Lockdown London

Doesn’t pre-pandemic life seem like a million years ago…….?

Knowing which day it is has become a thing of the past; the only things separating them seem to be the latest bumbling address from Downing Street detailing the latest death toll or alternating which supermarket within a 5km radius to visit. Being excited by the homeware section in the Clapham High Street Sainsburys (!) Holidays, nightclubs and house parties becoming a distant, fantastical and exotic memory. Boxsets wearily started, stopped, restarted then re-discarded again (House of Cards Season 6? – I dont think so). Endless endless circuits of running and walking around Brockwell Park. Here is a selection of some of the pandemic- related work I did last summer. Still waiting for the vaccine call…..

LOCKDOWN LONDON A supersize colouring sheet created for SupersizeWorld, in collaboration with Uncommon London. Sale of the posters raised more than £3000 for the Florence Nightingale Foundation, an amazing organisation that offers support and training scholarships to nurses worldwide.

SUPERSIZE LOCKDOWN Here’s an idea of just how big this colouring sheet was……….

Lockdown Dating The only thing worse than dating is online dating, and now its COMPLETELY online. Then again, if you show up to a virtual date you can always use the excuse of crappy WIFI to duck out of it. Every cloud has a silver lining, even if the cloud in question is full of COVID-19 virus particles! I am feeling a certain wistful nostalgia for meeting up in a bar or restaurant with an unattractive stranger for two hours of your life that I’m not going to get back (and before you say so, I have myself been the unattractive stranger in question….)

Lockdown Yoga with Adriene Adriene Mishler is a lovely lady who is also the Queen of YouTube yoga. I read up about her Thirty Day Yoga Challenge and decided to give it a shot – it lasted three days (well, two-and-a-half, technically)

Lockdown Barry’s Bootcamp I went through a phase of doing this every morning and meeting up with some friends via zoom and playing the session via the Barry’s IGTV. The classes were pretty knackering, even more exhausting was the posing…..

Lockdown Day 68: Run, run, run, run, try and figure out the Apple Watch, run, run, run, avoid walkers, buggies and other runners, run, run, run, run, run, try not to think about what data of yours is being recorded, run, run, try not to think what might be coming down the line pandemic-wise, run, run, run, run……

STILL IN LOCKDOWN March 2021…. Vaccines being rolled out…..just keep talking……keep talking ……stay positive, test negative…….this lockdown can’t last much longer……

Et in Arcadia Ego Queueing up on a balmy autumn evening outside the Brixton Water Lane Sainsburys to buy eggs and toilet roll – life is all about the simple pleasures. My latest stint doing this prompted me to ponder the phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego.’ It is used in many works of art and literature, and traditionally understood as ‘Even in Arcadia {an ideal pastoral idyll}, I {Death} am still present.’ Well if that doesn’t apply to a COVID-19 pandemic I don’t know what does.

 

Our Great White Hope I was once advised by an AOI (Association of Illustrators) representative to save any rants that I might have, political or otherwise – for Twitter. But I just cannot get the hang of it. So I’m going to rant here, about the podgy, bumbling, Suetonius-quoting, lying, mendacious, calculating, spineless, slothful, greedy, entitled, gormless, self-promoting twat that has manouevered himself into the leadership of our country and dropped us into the Brexit toilet bowl. Not to mention his appalling mistakes and poor judgement with regard to dealing with the pandemic. Words fail me.