What Nobody Tells You About Confinement

People assume the hardest part of quarantine was the boredom.

It was not.

Boredom is manageable. You read, you work, you Whatsapp, you watch something forgettable on TV. Boredom is a problem with solutions.

The hardest part was the smallness. Not just the room, though the room was small. The smallness of your world. The same four walls. The same view from the same window. The same carpet stains, the same desk, the same chair that was never quite comfortable enough.

You stop noticing the room after a while. What you do not stop noticing is the absence of everything outside it.

Fresh air. That was the first thing. Not a breeze or a gust. Just air that had not already been breathed, filtered, and recycled through a hotel ventilation system. You do not think about hotel air until you realise that the windows cannot open.

Sound was the second. Not silence. Hotels are never silent. You hear doors. Footsteps. Muffled conversations you cannot quite make out. The corridor becomes an unwanted radio station, broadcasting a programme you cannot switch off.

And then there is time.

Time does something strange when your environment doesn’t change.

Without the usual markers, the morning routine, the weekly commute, the lunchtime walk, hours lose their edges. Tuesday feels like Thursday. Morning feels like afternoon. You check your phone not only messages, but just to confirm what time it actually is.

The meals helped. Not because they were good. They were never good. But because they always arrived. Three times a day, a knock at the door gave the day a shape it otherwise refused to hold.

That rhythm; knock, open, inspect, eat, refill bag with waste, leave outside, became the spine of everything.

I did not understand any of this before I lived it. I thought quarantine would be boring. It was not boring. It was disorienting. There is a significant difference.

Next week, I will tell you about the food. You have been warned.

Andy Candler