It’s a myth that everyone has suffered alike. And under Boris Johnson, those who lost the most will be quickly forgotten
If at some point in the future there is a Museum of the Pandemic, its curators will struggle to convey the pulverising banality of lockdown. A replica living room and interactive Zoom installation will not do it justice.
It is hard to memorialise tedium, which has been the defining experience for many. The human mind measures time by the passage of distinct events. A vast slab of routine offers no holds; no pegs for recollection. It seems to last for ever, but leaves a shallow imprint. Or it does if you are lucky. To have reached this point in the pandemic with a secure job, a quiet room, no severe infection or agony of bereavement, is to have known a different pandemic to the one marked by destitution and death.
