of that experience.

In the bleak midwinter

The worst part of lockdown was the days getting shorter and the sky getting greyer. It seemed to coincide with everyone having had enough of being indoors. People might think of Scotland as a beautiful mountainous winter wonderland in these years, but the truth is that the sun rises late, it’s grey for a wee while and the it sets mid afternoon. On the good days it’s not raining. Your normal solution for this it to get round a coal fire in an old man pub and drink with people. That got taken away and so did the ability to go a wee jaunt into nature. It was a long shift made longer by everyone’s creative juices drying up.

Eventually January rolled around and the positivity of New Years resolutions and longer days opened things up like an anvil coming off your chest. Vaccines came along as a light at the end of the tunnel and it was worth leaving the house for your daily walk again. Both the UK and Scotland have their roadmap’s out of lockdown published and we can look forward to new freedoms every few weeks until we see the true damage of Brexit.

So what did we learn?

I’d love to come up with some sort of great conclusion or insight into the past year, but I think we are too close to it at the moment. Will everything return to normal or will be remain changed for ever more? There’s part of me relishes the ease of sitting with the same pint in the same pub with the same people waiting for the same bands to play the same venues, but there’s part of me loves the fact that I don’t miss or need it.

How did everyone else fare? What’s happened to the babies that got unprecedented access to their parents? The teenagers who’ve been isolated at crucial points in their development? The children educated in algebra by day drinking parents? Will there be a spate of phenomenal novels produced by new writers who just needed the time and space? Maybe we’ll never know the answer to these questions, or maybe we’ll see degrees in “lockdown psychology studies” start.

I was planning on making a list of everything I’d done, but I stopped counting at 20 music videos, numerous mixes, loads of new tunes, and lots of creative trumpet recording. Drone filming fell into my lap and I’ve embraced that. I’ve spent loads more time learning new editing skills and techniques and I’ve done all the boring admin of tying ideas together with influences from old films making it easier to communicate ideas to bands. I’ve dipped my toe into the world of analogue photography along with everything that’s involved in that. I’ve edited a lot more come than ever before. I’ve tried to learn banjo and failed. I’ve tried to learn mandolin and failed. I started scoring some horn parts that went nowhere. I’ve looked at various online tutorials, bookmarked them and done nothing with them. With seemingly all the time in the world there’s still things that are outwith your grasp.

Bleakly we’re about to face a world economic slump and we don’t know what’s round the corner. The one positive is the we’ve never been in a better position to cocoon ourselves out from the pressures of the rest of the world. Me and Rachel both learned that we can work remotely and still make a living. Whatever gets thrown at us, we’ve been able to adapt and reform and still stay creative and get involved in cool stuff. It’s also strengthened our relationship. Through the ups and downs of stressful projects, we’ve still laughed and supported each other. It makes us far more likely to look further afield for future accommodation options rather than worry about how close we are to the centre of a city.

With a lack of budget and loads of time, some creatives will amaze you by still being able to scrape together money for music videos and recordings and the like, while others will amaze you that they don’t use their time. Everyone is on a different journey and they all play out differently. This may seem like hippie bullshit, but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a time when I had better evidence of it happening live.

For my parents and many like them, they’ve had it even worse. Shielding without the wee islands of respite we had.

It’s hard to judge a global experience against your own, but I think social media died a little. In the early months and weeks, there was lots of birthday videos and people showing off the quirks of lockdown. I feel that this tailed off. You could be confident that no one was doing anything of note. This hit the big wannabe influencers particularly hard. There’s only so many times you can show off your bog roll collection. Genuine content became king again and many that had just been barking at the moon over the trend of the day started to show desperation and signs they were suffering. For the people creating content, those feeling guilty about not doing anything wanted even less to read about it so you heard less and less from some friends.

On a lighter note, I’ve had one beard cut. If you had told me that I would be given a year to grow my beard, I would have thought I could have had a viking pony tail in it by now. Instead, it just looks like I’ve let myself go a bit….. It remains a confusion.