WFH: remoteness is not isolation
Remoteness is in the mind The concepts of isolation and the vocabulary of distance are based on a world of physical distance and the removal of normal time. This is why many conversations, emails, video calls are so somewhat bewildering right now. We have assumptions about what others are doing, as well as exciting video peeks into the homes of corporate others we have never visited. The country is also very different to town.
Where and what we are all doing is very unusual in the UK, indeed across the world. We have been in this seeming artifice for some time. And various spatial gaps are emerging from what is seen to be normal. First. The "outside", a few feet from your front door in town, is where foreign land. Out there, like Shackleton in the Antarctic, live the "other". These are once neighbourly types doing distance jogging, good cycling (a naturally socially distanced activity) is, the workers (I had a weepy traffic warden yesterday, not ticketing but worried but cars casually blocking thoroughfares as the drivers think the roads are emptied).
Shackleton heads outside
One of the brave householders volunteers to re-stock essential supplies what was once know as "down the road".
There is I imagine a little tension now also on "the inside". Families and loved ones are experiencing time together in ways that test seasonal joy and love way beyond the Christmas week of bonhomie.
The issue of working from home (WFH) is not the W, it is the H. H has a different hierarchy to corporate control, normally by commute to office castles. Space in town is already quite tight and newly allocated to allow another area of privacy, once confined to bathrooms and bedrooms, for office "work". Attics and spare rooms seem popular, at least on zoom.
To escape the domestic bliss of confinement, the stresses of delayed exams and normal duties, typically one grown-up family adventurer in the "H team" will head out to the corona plagued badlands for shopping.
The armed services explain real isolation
Naval officers and the military are among the few trained groups to experience genuine isolation. A breathtakingly good memo from the Royal Household chief of staff explained how to be isolated, as in a ship at sea, for many months. He knows. They have a routine, the outside sea splashes and they are alone inside, confined.
The army response I received was an echo, it is much like war in the jungle, says one, where it is quiet necessarily and peril may or not be anywhere in the trees. My imagination runs riot; prisoners might be good at this then, alone for long periods. And as I spun, maybe children sent to boarding school at a young age are readied for loneliness from loved ones, decent food and the creature comforts. For months.
As survival tips are practised and tested
With "inside" and "outside" being perilous, some family units consider the plight of those, in their minds alone, beyond them. This can unify their shared family mission, as the idea of those on their own might lack the care.
They telephone to urge conversation and console the person on their own. The recipient might sound a little bewildered at first. " But it is fine, I have talked to hundreds today, all round the world, I am doing more work than I could as a student or at work, I do as I wish all day, eat and choose the time of day I want or not. I'd forgotten what freedom it was to decide my own time, space and activities without having to work a routine to please others."
As the phone disconnects, the well-meaning couple stare at each other, wondering how long they will be in blissful lock-down together, before their own rubber band snaps.