The Man of the Crowd

As though we are talking about Godfather films, one of the teenagers asks me, "Which is your favourite lockdown: 1, 2 or 3?" I tell him that it was the one that wasn't really a lockdown, the one where everything was normal except for... then I can't seem to remember exactly what we were not allowed to do in November and, despite a discussion that involves the whole family, we cannot agree what the restrictions were during that ineffective pre-Christmas lockdown. What we do agree on is that number 3 is the worst in terms of both lockdowns and The Godfather sequence. 

In the first lockdown we were able to spend a lot of time in the garden, which was particularly good respite for the teenagers having spent their days hunched over screens doing school and college work; in the bleak midwinter, however, that is not an option. Instead, we have initiated a Friday night ritual in the kitchen: Uno, beer, party food and everyone taking it in turns to choose music. I have lost a lot of card games, eaten too many mini-samosas and listened to Kanye West more than I care to over the last few weeks; but it brings us together and marginalises Instagram, TikTok and Xbox for a time.

With the usual sporting activities all suspended, there are few opportunities for the teenagers to exercise outdoors: by the time each day's studies have finished, there is a finite amount of daylight left to allow for a short walk if they can be persuaded out into the cold. Even at weekends options are limited: our usual winter routine would be to drive to Bexhill or Hastings, walk dogs along the seafront and eat fish 'n' chips; but observing the instruction to stay local we are left with the nearby footpaths and fields which are wet, wet, wet.

The countryside can be a forlorn place at this time of year in normal circumstances; but a pandemic in winter is testing even my perverse enjoyment of bleak isolation. Skeletal trees and bare fields stretching into the distance under grey skies is no longer liberating but suffocating. I know I should not complain: many are stuck in flats in towns and cities truly experiencing claustrophobia; but I long to see people when I step out of my front door instead of rooks and crows. Birds may be allowed to assemble in their parliaments and murders at the moment but, quite rightly, crowds of humans are forbidden.

When this is all over (how many of us begin sentences with that phrase, now) and life is safe again, I will be Edgar Allan Poe's The Man of the Crowd. In Poe's short story of that name, the narrator follows an old man who he spots in the street outside as he people-watches from a London coffee shop. Intrigued by the man's determined expression and dishevelled appearance, the narrator follows him through the teeming city streets. Never stopping, the man passes through shopping districts, markets, rich areas, poor areas and the pursuit continues into the evening and through the night. When the streets thin out, the man doubles back seeking the crowd afresh. By morning, the exhausted narrator realises that there is no purpose to the man's walking: he speaks to no one, he never buys, drinks or eats. He revels in being at the heart of the metropolis, part of the energy and throng of the city; he is simply the man of the crowd. I can't wait to join him.