Home Truths: After lockdown

When I moved to London, I decided that the best way to learn the language and get to know the British people was to work and volunteer. This was a very good decision because not only have I improved my English but I have now, through my volunteering and at Independent Age, created very good friendships. This difficult time would have been worst without the phone contact with them because I live alone and have been self-isolating from the first week of March.

Secluded at home, it is difficult to me to understand what is happening because I don't see the consequences of the pandemic, but I accept the situation and feel lucky because every day I have all the essentials: drinking water, soap, and the internet! Other people may not have these things.

I have started a list of the things I will do when the lockdown ends. The most important thing is to see my family because I miss them a lot. Afterwards, I will go out to see my friends.

I am now playing a video game in which I have to fish, it has made me realise that there are a lot of fish that I have never tasted, so I have added to the list to cook one new and different fish every week. I have also begun to study electricity in a free course at Monterrey University and I spend a lot of time creating virtual circuits. One of the first things that I will buy once the lockdown is lifted will be electronics components to repair my door bell and to make ‘toys’. My second purchase will be wool; I love knitting.

This lockdown has given me a wonderful thing: I talk on the phone everyday with my brother. He lives in USA, and although we have a good relationship we were just talking once a month or less. This is a gift that the coronavirus pandemic has given me: to recover the fluid relationship with my main partner and witness of my childhood.

I never “let the grass grow under my feet"; I'm lucky that I am a curious person and that every day I find something new.

I would like to encourage people to read and to play cards, board games and video games because these activities cleanse the brain and keep anxious feelings at bay, as you are focused on something else. For the older population who have worked hard all their lives, there are a lot of pursuits that they may have had to abandon along the way: they might have wanted to learn to draw, go to the theatre or to the ballet, enjoy Margot Fontain and Rudolph Nureyev, visit exotic countries or listen to the music of different and distant people... Today, all these things and more are possible with the internet. With one click you can be in Polynesia watching the dancers making impossible moves with their hips and with another, you can listen to eskimo/Inuit music or the sounds produced by Altai singers.

This is also a new opportunity to learn more things about us and a special moment for solidarity. We have to overcome this crisis together and let this pandemic allow us to grow stronger together and celebrate the end of it.