Lockdown Diaries: Recalibrating daily lives in Italy, UK

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coronavirus, covid-19, lockdown, italy, UK
A self-isolation sign outside a front door in England.

Curbs on movement have impacted people across the world. Starting this week, our columnists give you the lowdown from their safe zones, at home.

By Mariella Radaelli and Euan Reedie

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Published: Tue 31 Mar 2020, 9:04 PM

Notes from Italy
Mariella Radaelli
Permitted to only leave home for urgent reasons or necessity during the nationwide lockdown, Italians are now carrying the fourth version of a self-certification form in their pockets when they go outside. The paperwork keeps changing with the rules tightened several times since lockdown was first enforced.
The fourth version was released late last week to protect citizens from the 'Furbi', sly and fraudulent people who think they can ignore the rules. The entropy of the state bureaucracy is strong even in these tragic days, so Italians often complain about grey bureaucrats. Yet maybe the bureaucracy exists for a reason in the country - it protects the 'Fessi' from the 'Furbi', two types of Italians well depicted by novelist Giuseppe Prezzolini in his sarcastic Code of Italian Life published in the 1920s.
The Fessi, which literally means 'the stupid', actually connotes the honest people, the vast majority of Italians who work, pay their bills, have principles, and live according to ethics. Italy keeps running through the efforts of the Fessi, but the Furbi peep through every corner at the expense of society. Because the cult of the Furbizia, or cunning trick, is still well-established, Italy's bewildering bureaucratic soul continues to flourish. Since the beginning of the emergency, the government has issued 277 articles of law written in legalese with indications that sometimes interfere with each other.
Ordinary citizens, entrepreneurs, and accountants continue to wrack their brains trying to keep the piles of papers and file folders sorted.
Mariella Radaelli is a writer and editor in Milan, Italy.


Notes from the UK

Euan Reedie
A simple shopping trip the other day brought home to me the unimaginable effect the coronavirus is having on our daily existence in the UK.
Having to queue outside my local supermarket, Tesco, and only being permitted entry with two or three others when shoppers left, was a highly surreal experience.
A trip to a building supplies shop also felt like a journey into a dystopian world, as vehicles queued for an hour while mask-wearing workers patrolled the gates.
Britain entered lockdown last week and all of us have had to recalibrate our lives as we stay at home, save for essential work, shopping and one hour of outdoor exercise.
These truly are tumultuous times for all of us in the UK, like everyone globally.
I know people who are being asked to go on furlough (unpaid leave save for the 2,500 pounds a month available as part of the government's bailout) as their employers cannot afford to pay them.
Not seeing friends and loved ones who live only a few miles away is incredibly tough and hard to reconcile. When will this end? Nobody knows.
But, amidst the all-prevailing gloom, there is light. Literally.
It's been blissfully sunny for the past week; it's almost as if a higher power wants to help us avoid spiralling into uncontrollable depression.
Spring has seemingly sprung and boy, it's come at exactly the right time.
Life would have been appreciably harder if this dreaded disease had raged in the depths of the notoriously cold and wet British winter.
There have also been myriad acts of community kindness to gladden the heart and stir the soul during the crisis.
My local football club, Plymouth Argyle, has launched an innovative crowdfunding campaign to help support local businesses feeling the strain from the pandemic.
By the start of the week, £24,000 (Dh109,000) had been raised towards the £50,000 (Dh228,000) target from a vast range of options for supporters, including ticket packages and naming rights for one of the club's stands.
The English League Two club have also handed over the use of their new grandstand to the National Health Service (NHS) to ease the pressure on the city's Derriford hospital, with the Home Park boardroom temporarily transformed into a phlebotomy clinic and the conference hall becoming a waiting room.
Like other British football clubs, Argyle have been more creative and engaging than ever on social media through initiatives like Football Manager computer game recreations of real matches.
Twitter, so often a toxic and destructive medium, has become a great source of solace, with numerous British celebrities sharing comical videos of them adapting to isolation.
Tyson Fury, the larger-than-life world heavyweight boxing champion, is live streaming his frenzied family workout twice daily, for instance.
I am glad to report that us stoic Brits are surviving this unprecedented era with our customary humour and resilience, despite it being an immense struggle. We are valuing each other more, too.
People all over the country came out of their houses at 8pm last Thursday to provide a round of applause for our heroic NHS workers, for example.
As Winston Churchill famously said, we shall never surrender, even when faced with an enemy the like of which none of us has encountered before.
Euan Reedie is a freelance writer and editor in the United Kingdom.


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