Lockdown in Czechia - Day Seven - Sunday March 22nd 2020

Report by Trentin Quarantino

I wake up at 9.30am and can see Harley is already up and about. I go join her in the kitchen and can see she's having a hard time and is feeling really low so do my best to comfort her. She tells me she's been up since around 8am - fortunately it was my snoring that woke her up, not crappy dreams, so at least it's a start I suppose.

Seeing her depressed really gets to me though - I guess it always will. I try my best to be strong for her, and it seems to help a little and bring her out of the pit of despair, or at least partway out. Which is better than being stuck at the bottom. After a while she decides to have a bath, and I head to the store to buy food for the next couple of days.

Walking around seems so strange still. Everyone is now wearing some sort of face covering, even the old people, and it's almost like some post apocalyptic world with the few survivors wandering around looking lost, just waiting for the final knife to drop on them. There is a look of fear in people's eyes, and just people passing on the street do their utmost to get as far away from one another as possible.

I realise that I probably have that same look, and it saddens me.

By the time I get home Harley seems to be feeling much better - I guess the bath worked. We update the blog with yesterday's non-news, and I have a shit moment when I see a news report that borders might remain closed for 6 months. Well that's my summer fucked, especially my annual rafting trip. 

This sucks - the whole thing could be over and done within a month if people just followed basic precautions, but as there are countries that are still allowing everyone to walk around freely and infect each other - I'm looking at you UK and USA, I do understand why the Czech government would want to contain it here and then stop other idiots coming from elsewhere and bringing a second wave of this shit.

We look out the window and see it's snowing. Only very lightly, but still, it's snow. For like the third time since winter started. And then a few minutes later the snow seems to be falling upwards instead of down, almost like it hit the ground and said "This planet sucks, I want to go home."

I understand the sentiment...

Harley and I then have a short singing session to try to lighten the mood a little more - my re-written versions of Eleanor Rigby and Imagine, and the song she wrote to her lost mind yesterday, followed by her introducing me to the phenomenon that is MASH - the old American TV show rather than the thing you do with potatoes, in case anyone is wondering.

We watch the first three episodes, and it's okay. The canned laughter pisses me off, but that's a thing I've always hated. And the obvious misogyny is a little off putting, but find a show from that time period where that isn't a thing. The thing that really gets to me though is them calling the sole black character Spearchucker - insensitive much?

After three helpings of MASH I go to cook dinner while Harley has a nap. And find that the earlier report of the Czechs keeping the borders closed for six months which annoyed me was incorrect. They are actually talking about keeping them closed for up to two years.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, cunt, shit, fuck, cunt!

I have an event that I'm organising next year that I've been working on since 2015 - 1000+ people coming from all over the world. This could really screw that up, and I am not fucking happy. Not happy at all. I'm going to try not to panic and assume the worst - after all, these are only potential restrictions at this point, and if other countries (UK and USA sort yourselves the fuck out) get a grip there won't be a need for such draconian measures.

But inside there is at least a part of me that is panicking and assuming the worst.

Harley gets a video call from her friend so I go in the other room to give them space to chat - it's not like I'll understand anything they say anyway, and I like her to have time to talk to other people as she needs more in her life than just me.

So I sit and read, and am perfectly happy and comfortable with this arrangement. Until I'm not. Out of nowhere I have a surge of anger that is so powerful I just want to destroy everything I can see. It would be a lot easier to get this under control if I knew the reason for it, but I really have no clue.

Harley comes into the room to include me in the video chat, but I go back to the other room as I am feeling so damned anti-social right now. Harley is concerned and thinks I'm mad at her for spending so much time talking to friends, but the one thing I am 100% sure of is that this is not the reason I am feeling so pissed off all of a sudden.

After a while she ends the call and we lie in bed. I try to explain this urge to destroy things to her, and convince her that it's nothing to do with the time she's spending talking to friends. I don't feel ignored by her - we've been in the flat almost non-stop for nine days now, so we've had lots of time together, and it's good that she has another outlet and people she can bitch about me to. 

After a while I decide to take a shower and finally eat dinner to see if this can help calm me down a little. It doesn't work.

As I write this it's 2.30am, Harley is sleeping, and I really want to go to the local gas station and get a bottle of vodka. But I won't. The anger is finally slipping away, so that's good, but it's being replaced by a really deep sadness, which is less good, and I think I'm finally working out the issue.

To be clear, I do not, in any way, resent the fact that Harley has friends she can talk to during this crisis. They are helping to keep her somewhere close to sane, and this is something I am really, really happy about.

I just wish that I had friends too. I wish I had one person in my life, other than her, that I could talk to about the things that get me down. But I don't, and never really have had. To be fair, I'm from the north of England, so probably wouldn't talk to someone if I had the opportunity - that would involve accepting that I have feelings, and letting someone else know what they are.

We really don't do that where I come from. It would be nice to have the option though.

At 3am I semi-give in to my urges and go to the gas station. But I only buy beer, not vodka, so I'm winning that battle. And the beer helps a little, and I make it to bed at a little after 4am, hoping tomorrow will be better, knowing it probably won't.

Additional reporting by Harley Quarantinova 

Woke up after 8am to find the world cold, empty and biting. At least inside my head. Thoughts about my employment prospects in the months to come are very depressing and make it hard for me to breathe and keep fighting for my brighter future.

The only social medium I ever managed to be part of is showing me unexpectedly uplifting content today, I read about all the solidarity and volunteering in my country, and about students of medicine helping out hospital staff to the best of their abilities. 

My birthtown has developed a material for facemasks that is capable of fully blocking transmission of the virus, and already sent 3000 pieces of the final product to healthcare and social workers around the country. The place was a real anti-utopic robot town, very inhospitable environment to grow up in, but people there work smart, fast and efficient to get shit done. So a very bittersweet thank you to its founder Tomáš Baťa is in order I guess.

I'm once again determined to fight the violent thoughts yelling at me how useless, naive, small, pathetic and broken I am. Thank you, dad. I inherited your hatred and aggression and managed to aptly turn it inwards. Joy. 

Things have to happen today. Things need to be designed and created today. Hands and soul demand their stimuli. But first, coffee and bath. And trying to focus on what's important with some Native American wisdom stolen from a book I bought last year.

After warming up to a suitable temperature in the bathtub I play my drum for a bit and decide to make a leather hair clip I wanted to have for years. It doesn't take long and I'm quite happy with the result.

Then I take my guitar and try to get Trentin's remake of Eleanor Rigby right for once. Takes me few attempts. I'm doing much better job with the new addition to our repertoire in which we suggest people imagine everybody using their damn brains. I have a good feeling about that song.

Weather is being cheeky again. Snow is falling down. And the next minute it appears it's flying up. Obviously didn't like it much down here. Luckily, my caring attentive male got hands on bird seeds today so I can feed the army of hungry freezing tits and doves in the backyard a quite sufficient variety of foods again. We're going to have some nicely round tits in the area soon. So far I'm failing making the pair I bear on my own chest bigger so this gives me a quiet satisfaction.

The hero of the day is warming up pelmeni for dinner while I make the computer ready. Today I'm going to introduce my Brit to my favourite American show. He came across it before but clearly did not get into it deeply enough. 

The only thing Trentin comments on out loud about it is the canned laughter which I hate as well. But it's somehow fitting to watch a show full of people in surgical masks in these interesting times...

After a short nap I wake up to a party invitation. Sue and her loved one are asking me to join them for some fun so we try the newly discovered video call function, they play few songs on their ukuleles together, I share with them one of those that Trentin re-wrote, and we are enjoying ourselves till after midnight when they seem a bit too drunk to me, and also my left out non-Czech speaking man comes to the kitchen with a very worrying look on his face. 

I feel that I should give him more attention so we lie in bed silently holding each other until I start falling asleep. It makes me a bit angry that I cannot force myself to stay awake as I clearly see his night is going to be a sleepless and lonesome one. I'll try to find ways to make it up to him soon.