Self-isolation blogs: Susannah Rose
Susannah Rose
This is part of a series of self-isolation blogs, written by students, staff and Fellows during the coronavirus pandemic so we can learn about their experiences over the coming weeks.
To view other blog entries, take a look at our main self-isolation blog page.
The posts below are from Susannah Rose, Head of Alumni Relations.
Week 4
In the absence of friends and family under lockdown, I’ve been returning to some of my favourite literary relationships. The release in March of Hilary Mantel’s third volume in the Wolf Hall trilogy has been a timely treat for fans of hers like me. Sure, there have been great books in the eight years since the second instalment, but if I had to choose a character with which to spend lockdown, it could only be Hilary’s Thomas Cromwell. The Mirror & the Light begins on the executioner’s scaffold, in the stunned seconds after Anne Boleyn’s head has been separated from her body. Thomas Cromwell’s first thought is to his empty stomach before he remembers his manners and offers thanks to the executioner. It’s an outrageous opener and illustrates Hilary’s extraordinary eye for detail and drama. It’s a pleasure to ride along with her, on a grey day in isolation; to sit on the shoulder of her master-manipulator as he manoeuvres his way through Tudor politics.
Like lots of people, I’ve been recording my experience of lockdown. While tidying yet another cupboard yesterday, I found a video from my 12th birthday party. It’s recorded on a now defunct tape format so sadly all I can do in the short term is appreciate my father’s handwriting on the label and the intention to create a record for the future. For that reason, I’m writing my diary on paper in the hope that it will extend the lifespan, if not the audience, of my observations. And in seeking literary comforts, I’ve been curious to know what some of my favourite fictional diarists would make of the current situation. I’d love to take a peek into the journals of a neurotic, fifty-something Adrian Mole, locked down in Leicester, or Bridget Jones, wrestling with Zoom yoga and tracking an exorbitant rise in her alcohol consumption.
In the freakish chaos of the pandemic, a glimpse of the minutiae of other people’s locked-down lives is both tantalising and reassuring. Without the navel-diving observations of Adrian or Bridget, the prurience of gossip magazines, or the pleasure of pavement-side people watching, I have two new favourite resources. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Daily entries from the 17th Century London diary (currently in the year 1667) offers up a daily serving of history filtered through mundane detail. And the Bookcase Credibility Twitter account is a comic delight, analysing the power dynamics of the bookshelf backgrounds that are making plentiful appearances in media interviews across the nation. As the tagline says, ‘What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you.’
Johnians can look out for more bookcases (and participate in some stimulating discussion) in upcoming online talks from Dr Martin Worthington and Dr Joana Meier of St John’s College. More details are available here: https://johnian.joh.cam.ac.uk/events/2020/lets-talk-academia
30 April 2020
Week 3
Cycling past the Backs of the Colleges last week, I was able to briefly enjoy the sight of grassy banks embroidered with purple, white and yellow flowers. I took a picture because I was afraid I might forget the sight and was mindful that this year far fewer people will be able to relish the beauty of April in Cambridge.
Life may be nominally on hold at the moment, but some things continue regardless of an audience. By the next time we’re together, spring will have cycled through many of her greatest hits. We will have missed moments of varying significance in the lives of our family and friends and we’ll all have aged a little bit more.
Two weeks before the lockdown my father left his home to move into a care home. It has been a less than ideal start to his new life, but so much better than it might otherwise have been. He lives with a progressive condition so I know that the next time I can sit down with him, he may be slightly different.
The virus has hastened many beginnings and endings which have been stripped of ritual and ceremony. We’re left to process the significance of these moments in solitude, in our own time. In College, the community has said indefinite farewells to friends and colleagues while some medical students have started their careers ahead of time.
Last week marked the 250th birthday of William Wordsworth, an alumnus of St John’s. A College exhibition showcased a number of items including letters, first editions and intriguing objects from the Wordsworth collection, and it can be viewed online. Among the collection you can see two versions of his famous poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’. In the final stanza he describes the pleasure of recalling the sight of the daffodils ‘when on my couch I lie/ In vacant or in pensive mood.’ It’s a thought that may encourage us to find comfort by focussing our own ‘inward eye’ on loved ones and favourite places.
Visit the College’s online Wordsworth exhibition.
14 April 2020
Week 2
One night this week, my mother lobbed a text at me like a pebble or a small hand grenade.
“If you fancy it, you have the opportunity to cook these days.”
Only a mother could synthesise the coronavirus lockdown and an 18-year debate in just one short text message. There is a generational difference in our approach to food that we have never reconciled. I am willing to pay a premium for convenience so that I can spend more time doing things I love, like being outside of my home. My mother thinks I’m living with a shameful skills deficit. She’s right, of course; I now have ample opportunity to cook. I’ve produced 3 meals a day for myself for the last 3 weeks. I couldn’t have imagined living a life in which I regularly do week-day lunchtime washing-up; though perhaps that says more about the limits of my imagination. Whether I fancy it or not, I am certainly practicing my cooking skills, and missing a slap-up Buttery lunch.
But aren’t we all turning our hands to new things in the absence of readily-available skilled professionals? This week my colleagues have undertaken plumbing and teaching, among other things, while I’ve taken up dentistry. If you live in a very particular set of circumstances with a degree of good fortune, you might even see the lockdown as a time for self-improvement. If you have the luxury to determine how you spend your own time, at the very least you’ll need an absorbing hobby.
As of two weeks ago, I’ve started drawing and painting. With no previous detectable interest or talent in visual art, I’ve been emboldened by ignorance. I’ve mailed out my first few completed pieces to family and friends as placeholder gifts for birthdays without any compunction. It is completely liberating to mess around with a creative medium and have no expectation for the quality of the output. I’ve taken advice from artist friends, or from anyone who’s willing to chance an opinion. On Saturday, long after I should have turned in for the night, I was grappling to regain control of a portrait that was slipping from my fingers with every brush stroke. I don’t yet have the experience to know when to stop, persevere or change direction. By Whatsapp, a friend coached me out of the hole I’d painted myself into. For the time being I’ve shut the picture in another room, but check on it occasionally like it’s a sick child, hoping it’ll be better than the last time I looked in on it.
What does it take to make you sit down and invest your time in a creative impulse? To explore a long-held desire to write, paint or make music? For some, the lockdown will create the perfect conditions; the time that you never have is, irrefutably, yours. For alumna of St John’s, Nicola Penfold nee Lumsden (1997), it was a shift in her family life.
“I’m a terrible procrastinator, but paying for childcare disciplined me. For the first time in my life I sat down and wrote a whole book,” she said in a recent interview with my colleague.
Nicola has just published her debut novel for children, Where the World Turns Wild. The book is an ecological adventure set in a world that has been blighted by a deadly disease. Humans live in cities, walled off from the natural world. The subject matter will clearly reverberate in our current situation. You can read more about Nicola’s journey from St John’s to published author on our alumni blog.
6 April 2020
Week 1
It has been extraordinary to see the progression of adjustments over the last 10 days that the University and College have made in response to the government’s coronavirus announcements. The operational coordination required in the College is surely unprecedented, certainly in modern times. Functionally, Colleges are unique environments. Staff at the front line of managing the controlled, safe shut-down of the College have worked hard to protect the community and it’s been met with huge gratitude from the people who continue to live in isolation in the College’s properties.
The Development Office team achieved a relatively smooth transition to remote working thanks to the support from our IT colleagues and coordination by Rebecca Buncombe. Homes have become multi-purpose. Business is conducted at arm’s length from the fridge and family members video-bomb work calls. Our worlds have become incredibly small and yet we’re astonished by the scale of each person’s potential to wreak havoc if we do not curtail our movements. As a reminder of the collective responsibility we share for enjoying the advantages of living in an interconnected world, it’s as sharp as a knife.
With great regret we have had to cancel or postpone many events and activities that connect the alumni of St John’s to one another and the College. We know how valued these occasions are to many Johnians, as College members refer to themselves. But we will do everything we can to facilitate and stimulate communication online in the coming months. We’ll be sharing lots of content from alumni on our blog; their stories, experiences, ideas and resources for addressing the numerous professional and personal challenges that face our society right now.
As someone who lives alone, I want to flag up the Living Well Alone Project, created by Johnian Hannah Carmichael OBE (2013). In usual circumstances, living alone feels to me like one of the greatest pleasures of adulthood. It works because of how I balance it with the rest of my life. It takes a conscious effort to weight the scales evenly, but with good health and friendships it’s not hard. The current limitations on movement have the effect of removing the weights from one side of the scales. Hannah created the project to empower people who live alone (approximately 8 million in the UK) to lead happy, healthy and connected lives. Now more than ever, this may seem like an invaluable resource. You can find out more about the project at livingwellalone.com/ or join the Facebook community at facebook.com/livingwellalone/
27 March 2020