Getting Out And About.

Since March, our home has been more than our home. It’s been our life. Our sanctuary. We are very lucky. We have lots of space, so have been able to work from home in separate rooms, coming together for meals and lockdown telly.

 We have outside space in the form of a rather beautiful balcony level with the treetops where we can sit and have lunch or a drink in the evening, or fall asleep on a sun bed with a book on a hot afternoon.

 Spending so much time in our home has meant that one has started to want to change things. We haven’t got to the point of approaching the estate agents, but we’ve had new windows put in, installed a dishwasher at long last and treated ourselves to little luxuries like new bedding, and new wine racks. I’ve got my eye on redecorating the second bedroom, the facias on the kitchen cupboards could do with a revamp, and I am wondering if we could fit a plunge pool underneath the plastic ivory trellis on the balcony.

 After our wonderful five days boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads, which seems so much longer than two weeks ago, my horizons have had to stretch further than home. I’m in the process of filming a ninety-minute documentary for a major corporate client to be part of a virtual meeting at the beginning of October. As well as sending other film teams out to capture footage over the country, I’ve been clocking up the miles myself. The first week was mainly car journeys to private locations, so I still felt safe in my own little habitat.  It was a long three-hour train journey to Penrith and an overnight stay in a hotel that started to widen my horizons. Masks on trains, mercifully sitting in a virtually empty carriage, but ramping up the human contact. Premier Inn scored highly on not losing their welcome, but making me feel safe.

 This week’s been a little more adventurous. After a quick filming trip to Gillingham on Monday, I spent the rest of the week in the Premier Inn, Archway to save me a two and a half hour drive in and out of work each day. We’ve been in rehearsals and the end of each day now means a two stop journey on the tube to my hotel room. I remember how excited I felt getting onto my first-ever tube train at the age of 12 on a trip to London. I didn’t have that excitement this time.

I have to admit I’m still fearful. I’m nervous of the whole situation and at the moment nothing is going to change that. It’s like my fear of snakes. I know it’s totally irrational, but it doesn’t stop me running off set on “Peep Show” when a snake was handed to Super Hans for a party scene, or turning down a film role when told that a pit of snakes was involved.

You can tell me everything you want about the low percentage of people who have caught COVID-19, and I can easily assimilate the figures, But it’s different when I’m out and about. I feel frightened. This week’s trips involved a visit to Luton airport-never something guaranteed to lighten the heart — a flight to Glasgow, and then location shooting and a flight back from Edinburgh airport. The airports were not massively busy,

but the planes were. Row after row of people sitting masked in proximity. Reminded me of somewhere I worked once.  Ah yes, a theatre.  Better not go there. Actually, of course, I can’t go there because to sit in a row with other people masked is dangerous in a theatre.

It didn’t seem much safer on the easyJet flights to Glasgow and Luton. I’d managed to bag a front row seat next to the wall and I turned my head to the window and tried to sleep.

Two days at home now and it’s off to the Premier Inn, Archway once more, for a week shooting in studio. Safe environments with lots of people.

It’s strangely disconcerting that people worry me. Every day people whom I used to love to hug and greet effusively, to celebrate, to deprecate, to rejoice and to admonish are now the thing I wish to have less of. Put me in a room with one person and I’m happy. The more people around me the less secure I feel.

 I hope I’m not so much of an old dog that I can’t learn new tricks. I hope I can refocus myself and even if we have to continue living with this threat, I hope I can look forward to the moment I step out of the house happy to meet the world. At the moment, it takes more effort than I would like.