Rosemary Horton is perhaps one of the most interesting people I have met, and yet spent most of her life not moving far from our borough, Merton. She’s lived here for 60 years, and in Wimbledon Village for three decades, where she is now living in an idyllic cottage. Rosemary was a teacher her whole life, mostly around Wimbledon working at schools like Bishop Gilpin, Wimbledon Park and even running her own nursery for years in Spencer Hill. Some months ago, in the depth of Autumn lockdown last year, I asked Rosemary, now in her 80s, if I could interview her to talk about the COVID crisis and so went in her garden to ask a few questions while standing a few metres away.
As someone considered high-risk, she had been shielding since March and was still doing so when I interviewed her. I asked how her experience of lockdown was—overall positive or negative? She took a moment before replying: “Positive for me, but I can understand why some people shielding had a negative experience. Everyone on my street is my friend, we garden together, I know everyone so they all look after me.” Just as she was about to start another sentence, her neighbour Anne, who is in her 90s, came through the garden to say hello. Rosemary gestured towards Anne explaining, “We exercise and garden together, she brings her coffee to the square every morning with me—she is an absolute joy”. Rosemary told me that without this sense of solidarity, lockdown would have been a far more isolating and alienating experience.
“I’m fortunate that three of my children and four of my grandchildren live in Wimbledon, but I have a friend in Raynes Park who had no one to keep her company or do the shopping for her, and she had a really hard time, sadly.”
Aside from her family members that live here in Merton, Rosemary has an adoptive daughter in Japan who she can no longer see due to Covid restrictions. Given the advancement of technology and apps like Zoom, Teams and Skype, Rosemary has been able to stay in touch with her 60-year-old daughter, who is experiencing the crisis from far East Asia. “We Skype on Sundays, and she recently became a grandmother, which would make me a great-grandma! My new-great grandson is nearly one year old now.” She reflected with a touch of sorrow that she hasn’t been able to meet him, but she hopes that restrictions lift soon so her family can reunite.
At the time, in October, we were in the midst of a second wave. Despite the fact that we were in Tier 2 in London, the fear that we escalate to Tier 3 was still brewing. I asked Rosemary if she felt that we would go into a second lockdown and how she would feel if this were the case.
“No, I am already prepared for it, as soon as the other one finished and my son said I could do my own shopping again which was a joy—I got so excited to be able to choose things—I knew that another lockdown would come.”
I followed, “Do you think the people living here in Wimbledon will follow another lockdown?”
She replied, with a chuckle: “I think we have to. Frankly, I don’t think we will do it with such good grace, but I don’t see how we could not. I think most of us never had high hopes that winter would be ‘normal’.”
“Do you think we should go into a full lockdown as we did in spring?”
“Yes, I do. I mean why do it by halves? It’s more painful.” This inherently signaled to me that Rosemary likely disapproves of tier 2 restrictions, as this is a way in which we are taking it by ‘halves’. Accordingly, I asked a slightly more political question.
“Do you approve of the way the government has handled and is handling the crisis?”
“No, not particularly, no. I think they could have done a lot better. Firstly, I wish they had treated us more like intelligent people in such that we felt blindfolded.” She went on to make a deeper ideological parallel. “I heard echoes of the book 1984 back in March. When I first read 1984 in the 1950s, I said to my youngest son: ‘Don’t worry, it is impossible for Big Brother to be watching you’ because that was a fear that the book resonated with. And he replied ‘We are already being watched, mum’.” She went on to explain how she feels our governments globally are not being fully transparent with their citizens, and this crisis is possibly a way for nations to gain political control. This vulnerability that many people have felt in the crisis is consistent with many conspiracy theories which argue that the pandemic was caused deliberately to take advantage of people.
I followed up asking if she felt the echoes of 1984’s authoritarianism from Western governments or the Chinese government. She hastily replied: “No, no, from the UK government. I think we can head in the direction of 1984 if you listen to some stupid person like Trump. I like to call Boris ‘baby Trump’.” She laughed lightly before concluding, “I say no more!”.
Speaking of political crises, Rosemary had experienced the Second World War from here in London. I asked her if she felt there was a worthy comparison between the feelings of the WWII and the Covid-19 crisis.
“My mother and I lived through the second world war—sleeping in the underground, eating in soup kitchens, that type of thing. But she [her mother] remembered the first world war as a time of patriotism before innocent civilians were actually involved in battles between countries. So, when the second war came around, I think people had learned from the first to be patriotic towards their communities, rather than to their government or royal family. So, when we were bombed, it drew people together.” She explained how she doesn’t feel that people were drawn together in this crisis, not only emotionally but physically because we were all isolated.
“Even if I didn’t agree with Churchill on everything, he was an awesome man and somehow made this feeling that we were all special, and we can do it, Hitler is a nasty man. And there is none of that now.”
Rosemary went on to compare the impacts of the two global crises. “World War Two brought women into the workforce—my mother was conscripted in a factory, and women emerged and took their roles. So, I think [ in this crisis] people have found a much greater appreciation for people working in social industries like teachers and nurses. Teachers are so underpaid and taken for granted as are nurses and medical workers so I hope we learn from this the same way we learnt from WWII”.
Having discussed the likelihood of a difficult winter and a 2021 that is not exactly what we may refer to as ‘normal life’, I asked Rosemary if she trusts the government with the responsibility of her and her family’s life in the next year.
“No, honestly, not particularly,” she concluded. Valuable words from someone who has seen so much, and with such a rich history.
