#CargoOfBricks 8: Lockdown London and getting kettled outside Downing Street

Slugger O'Toole

Episode Eight of #CargoOfBricks is with Dublin born, London based historian, a public commentator on both Irish and British politics and prolific crime writer Ruth Dudley Edwards. Initially a lockdown sceptic, I was curious to hear how she had managed what was probably the oddest period of disruption in our post-war lives, and how life changed for her.

In the free-flowing conversation which follows she talks about...

• Although, she began defiantly anti lockdown, 'when the orders came' she quickly complied. Then, it seem to her, the world seemed to fill out with people who seem knew exactly what the right answer to Covid was, in deep contrast to her own growing sense of 'not knowing' and which quickly enveloped most European governments, including the UK and Ireland.
• On her daily walk she began to learn poetry, starting with Davies' classic lines "we have no time to stop and stare". Slowing down, in St James' Park she became embroiled in the micro-politics of the wildfowl there. She met the hawk handler who showed her the kestrels nesting on Nelson's Column. In an otherwise empty London, people smiled, and made friends.
• What began to fade was the shrillness of the media commentary and her normal life, "filled with politics, and 'now' and urgency and rush". If not listening to poetry it was podcast on bigger themes, and unexpected subjected. Confronted with genuine complexity and not actually knowing, she watched the media get more hysterical and gotcha journalism.

She also mentions bumping into the first Black Lives Matter protest in London on the way back from visiting a friend and the sheer joy in the young protestors at being together in a just cause and how the lockdown has been quietly stealing our quality of life and storing up issues around mental health.

So that's that. See you when I will be talking to retired publisher Barry McIlheney talking about his journey from Belfast's punk scene in the late 70s to the centre of London's pop culture.

You can subscribe to Cargo of Bricks, Slugger TV, and our other podcasts on Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts or Spotify, where you can also catch up on previous Covid related episodes with the likes of Ian Parsley, Graham Brownlow and Tina McKenzie.