My legs rest on my all-time favourite ‘lazy boy’ and the Northerly sun warms the air in the living room at sunset. Outside, the breeze ruffles the pine trees surrounding the cottage and in the distant horizon, the antennas of Dundalk rise up to the clearest sky in timid silence.

Cars can be heard in the distance as we leave the ethereal limbo of COVID-19, the longing for some normality in our lives now becoming our daily obsession around charts, news bulletins and hand sanitiser.

At six every afternoon, numbers for the day are published. Deaths and new cases just a reference number that will determine our next levels of freedom. Numbers that were once a person that now has to be mourned in the almost Hollywood-esque ‘social distance’.

As it starts raining in the middle of a summer storm, I realise this website, once my pride and my record of adventurous times has not been updated since last year.
October 2019 and the world was different. A world of dark early commutes and M50 car crashes. Of eyes fixed on an oversized Mac looking at spreadsheets and directing staff in the most surreal environment of cameras, lights and overpriced garments. Pissing rain on the streets, pissing rain in my soul for the whole of November.
In December, as our world prepared for the holiday season, my leave is cancelled, my birthday is a lonely reminder of ageing and overtime is requested from work. It is still pissing rain.

At Christmas I take the cheapest flight to London I find in a futile attempt to hide from misery in the soggy grey corners of the metropolis, yet I encounter a sunny sky on Christmas Day. My friends, with their Latin quirkiness, provide for a day-long flow of barbecued meat and tiramisu, with the celebration somehow ending in badly sung Andrea Boccelli karaoke, at a time in which across the Thames, the towers of Canary Wharf turn into a dark row of glass ghosts tucking into a bed of wintery mist.
It rains for the rest of my trip. I walk in high spirits from Surrey Quays to Oxford Street at the thought of a crappy year almost over, and in a desperate hurry across Bermondsey at the call of a police search order in the apartment I am staying in. 

The New Year brings old friends back and takes away my job. For the first time learning about the benefits of ‘gardening leave’ on a Brexit-fuelled move.  I sit alone in the conference room hearing it all in silence, the adrenaline pumping a smile on my face at the thought of never having to return to the dreadful industrial estate, whilst my stomach slowly sinks in the worry of my new ‘gardening’ situation. 

I run away again. Across the Pyrenees, the Sagrada Familia greets me a welcome to Barcelona and as the plane heavily lands in El Prat, a cold sunshine inundates both sight and soul.

And as I have the usual tapas with friends at El Born, I drunkenly discuss a move from Ireland at Eixample, and for an afternoon, I climb the Tibidabo on my own, both sweat and tears running salty canals of happiness and anger across my face, and once back in Urquinaona, I feel the cleansing lightness of a recently acquired freedom from all the anguish just past.

Upon landing in Dublin it is time for interviews. Phone in one hand, cheat sheet on the other. My timeline of professional experience repeatedly sold in thirty minutes like a script of corporate paraphernalia ready to be printed and framed.
The gym keeps the anxiety of waiting at bay. The gin keeps the worry of bills piling up in a blur.

I am called to second interviews for a chance to ditch the shorts and put on a shirt. I travel to the border. I shake hands with no sanitiser and I sell my knowledge in a meeting room with a view of the Mourne Mountains.
‘Ten, eleven, twelve…’ . The phone rings and I get off the pull up bar. A job is offered less than twenty-four hours after my interview and I accept in a sweaty smile, finishing my workout without further thinking and walking the six-kilometres to Sandycove in a numb and premeditated good-bye.

News of a new virus at six induce a craving for an icy Corona. Images of Wuhan residents wearing masks in deserted streets seem distant and instead, my worries focus on Ines, Ciara and Dennis, the three storms that hit us for three weeks in a row.
‘I have no plans of going to China any time soon anyway’ and sip on gin.

For nine mornings, the Enterprise takes me to the confines of the European Union in a smooth rocking. The Irish countryside, still frosty from the last bits of winter glistens under the freezing mist and the Irish capital, grey in its nature, vanishes behind in a swirl of distant memories of a decade well-lived within its boundaries.

And just as the morning of 9-11, another one of those unforgettable days unfolds in slow motion.
The news pop on my work laptop like a teleprompter of bad comedy lines. Hour after hour, a part of the country announces shut down in an apocalyptically declared state of emergency, sending us all into a suspended limbo of working from home.
Few days later on a turbulent Friday, the government announces full lockdown for the next morning. I desperately start packing and jamming Olaf with boxes of personal belongings to be transported at 140km/h. My heart races as fast as the wheels detour from the M50 and my stomach fills up with anxious waves of bile as I leave the orbits of Dublin and make my way North, where the Republic turns colourful and joins the United Kingdom.

I pour the last bit of tonic left in the cottage in a small tumbler and add ice, blueberries and gin. A long reflection in between deep breaths and tears. I down the long glass and I think to myself: ‘Here’s to change. For the past few months of personal changes, for peace for those whose lives have now been affected by the pandemic, for the next years of a world now forever changed’.

Welcome to the Cooleys.