‘Is it still too much to wish for a scotch egg in a pub garden by Easter?’

It’s hard for Trudy to concentrate on work while waiting for the roadmap out of lockdown. Well, that and all the building work going on nearby. By Christine Manby

(Tom Ford)

There is a special place in hell for people who decide to build an extension during lockdown, as the people who live in the house that backs onto mine have decided to do. Brenda from number 18, who knows everything that happens in this postcode, says the work is expected to take three months. Three months in builder years, as everybody knows, will be at least six. In the meantime, I have taken possession of my first pair of ear defenders.

When the work started last Friday morning, I thought I could cope with my usual earphones. But no. Not even blasting Sheridan Smith’s A Northern Soul at top volume could drown out the whine of the drill, so I ordered a pair of state-of-the-art 3M ear defenders from the local builders’ merchant. They arrived in a box big enough for all the materials needed to build a three-bedroom semi. They cut out both the sound of the building work itself and the singing of the builders, which is arguably worse than the noise of any angle grinder. The builders are, of course, death metal fans and have clearly ruined their own hearing by failing to wear ear-defenders of their own so they think they have to shout to be heard even when they’re not social distancing.

They started early this morning. I put on my ear defenders to go downstairs to make a cup of tea. As I stood at the sink, I realised when I adjusted the defenders to fit more comfortably (I think I might have to buy a matching hard hat to support their weight), that the builders had actually stopped drilling. I can’t help thinking there’s malice in the way they time their day. Heavy machinery between 7.45 and 8.15. Quiet time, 8.15 to 14.00. Heavy machinery, 14.00 to 16.00 hours, which is, of course, when I make most of my work calls.

As I pondered this I realised that the builders were hanging out of an upstairs window on their fag break, with a clear view of me in the dressing gown that I’ve had since 1992. The roller blind on the kitchen window has been frozen in the ‘up’ position since Christmas, at which point it had been frozen in the “down” position for six weeks. It wasn’t moving. There was nowhere to hide.

There was nothing for it but to get dressed, go for my sanity stroll and try to find something to photograph for the work positivity photo project. It is getting harder than ever to be positive as I trudge around Tooting Common every day, envying the dog owners in their pally huddles by the poo bins.

Today I took a different route. On a street I haven’t walked down before, I saw a lamppost with a sticker on it saying: “Take a deep breath, six seconds in, six seconds out.” Perfect for a positivity picture. Not so perfect in real life as my own deep breath coincided with the arrival of a refuse lorry, belching bin smells. See, Ms Yoga With Adriene? This is why it’s best I stick to shallow breathing.

I got back home just as Brenda was accepting a delivery on her doorstep: an enormous bunch of flowers. I had a wildly optimistic thought that she was taking them in for me. But no.

Brenda did not go indoors straight away, instead she waited until I drew level. Of course I had to say “hello” and how could I not mention the roses she was holding at waist level like a blushing bride.

“They’re beautiful,” I said.

“Aren’t they?” she preened.

“Secret admirer?”

“Oh, not secret,” she said. “New boyfriend. Belated Valentine’s Day.”

I tried to hide my unconscious bias. Brenda may have had 20 years on me but that didn’t mean she couldn’t date.

“I met him online,” she mouthed, in the manner of someone imparting news of someone else’s STD.

“Everybody does these days,” I said. “It’s the only way in a pandemic. Have you managed to meet in real life? For a socially distanced walk? I don’t think it’s against the rules.”

“Perhaps, but I really don’t think socially-distanced dates are in the spirit of the law,” Brenda said. “It wouldn’t be possible anyway. Simon doesn’t live here. He’s in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He works for the Red Cross. He’s a surgeon.”

“And you met him online?”

“On Facebook. He sent me a message out of the blue after seeing me on the Dan Brown fan page. He said he liked my face. So nice to get a real message instead of something from a scammer pretending to be a three-star US Army general in Afghanistan,” Brenda said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Hmmm.” I sat on my cynicism. Brenda knew about those fake profiles and the flowers she was holding looked real enough. Just because I was having zero romantic action beyond the odd FaceTime date with a farmer who dialled in from the shed because he probably hadn’t really broken up with his live-in girlfriend, didn’t mean that Brenda shouldn’t be having better luck. Perhaps there really were kind, single Red Cross doctors looking for love out there.

“He’s a very lucky man,” I said. Brenda beamed.

I let myself into my house and put my ear defenders back on. But even with the noise blocked out, it was hard to settle down to work with the prime minister’s big “roadmap out of lockdown” reveal looming. What would it hold? Good news for the parents of school-age children, I was sure. But was it still too much to wish for a scotch egg and soda water in a pub garden by Easter? And if that was to be allowed, how would I deal with the possibility of enjoying myself in the company of more than one person at a time again anyway? Worse, could I cope with the return of Fomo when no one invited me to a scotch egg soiree? “What do you think, Minky?” I asked the one sentient being with whom I shared my life. A hamster. Lockdown had reduced me to a woman who talks to rodents.