Susan Hill Susan Hill

Do we really want to go back to normal?

(iStock)

On the day our A-level exams began some wit wrote on the blackboard: ‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.’ I thought of that again yesterday when a writer friend emailed: ‘Like you, I thought I would be much more productive but I do find it very hard to focus… and I still haven’t filed those boxes of books in the sitting room.’

The days fly by and the sunshine was a real bonus, for it is pleasant and surely good for the soul to sit in it, reading, dreaming, nodding off, and topping up our Vitamin D levels. I said here at the beginning of lockdown that I would finish the book I had already started, plus some short stories, this weekly column and the occasional book review. I would also dig out the information my horrid slave-driver of an accountant has politely, and then progressively less politely, been requesting. I have definitely read many books, but then I always do; and I have also written a couple of chapters, but at any other time I would have written ten by now, never mind during weeks when so many of life’s little interruptions and diversions have gone into quarantine themselves.

‘You appear to be suffering from sheep deprivation.’

Talking of A-levels, I have not yet penned my last essay for the one in classical civilisation I am supposed to be taking, nor have I finished the cushion of a panel from the Bayeux Tapestry, rearranged old photographs in new albums, or culled the duplicates of my collection of Ladybird Books and re-shelved the remainder in alphabetical or subject order. If I were a Catholic I would go to confession with a sin-list not of ‘I haves…’ but ‘I have nots…’.

Do you recognise yourself in all this? ‘If only I had the time…’ Oh come on.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in