By Ellie Broughton
In many ways being in lockdown is like normal life - since July I’ve been working from home running our cycling and hiking holiday house, Casa de Ciclista. And on the odd occasion when we don’t have guests or family staying we’re busy decorating and gardening. When our first guest cancelled their booking for Sunday, I was relieved because it meant I didn’t have to spend a glorious day preparing the house for the new arrivals. I could have a day off!
There’ve been a lot of articles in the press recently from freelance journalists and columnists giving advice about working from home to newbies. They all say things like ‘stay away from the biscuit tin’ or ‘don’t be tempted to switch on daytime TV’. My working from home life is absolutely nothing like theirs. My work involves zero screen time.
Casa de Ciclista
On Sunday a group of 11 cyclists and climbers from Massachusetts left at 10am and I had 10 hours to prepare for the next lot. That’s 10 beds to strip and make, 4 bathrooms and a cloakroom to polish, the living room with the wood burning stove to clean and top up with fresh logs and the kitchen to scrub and mop. Once that’s all done there’s the laundry mountain. It’s glamorous work...not.
But the guests cancelled and I had the weekend to myself (albeit in lockdown glued to social media and the news) so I didn’t have to clean up until yesterday. Actually I wanted to leave it three days as that’s how long it takes for the coronavirus to die on metal and plastic and you can’t buy disinfectant spray for love nor money. Perhaps I’m getting paranoid but these are the times we live in now.
It may not be everyone’s dream job but I’m pretty house proud and I take a certain pride in reclaiming the house and making it pristine and beautiful again after the visitors leave. I imagine the next guests, always delighted to arrive here at this tranquil oasis on the edge of the Tramuntana mountains. You can literally feel their stress melt away in the first few hours after their arrival.
This time I was cleaning with even greater purpose- the lockdown meant that all our guests were forced to cancel until after Easter. The next visitors would be our own families who planned to take advantage of the house being unexpectedly empty and come and lockdown in the sunshine next to the pool with a good book.
I went about my business as usual, buoyed up by the news that my son’s university had unexpectedly shut down and would only be operating online for the foreseeable future. He could come out next Sunday and I could change his flights for free!
Finally with the laundry done, beds made and kitchen sparkling, we sat down to relax in front of Little Women (courtesy of our dodgy UK TV system here in Spain). As the first scene opened, a message pinged up on my phone “Mallorca closes its airspace to all but residents returning to the island”.
I messaged the British expat populations’s gestoria fixer Tracey in a panic. She is the island guru and knows everything. “My son’s being sent home from university this week, is he going to be allowed into Mallorca?” The answer: “No, I’m afraid there’s been no warning of this and many families are being torn apart. There’s nothing you can do.”
I had heard that Little Women was a tear-jerker but I had expected to get beyond the first scene. It really hit me then, being separated from the whole family, everyone in different places locked into their own lockdowns, apart and alone. This coronavirus sucks. I couldn’t deal with it any more. Too much had changed too quickly. I had had enough.
