I was talking to a friend recently about what we can take from this extraordinary episode in all of our lives. My friend said a literary agent told her she’d been swamped with submissions about Covid, but precisely no one wants to read The Great Covid Novel. We’ve lived it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve done quite enough thinking about it, worrying about it, grieving about it, thank you. I want to move forward. It’s notable that the flu pandemic after the First World War, which killed 10 million more people than the war itself, produced almost no great art. People longed just to get on with their lives, with barely a backward glance.
What I think I will take from this time, and perhaps you will too, is the quiet mastery of new skills and the pleasure of taking time over things.