{"id":99402,"date":"2020-04-13T07:59:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T07:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=99402"},"modified":"2020-04-13T07:59:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-13T07:59:09","slug":"3am-in-lockdown-31-james-miller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/3am-in-lockdown-31-james-miller\/","title":{"rendered":"3:AM in Lockdown 31: James Miller"},"content":{"rendered":"

The London Mouse<\/strong>
\nBy James Miller<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When my daughter wakes in the morning and I go to collect her from her cot she says, ‘Not going nursery, no’. It’s a statement, an expression of novelty, but as the days go on, it’s also a question, as if she’s asking, \u2018how much longer will this continue?’<\/p>\n

She’s a sociable little girl, my daughter, used to four days a week at nursery and a busy programme of seeing other friends or family at weekends. Now she just sees me and her mother: friends, family, nursery, the music class, all the rest of her life is now relegated to little faces on confused Zoom meetings. There’s a small park nearby, but most days she seems reluctant to go. Perhaps she just thinks it’s pointless, now, walking up and down on the grass, the playground locked. Perhaps she picks up on the odd vibe: the masks, the fact that, when she sees other children playing and runs to join them, I gently steer her away. Social distancing doesn’t come naturally to a toddler. Sometimes she will run through a litany of her favourite places, ‘go playground?’ ‘go caf \u00e9?’ ‘go trampolining?’ ‘go dinosaur museum?’ and to each question we shake our heads and say, ‘I’m sorry, it’s closed. Everything is closed’. Everything is closed, I try to explain, because ‘everything is broken’. We wait for everything to be fixed. With me as her father (clumsy and impractical) my daughter is used to things breaking, used to me not being able to fix them, but perhaps she senses that this is a breakage on a far greater scale.<\/p>\n

In the late afternoon we tune into something called \u2018Cosmic Kidz’ and do yoga together. I’m terrible at yoga but my daughter has no trouble touching her foot to her ear. She calls it ‘ogre’ \u2014 ‘Do more ogre Dadda’ she instructs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Our house is on a main road between Tooting and Earlsfield and the main road is quiet. From my bedroom window, at night, I like to watch as the almost-empty buses glide past. I find myself counting the passengers, sitting far apart, upstairs and down. I note how many wear face masks. It’s possible to have a bus all to yourself. The buses still advertise movies no one will go and see. Dead adverts. I wonder how long they will stay up there or if, after a while, the buses will have no advertising at all. The spectacle, it seems, is finally broken, even if the President continues to boast about his TV ratings.<\/p>\n

It’s very quiet, at night. I quite like it. There goes an empty bus, there goes an Uber (driver wearing masks and gloves), there goes another (driver unmasked); the wine of a Deliveroo moped. I spy a fox, strolling nonchalantly along the pavement as if owns the place. I guess it does, in a way. Nine thirty on a Friday night, the streets are deserted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I find it hard to read, harder to write. It’s not that these activities seem pointless; it’s just that I no longer have any time. My day is a series of ten-minute intervals. Half an hour, if I’m lucky. The caf \u00e9 where I used to go to write is closed \u2014 obviously \u2014 so I’m unsure what to do. I look after my daughter and I pace the house. When I’m not pacing or anxiously checking social media or looking after my daughter (or all three at once) I spend time meditating \u2014 at least an hour a day. My meditations are incredibly deep \u2014 and I’ve been meditating for long enough (a decade) to know that these deep plunges into oblivion are a sign that my mind and body are in a state of acute stress. I’m grateful for the meditations: blissful interludes of thoughtless darkness, moments out of time during a period where time itself has stalled. Afterwards, I always feel a little better, as if I’ve managed to dampen down the terror for a few more hours.<\/p>\n

For a couple of days, I have quite a bad cough; there’s a slight ache in my limbs. Maybe this is it, I think, maybe I’ve got it. But the next day I feel perfectly fine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m involved with Extinction Rebellion and spend more and more time in Zoom meetings \u2014 this is nothing new, Extinction Rebellion is all about Zoom meetings, I was having them long before a pandemic made them obligatory. No actions are possible \u2014 the next Rebellion has been postponed, like everything else \u2014 so, inevitably, meetings proliferate. Art circle, media and Messaging coordination, spin off meetings about this and that. ‘We all know the collapse is coming,’ someone says this at every meeting, ‘This is just the dress rehearsal.’ Jazz hands indicate general agreement, but everyone is scared. The pandemic has its parallels with climate change: both are ominous hyper-objects, invisible and all encompassing. We talk about whether a better world can come out of this crisis. We can’t go back to business as usual: business as usual is the problem.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I have a small, slightly unkempt back garden. Sitting there while my daughter plays with her dinosaurs in her sandpit, I notice a mouse. The mouse creeps out of a hole in the garden wall. My daughter and I watch the mouse. My daughter is excited, makes a comparison with this mouse and the mouse in The Gruffalo’s Child<\/em>. The mouse watches us and we watch the mouse. It’s quite beautiful, for a London mouse, with shining dark eyes and a fine long tail. After a while, the mouse retreats back to the hole, but doesn’t altogether hide away. It’s still there and so are we.<\/p>\n

@jmlostboys<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The London Mouse By James Miller. When my daughter wakes in the morning and I go to collect her from her cot she says, ‘Not going nursery, no’. It’s a statement, an expression of novelty, but as the days go on, it’s also a question, as if she’s asking, \u2018how much longer will this continue?’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buzzwords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99402"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99551,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99402\/revisions\/99551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}