I had booked return flights Manchester – Exeter to visit my poet friend Kathleen. My trip was going to be in the third week of March 2020. On the 5th of March Flybe filed for administration and ceased all operations immediately. I lost £65, but I was very relieved: If I had flown to Exeter, I might well have been stuck in Devon as that first lockdown started…

On Sunday 15 March I learned the British government was considering a compulsory quarantine. The next day I emailed the owner of the campsite asking if I could arrive early. He replied immediately. I booked a flight, transferred money, packed, agonised over which poetry books to take to my ‘desert island’ near The Hague. I flew to Schiphol on the Wednesday. The local buses already had the area near the driver closed off with white-red plastic.

Here are two poems about that first lockdown:

The departure

Half a century condensed into Brexit, pandemic.
At the threat of a four-month’ compulsory
quarantine I fled to my bolthole in Holland.

Six months of safety in a static caravan,
waking to birdsong each morning,
shielded from the sun by the golden elm.
I walked my daily rounds on the grass lanes.

Forsythia, tulips, narcissi, rhododendron,
pyracantha, salvia, rock rose, asters:
the seasons’ steady markers. From a distance
I waved to neighbours finally arriving.

In the cupboard of the spare room
lay the letter confirming my ‘settled status’
on the other side of the North Sea.

The undertakers

A double spread in the paper
features a large photo.

This man, in his thirties, a narrow
horizontal moustache, soft smile.

He sits in a wooden boat, his right hand
resting on a plain white coffin.

People are asked to email text and selfies.
Made into cards, these are placed on the coffin.

He is based in Amsterdam, will transport
you safely through the canals.

That undertaker has just opened a crematorium.
He also owns a chain of hotels.

The pandemic has cut the numbers allowed
to be in the room. There is livestreaming.

People, he says, are glad of it.
The intimacy makes it easier to speak.

At the end of September 2020, the campsite closed. I got a Covid test somewhere in the centre of The Hague and flew back to Manchester.

Late lockdown poem

I wake up and know, of course,
that I am not a morning person.
The sound of rain, of course,
and fewer sirens as people
are supposed to be at home.
My lifelines are the same, of course:
motto, comfort break, medication.
Of course, I think about exercise,
settle for Composer of the Week,
dead, of course.

A postage stamp, Joshua calls it

He’s right and there’s traffic noise
from the main road and people
with dogs on long leads,
but not all the benches
are dedicated to the dead,
Marie-Louise is a pretty name
for a park and the 43 Airport bus
is a hybrid and no-one much
was going to the airport
that autumn: I often had the bus
to myself, both ways.