Should I emulate my mother – who danced in the streets during the Blitz? | John Crace

All plans are on hold now and I can't work out if I need a bit more or a bit less of my mother's spirit

Anxiety is still the first feeling of which I am aware every morning. First as a sense of unease as I regain consciousness and then physical and mental distress as I reconnect with the reality of the new normal. It can still take me a couple of hours of hiding under the duvet before I feel brave enough to get up and have breakfast. Some things have changed, though. Thankfully my dreams are no longer quite so terrifying. Rather, they have switched into something more distant and desolate where I am disconnected from the present. One night I dreamed first I was with my son, who was learning to fly in the Lofoten Islands - somewhere I've never been (nor have I watched the TV series Twin) and would not be unable to place on a map of Norway - and then that I was in a spaceship with Buzz Aldrin as we were flying to the edge of the solar system. Buzz didn't seem that pleased to have me for company. What's also changed is that during the day some of the anxiety now dissipates into sadness and depression. Sadness both at the scale of the crisis - we are now well past the chief scientific adviser's best result" death toll of 20,000, with no end in sight - and at my own personal losses. In particular the separation from my family, friends and colleagues. In the early days of the lockdown I was somehow able to kid myself that maybe the quarantine wouldn't last that long. But now it's sunk in that the government is making things up as it goes along, life may not return to normal for many months and that all plans will have to be put on hold. I remember my mother telling me how she and some friends danced down Piccadilly during an air raid in the second world war (I'm assuming they were a bit pissed) before a warden angrily shepherded them into a shelter. I can't quite work out whether I need a bit more or a bit less of that sort of spirit.