Yesterday L. and I decided to visit his work to collect several packages that have been waiting for us since the very first days of the lockdown (two Vogue Art Deco posters included): the visit had to be prepared in advance, and we arranged it for today: only L. himself can go into the Lab, I should wait for him outside due to the quarantine precautions.
The distance between our house and the Lab is quite significant (by Cambridge standards, of course: for any Muscovite it’s pretty much nothing, three or so kilometres), and the route passes through the centre and a part of the city we haven’t visited for ages.
Boy, was it gloomy. To be quite frank, today’s walk, even pleasant in parts despite the intermittent drizzle and grey skies, was the saddest of all our wanderings around the city and nearby since March. Despite the noticeable increase in the numbers of people on the streets—pedestrians and cyclists, and also motorists (the amount of cars on Hills Road was nearly the same as before the quarantine), everything looked wretched, shabby and absolutely deserted.
More than a half of the cafes, restaurants and bakeries are shut down either forever or “until further notice,” which seemingly means the same, of course: our beloved “Dulcedo,” an artisan patisserie with divine desserts, disappeared and its windows were black: the announcement said that they were going to move to Mill Road and somewhere North, but would they really? I have no idea.
Smokeworks near the rail station closed; a tiny indie shop near the Catholic Church, with groceries and Lincolnshire poacher, closed; Côte and Cafè Rouge on Magdalene Street are closed as well. There were people passing by those buildings, which were once happy and crowded places and now are empty, with blind spots instead of dainty decorated displays.
No punting, although on the way back we saw one punt with awkward teens who didn’t much know how to deal with it: I’d have found it infuriating once, but now I was glad to see real people on the river again.
La Margherita, the Italian restaurant where we had our wedding reception, has survived the havoc: the sign on their doors said that they were about to open and were operating for takeaways, and it was the most heartwarming discovery of the day.
The church yard near St Botolph’s looked like it hadn’t been cut in a hundred years: wild grass overgrew its trees and benches. An unpleasant fragment of memory about the Eloi and their reckless life in splendid landscapes came to mind. The place in front of the Chronophage, usually full of tourists with smartphones, was desolate, and it was growling into the void.
I hope one day it will all be over, and will fade away from our collective memories completely, like all those social distancing stickers on the pavement, which will be removed once and forever.
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