It’s inevitable that two expressions have entered our over-the-wall and across-the-road conversations: “stir crazy” and “cabin fever”. “Stir Crazy” derives from 18th Century London prison slang while “Cabin Fever” dates from the 1800s experience of being isolated in a remote log cabin on the American Prairies. In Crich we’re using it almost ironically, because we have cars, can travel a little way, have the internet, go out walking, we meet people, nevertheless as a psychological condition it is real enough. The winter we spent living on the Canadian/US border was brutally cold. There’s an apt line in Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl from the North Country’: “Where the wind hits heavy on the borderline.” On Christmas Day the temperature hit 40 degrees below; that is when Fahrenheit and Centigrade converge. The Episcopal priest took the Christmas Day service with his hand bandaged because it had frozen to the metal door handle of the church, and he had torn his skin unclasping it. Typically by February the suicide rate increases in an area like that. According to Google, symptoms of cabin fever are: Restlessness, Lethargy, Sadness or depression, Trouble concentrating, Lack of patience, Food cravings, Decreased motivation, Social Isolation. I have to admit each one of these has afflicted me at some point over the last ten weeks and I have had a relatively open and luxurious lockdown.
We’ve almost forgotten that the virus started off literally as a cabin fever on those cruise ships we saw docked in international harbours with sad passengers waving forlornly from their expensive balconies. In those distant days of course it was news that would never affect us. Brexit was the only headline.
It’s hardly surprising that as soon as the valve was eased last week people from the towns exploded out onto the beaches and into the countryside – reckless, careless, untidy, insensitive, rude and downright stupid – much to the annoyance of inhabitants of Matlock Bath, Cornwall, and anywhere else with open spaces and water. Like so much else about this lockdown it induces an ambivalent reaction – of course we are appalled but also understand why it happens. Children imprisoned in flats and houses with tiny gardens, parents fed up with the kids and each other, families pale and their bodies aching for some Vitamin D, bikers panting for the wind in their faces and fish and chips. Watching them on social media or TV, however, I can’t help feeling angry that their lack of measured response might lead to a further spike, more lockdown, loss to the economy and all the rest. When the Queen broke out of being isolated with Prince Philip in the cramped conditions of Windsor Castle, she went riding on Fern, her pony, without racing like a maniac down the close confines of Windsor Great Park, which as we know is the royal equivalent of a patio.
The victims of the original cabin fever would have had lower expectations as to their entitlement to freedom and entertainment. They had livestock to tend to, were 1500 miles from the sea and could travel no further in a day than a horse drawn wagon would take them. How did they spend those months locked in by blizzards, deep snow, remoteness and distance? I had a look at a diary of an early mid-western settler. She spent her time writing the diary I was reading. Well I’m blogging, so not much difference there! A lot of sewing was done, though not face masks, and of course a lot of cooking with whatever ingredients were to be found in the larder. There was a daily walk and though there was no click and collect, by the mid to late 19th Century there were mail order catalogues from companies like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck – those predecessors of Amazon. Maybe loo rolls were delivered by Wells Fargo. Shut in by the snow there was home-schooling and home church.
While our children our gaming with each other over the internet, Laura Ingalls Wilder was sewing quilt patches and, “They played Patty Cake with Carrie, and they played Hide the Thimble. With a piece of string and their fingers, they played Cat’s Cradle. And they played Bean Porridge Hot. Facing each other, they clapped their hands together and against each other’s hands, keeping time while they said,
‘Bean porridge hot,
Bean porridge cold,
Bean porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.
Some like it hot,
Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot
Nine days old
I like it hot,
I like it cold,
I like it in the pot,
Nine days old.’”
I thought I would quote the whole passage in case you wanted to play it. You would have to repeat it rather a lot to fill up the lockdown period. You can see that life in the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ was a riot!
Now we have a really exciting day lined up, an excursion to the far reaches of Sainsbury’s car park for a click and collect. And tomorrow, I can hardly contain my excitement, a blood test at Holloway. Then I’ll come home and we’ll spend the next six weeks playing ‘Bean Porridge Hot.’