Jonny McCambridge: All that I have been left with is all I really need

My wife and I have some long desired time off work. She is currently putting our exhausted son to bed. I step into the back garden to drink in the last drops of warm air before the nighttime chill descends.

My thoughts turn, as they usually do around this time of the week, to what I will write about in my column.

I sit there for some time, my mind barren.

I look around, trying to take the perspective outside of my own thoughts. There are colours in the garden - ochre, pale yellow, startling pink, and varying depths of green.

I’m no gardener and I’m struck by how this cycle continues without any interference or direction from me. But, while some buds have sprouted already, others remain just a promise. Plants, like people, develop at their own pace.

There is something even more diverting than the wash of the leaves; it is the sound. Or rather, the lack of it. The air is still tonight so there is no rustle from the tips of the trees. The birdsong has long since quietened.

More, there is no low thunder of traffic from the nearby road, no distant rumble of a plane in the sky. There are no cries of children playing, no adults talking. There is no urgent rush of oil burners boiling.

I have sat in the same spot on countless evenings before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed this vacuum before. Is it always this way, or is this another manifestation of our new condition?

The silence is, at the same time, both reassuring and disconcerting. I enjoy the peace, but still like to hear some activity, just to remind me that there is something else out there, on the other side of the garden fence. I crunch my feet on the loose stones, just to create a sound.

I take a moment and consider the day just passed. I’m reluctantly forced to admit that it has been pleasant. I feel a certain guilt in this, knowing so much about how many are suffering at this time. But, undeniably, there is an degree of attraction in this slower pace of life.

This was a family day. The three of us shared breakfast and dinner at the same table, played together, watched a film, went for a walk. I wore a sun hat. Our son talked a lot and we listened. Later, when my boy is dreaming, my wife and I will watch something silly on TV. She will have a glass of wine while I munch crisps. There is nothing else to do.

I have written a lot in previous weeks about the strain that lockdown has brought to me and others. While that is true, it is only honest to state that it is not the full picture. This adversity has also created a more profound appreciation and distinction of what is important in our lives, and what we can do without.

I think about what I miss most of the old life. Being able to see extended family and friends, watching my son playing with those of his own age. Much beyond that now seems dispensable. My whole life has been lived aggrandising sport to appear more important than it should be. Now, I find, I don’t think much about it. The new reality has separated the substance from the garnish.

I consider how a normal day off work, before the pandemic, would have looked. There would have been a panic to squeeze in many activities. We would have tried to take our son to a class or play date in the morning, fought our way around a supermarket or clothes shop, visited people, forced some small talk, perhaps gone out for dinner, all while I followed the progress of multiple sporting events on my phone and checked social media. It would have been typically frenzied.

This frenzy is of mind as well as action. I can explain this best through a simple example. I enjoy drinking pure apple juice. Apple juice with other flavours added, I enjoy less. When I go to the shop I often set myself the task of buying the plain juice. Yet, more often than not, I get home to find I have bought apple juice flavoured with pear, elderflower or, worst of all, cucumber and mint.

The problem is clear, it is a symptom of a cluttered mind. Forever anxious about the next thing that needs to be done, and the thing after that, and not focusing on what is in front of my eyes. Sometimes, it feels that I can only think with clarity when I write, it is the most effective way of finding a path through this troubled maze.

It is hard to look past the current pandemic when the agony being suffered by many is absolute. As I said earlier, its claw is so long and pointed that I now feel a degree of guilt when I’m enjoying an experience that I know others cannot.

But the crisis will pass and then some of the things that enrich and colour our lives will start up again. Perhaps we will be just as we were before, perhaps, because the trauma has the potential to improve us, we will be slightly altered. The upsurge in kindness and compassion which has become apparent throughout communities will hopefully prove more tenacious than the virus which spawned it.

The air is cooler now and I’m surprised at how long I’ve been sitting in the same spot. It is harder to see the plants in the half-light but the night seems just as peaceful as what passed before. I enjoy it for a few more moments before I go back inside.

One of the many effects of the lockdown has been to sharpen my senses towards what is around me. It has given me the chance to spend time with my wife and son that I would otherwise have missed. Distractions have been removed as the regulations mean we have settled into a more sedate, purer set of habits.

Tomorrow will be another family day. We have nothing in particular to do and nowhere that we need, or are allowed to go. It will be just the three of us in our home. I’m looking forward to it.

When everything else is taken away, what is left is what is most important. And, as I constantly remind myself, it’s all that I really need.