It’s when day turns to night that it becomes most surreal. As I lie in bed, the darkness outside seems more pronounced than usual, like it’s trying to make clear just how bleak the situation is. Although the night time silence is nothing new, it seems more eerie than usual, like nothing has changed but somehow everything has. We’re in a global fight against an enemy we don’t understand and the mounting deaths have become mere statistics as we struggle to comprehend the humanity of hundreds of families losing their loved ones everyday to a virus we have no idea how to stop. Everytime I tell my Mum that I love her, I feel like I need to make sure she understands that I really do love her, as if it’s somehow more important now that people are dying. I wonder whether things will ever be normal again, or if this is the new normal, confined to our homes until the Government runs out of money and we’re ‘allowed’ to go back to work. I think about my first trip out for a spot of lunch, my first pint on a Friday night, my first day back at the racecourse – will it be weeks, months, maybe even years? People argue about where the Government has gone wrong, what they should do in future and how they can remedy their mistakes, as if there’s some sort of manual detailing the decisions you should be making as you watch thousands of your fellow citizens die, wondering whether you could have prevented those deaths if only you’d made that one decision a bit sooner. I rang my Nan last night and we were on the phone for twenty minutes as she asked me about what I’d been up to, how I’m feeling, when I think this will all be over, the tremble in her voice making it sufficiently obvious just how much she is missing me and how painful it must be for her trapped inside for weeks on end, with no idea when she might be able to see her friends and family again. There’s something beautiful and serene about this lockdown, as we rediscover parts of ourselves that we’d long forgotten & remember what life is really about, but the fact remains that this is the most terrifying thing any of us have ever experienced, and ever will experience.