In late March, when the world was starting to lockdown, we happened to be back in the UK dealing with some family affairs.
Our friends on Sherkin Island told us to get back before the borders closed and travelling restrictions were imposed.

We packed the car and made ready to depart.

That night I had a bit of a panic, as I was concerned about driving away from my elderly parents. I knew that none of us could be together throughout lockdown, as we all happened to be in different geographical areas at that moment - but I felt the need to be on the same landmass as my family as we stepped in to the unknown.

On a practical level, it was also sensible to stay put and finish the business that we had gone to do as we did not know what the future held and we were not sure if we would be able to ‘pop’ back at a later date in the summer.

And so we stayed in England and waited it out.

I have mentioned elsewhere how the effect of living through this experience has been very unsettling for my art practice. The day before lockdown was announced, however, it was by complete coincidence that I started a new notebook. The first drawing was a scribbled pastiche of Munch’s ‘The Scream of Nature’, wryly expressing my frustration at the UK government’s approach to dealing with the crisis as I listened to the news on the radio.

The next day, lockdown was announced and so I scribbled another little drawing to mark the day.

The following day, we realized that reports of stock-piling of household items like loo roll were a bizarre and frightening reality as we tried to book supermarket delivery slots for my parents and for ourselves. We became obsessed, trying to organize home delivery, as we did not want to leave the house for any reason and so the next page of the notebook was a mocking cartoon of me shopping online – and so a pattern and a project emerged.

I had started the Corona Chronicles.

Since then, I have drawn a small cartoon to capture something about each day. I have tried, on the whole, to avoid too much politics and focus instead on the enclosed little domestic world in which we have been living, noting the mundane, small activities that have made up our days, with only occasional intrusion by an external event.

I have already shared some of the images on social media, but in a scattered way, not necessarily in chronological order. The response has been positive to this visual diary with its insights in to a life that has probably not much differed from many others’ experience.

And so the Corona Chronicles continue.
I am not sure when they will end.
When will it ever end?