Well, it got me. Covid has wrapped its evil claws around my body, inside and out. It has stolen my breath, attacked my muscles and joints with sharp teeth, and permeated my soul with a sense of hopelessness. However, I come from generations of women who won’t be beaten down, so instead I’m turning my thoughts to writing to escape this feeling of dread. I have a sense that may be Covid has been tampering with my logical thoughts and so apologies if this writing isn’t well constructed or doesn’t make sense. It will go onto my blog as a record of what is an event, a massive event, for me and my poor body (which has been through a great deal in the nearly 60 years I have been in residence). Short bursts is all I have energy for at the moment…excuse me…it is likely this writing will emerge gradually over days before being published.

I have been trying to avoid Covid’s gaze for the last almost 18 months working mostly from home. I have been dutiful in following the often unclear, muddy guidance from government. In the last academic year I learned the skill of teaching online, and by September 2021 I was good at it – I know because many of my students told me. However despite this, they complained often about wanting and needing face-to-face contact. My home became my workplace and it was me who turned a room in my house into an office. It was me who paid the energy bills, the broadband and for the necessary consumables such as printer ink and paper. Workload increased significantly for many reasons beyond my control, but gradually I worked out how to lock the door on my workspace in order to preserve some sort of manageable boundary between work and home life. Yet still I knew I worked far longer hours than I was paid for. Double whammy…I was the one paying for working from home and longer hours. I made that choice for my students though and it was a conscious choice…even if it was Hobson’s. It was a strangely lonely experience working from home, as all work relationships became virtual and yet all of these people were entering my personal space sometimes unbidden. I stuck to each lockdown and like many missed family and friends acutely, but I was convinced it was for the best and the price I paid to keep myself, my friends, and my family safe.

So when my employer decided that we would return to face-to-face teaching in October 2021, I sat with pen and paper to construct a pros and cons list, and set to completing their risk assessment which I knew would, as before, put me in a higher category than the average. In the end though, the choice was mine alone, if influenced by the mitigations I was told were being put in place. I was reassured that teaching would be in rooms which allowed for 2 metre (later 1m) distancing, that in rooms where CO2 monitors were in place students would be required to wear face coverings and be encouraged to wear them whilst indoors. Mobile CO2 monitors would be used periodically in other teaching rooms. I was told that hygiene was to be exemplary. In the end the clincher for the decision for me returning to face to face teaching was the students – because they, and to a certain extent, I, needed human connection. I decided to return with the proviso that as soon as I felt unsafe I would move to online teaching. I had been double-jabbed and that added some weight to my decision. Choice made.

My face masks and I became one over the following months. I found that often I would remind students to put on their masks whilst in teaching rooms, but as soon as they had left the room, for the most part, their face covering would be removed. I got into the habit of opening windows and wiping down surfaces when I entered or left a teaching space. Shortly into term all space restrictions were lifted to normal occupancy. Occasionally a CO2 monitor would warn me that the room needed more ventilation, or a person with a mobile monitor would demand doors be open too. I found it difficult to teach in a mask, and instead moved to wearing a transparent visor which my employer provided. I knew that the visor provided more protection to the students in front of me, than personal protection but this was offered and I took it up, as a compromise. Students complained about the cold rooms as windows were open, so the heating was turned up. With my habitual teaching style of constant movement and gesture I soon found that I would sweat with the heat, and the visor would fog, making me uncomfortable. Mask or visor? I made that choice but it was always one or the other. As the term progressed, I remembered how much I enjoyed teaching face to face, but how much physical, mental and emotional energy I gave in that endeavour and more of the latter with the threat of Covid staring over our shoulders. I was exhausted everyday, but it felt like some sort of normality after over a year of working alone.

As I moved between teaching rooms I passed groups of students in corridors and communal spaces laughing, joking and sharing. I was torn – I loved to hear the return of the buzz of human connection to the campus. However, I winced as I saw the closeness of that contact, the vast majority of faces maskless. It was like each person was relieved to no longer be living under the shadow of Covid that had dictated their existence for the previous year. It was as if, as one, the people before me were sticking their fingers in their ears, and their heads in the sand, to pretend there was nothing to worry about. It sometimes felt like only I could see that big elephant ‘Covid’ in the room every time I passed through the shared spaces – giggling with evil joy as people hugged or kissed, or shared food and drink. That was their choice.

I however, wanted to cry each time I had to thread my way through those crowds, or when I was in a lift and groups of laughing students clambered in, unaware of me pushing myself into a corner to ineffectively avoid their maskless faces and possible infection from their laughing breath. I flagged my concerns with those managing me, who responded with kindness and reassurance that the message about Covid awareness had been emailed to every staff and student member. I understand that everyone of course had to make their own choice, all that could be done in enabling people to understand that they had a choice, had been done. Decisions were left in the hands of each individual.

I think that somewhere along the line I lost sight of my personal risk assessment, and what I had set myself as the bottom line – that if I felt unsafe I would move to teaching online. I had felt unsafe for weeks if I am honest to myself, but I ignored my inner voice. I let myself believe the discourse that ‘Covid awareness’ was enough. I told myself the lie that students would suffer if I moved back to online teaching. I obtained my ‘red lanyard’ which indicated that I wanted people to respect my personal space because of the threat of Covid. Did people take note of it? I certainly didn’t notice any change in people’s behaviours around me. However, I sucked up the discourse that awareness, and of course a red lanyard, would save me from infection.

Last week I was pleased to be asked to teach a session on race and ethnicity, and my passion for amplifying the message of anti-racism drove me. I did a dynamic risk assessment. It was a large room. Windows and doors were open and ventilation was good. The front rows of students were wearing face coverings (although not all). I started to teach whilst wearing my visor, but I became hot, and perhaps because of the emotive subject I felt the visor was a barrier, rather than a safety device, so I removed it whilst speaking. A moment of foolishness perhaps, but my choice. I only replaced my mask when I stopped talking. The following day I had a text from a colleague who had shared the same space, saying that she had tested positive for Covid. She had constantly worn her mask or visor during the session. She had respected my personal space. Yet here I am, lying in bed with Covid as my companion.

Do I think she was the source of my infection? No, I honestly don’t, although some may wish to point a finger there to make it easier to reconcile, or blame my 2 hours of being unmasked in a ventilated room. Others around me have come down with Covid this week, and in previous weeks. Anyone of them might have been the source… or not. Covid is still everywhere despite how much we wish it wasn’t, and denial doesn’t change that fact. I blame no one. The cause of my infection has been fear and complacency: mine and every other person who inhabit the space I work in. I mention only my work space because I had made a conscious choice after the summer not to go to busy social spaces which take place indoors – therefore I am 99% sure that my infection has come from work, as I have been nowhere else. I have made some poor personal choices – although perhaps fewer in comparison to others. The choices I have made have never just been for me, but as a conscious attempt to protect others. I hope upon hope that more people will do the same, because whilst hopefully I am passing through this relatively unscathed (time will tell) there are many, many others who have (and will) not.

We are lucky that in this country we are allowed a choice in so many things. In terms of the continuing Covid crisis perhaps more people need to exercise human compassion and a wish for the common good, recognising that at times this requires some restrictions to what we may feel are our individual freedoms. In early years we often speak of supporting children to understand that with rights come responsibilities…if small children can understand this, why can’t so many adults? What part of humanity is it that we lose in our society as we move through the life course?

Surely our responsibilities must be for the good of our communities, not just ourselves or profits? We have only got power over our individual choices…but a plea to those that know me and read this…make a conscious choice rather than be complacent, and think about others alongside thinking of yourself. That’s it…off my soap box and back to sleep.

Be safe folks.

A few recent events have sent me into a spiral of squiggly thoughts that have taken time to coalesce.

I remember introducing my mum to my later-to-be in-laws. She and my dad had been divorced a while at this time and mum had remarried and had two young toddlers.

“This is my mum, Topsy”.

Topsy was my dad’s pet name for her and everyone we knew called her that. He explained the reason for the name to me when I was very young and asked why she had two names. He looked at my mum who had her back to me, and was washing-up at the sink, before explaining “Well, she is for me, the tops of my life”. The look my mum gave him as she turned at his reply, and his eyes as he looked at her made me warm inside. Safe. Protected. Held. So many emotions flooded my body as I bathed in that connection, but the overriding one was love. It wasn’t until I was a few years older that I first questioned the true origin of her nickname. I was sat snuggled up on the sofa with that after Sunday-lunch contentment. I still remember vividly the smell of roast dinner that permeated the house. Mum was, as are her daughters, feeders. Food, the more the better, demonstrated love.

In my dreamy contentment, full up on lunch and love, I was watching the Sunday matinee on our TV. The film that day was Yul Brunner in ‘The King and I’. As the plot unfolded, I watched as the story of ‘Uncle Tom’ was portrayed in a ballet scene. I did not understand much at that time about the ‘Uncle Tom’s cabin’ story, but could see that the dance was about cruelty to enslaved people one of which was called Topsy like my mum. I found the scene disturbing as the wicked Simon Legree chased the poor slave Eliza who was running away from him, but it also made me uneasy because of the connection of the name Topsy, also enslaved by Legree.

It was much later, when I was flicking through our beloved fake Encyclopedia Brittanica that I come across details of the book ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The images of black people from the book jumped from the page; big lips, long limbs, bare feet, white-teeth and fuzzy hair, including Topsy. Ugly caricatures of the illustrator’s take on blackness, which I now know belies the intended anti-slavery message of the writing inside. I can remember closing the Encyclopedia with a thump, not liking the feelings, both physical and mental that were taking my breath away…

Now, I had only ever referred to my mum as mum, mummy or mother (depending on my mood with her). Being a teen I really had no experience of introducing my mum to anyone, let alone the parents of a man whom I had agreed to marry. ‘Mrs B…’ sounded too formal. I settled on Topsy because it is the only name I had really heard used in the family, apart from when my mum’s siblings/friends from back home visited. They used her birth name or a shortened version of it. So when I nervously introduced my mum, it was like I was suddenly an adult being all grown-up. However, I was simultaneously crushed back to childhood and shocked at my mum’s quick reply, ‘I’ve always hated being called Topsy. My name is …’ She reached for each of their hands, and greeted them warmly whilst I stood slightly stung and stunned to open-mouthed silence. The moment soon passed onto light chit-chat, and I never talked to her about the reasons for her conscious step away from Topsy.

I wish now, I could ask her why she made that decision. Alzheimers has taken away that option sadly – talking of such things prompts either sadness, confusion or a jump down one of the many rabbit holes that her deteriorating brain throws in the way of her rational thoughts. Some might wonder if saying goodbye to Topsy was a chosen step away from her old life and old identity. After all, she was following a different path as someone else’s wife, and her motherhood had been extended with more young to protect. However, I suspect that the name Topsy had darker emotional origins for her. Uncle Tom and Topsy were negative stereotypes of black people. Tom was the archetypal dutiful, but unintelligent slave, and Topsy the disobedient, wire-haired, flat-footed black ‘pickanniny’ after Beecham’s book was published in 1852. I am sure my mum would have been labelled with many derogatory stereotypes on her arrival to England 100 years later at just 16 years of age, and I wonder if initially the label of Topsy was not as innocuous as my dad led me to believe. I wonder if every time she was called by that name it held the taint of the negative stereotype.

This is the memory that came to mind as events unfolded recently. The first event that occurred was the racist comments made to cricketer Azeem Rafiq which Yorkshire Cricket Club declared was merely ‘friendly banter’. The outpouring of memories of similar experiences of ‘friendly banter’ from brown and black people on social media hit home. The united pain and anger from the throwaway barbs sung out to me, along with shared frustration that often the pain was unacknowledged or negated by cries of our over-sensitivity and paranoia. The popular press jumped on the band wagon prompting the cry from some of the population that their freedom of speech was being curtailed. Often the usual fallback position was taken, which smacks of white fragility, that this was an example of the ‘woke’ view and ‘political correctness’ gone mad.

I cannot give details of the next event as it involves a white family member, however in a similar vein to the events above, a racist word was used accompanied by the comment that the person knew it was wrong, but felt they had the freedom to say it anyway. The personal hurt and disappointment is indescribable. Whilst some might chant the childhood slogan “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” personally the opposite is true. Physical hurt brought about by racism can be declared wrong – it is in plain sight, it could bring about an arrest and most could not argue that it sits in the ‘unacceptable behaviour’ box. Words that are racist might be harmless in the eyes of the perpetrator, but the recipient feels the sting of them on the inside. I know that however well I try to hide the hurt outwardly, inside each new assault breaks open the wound left from the first time I encountered the barbs of racism. I have been spat at because of my colour, and I have been discriminated against physically through gestures or movements. I am lucky that for me this was the limit of physical assault that I have had to cope with. For me personally, the longest-lasting wounds come from the culmination of micro-aggressions. The greatest impact has come from small day-to-day occurrences; racist words, jokes or hidden messages behind seemingly innocent speak, which when challenged results in denial, or an accusation of over-sensitivity, or lack of humour. These have been the most hurtful things, and impacted my feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence and eroded any true sense of belonging.

I have reflected since these events on how I might provide a meaningful explanation to someone who feels their freedom is curtailed by being challenged about using ‘friendly banter’ which may cause offence to another. So often when challenged people will retort that racism was not their intention, therefore it was not an act of racism. It was whilst recently attending fantastic training on racial literacy that the penny dropped for me. The presenter talked of the importance of people considering impact rather than intent. If only more people, myself included, would consider impact rather than intent in their engagement with others, it would be a small start in feeling safe and protected, for those who are made ‘other’ in our society. Thinking back to the memory of the ‘pet’ name of ‘Topsy’ for my mum, it would never have been my dad’s intention to hurt her – he loved her with all of his heart until the day he died, despite their divorce. I know this, because he told me so many times during his painful battle to hang onto life. However, it was a name which held mixed emotions for my mum. Whatever the intention it was a micro-aggression that fell from the lips of those she loved. She probably never spoke out, to do that risked hurting them. However, I am sure there was a cumulative effect and when she began a new life she could at last speak out and abandon the source of daily pain. Strangely, for me the stab of pain comes not only when people make racial slurs against people that look like me, but also when they are made against anyone ‘othered’. The comments hint of unconscious biases bubbling to the surface and if the perpetrator holds these, what else lurks beneath? Stab…stab…stab at the wound caused by racism. It is the impact not the intent.

I started this post a while ago, before Azeem Rafiq revealed the details of the overt and covert forms of racism he endured for so long. All that listened to that broadcast could not deny the impact that it had on his mental health – the insidious, pervasive, systemic racism labelled as ‘friendly’ exchange was the cause. Many black and brown people in this country would have wept as Azeem spoke with their voice, hoping upon hope that people would listen and act. I certainly hope that the people, and one in particular, hear the message and consider the impact, whatever their intent before they let their racist arrow loose again.