London In Coronavirus Lockdown: A Tale Of Two Chinooks
AFTER NIGHTFALL, YOU SEE THE LIGHTS LINING UP. Coming to the end of my commute on a winter evening, I can look up and see plane after plane stretching away into the murk of the eastern sky. They follow one another to land at Heathrow to the west.
Sometimes, a passenger myself, I have been able to look out and see my street. When flights pass over my house, they are already so low that detail on the ground can easily be discerned. In the summer, sleeping with the windows open, I am usually woken by the planes as they come in to land in the early morning.
Many might find this irritating, and I admit that, as the summer light comes in all to early, and the jet engines roar, I sometimes wish for the quiet that might have let me sleep longer.
Yet few things have given me more in life than travel. As a journalist, I reported from at least 25 countries, visiting a dozen or so more in transit on the way to stories, or as a tourist.
So I have never really minded the planes. They are a welcome reminder–in my small corner of west London–of the lands and cultures I have seen on my travels, and countless others I may yet see.
Now the planes are gone. At least, they are so few that my surroundings have been transformed. My commute is no more. The small world to which I find myself confined is a world where there is much less noise.
In Chiswick, A Memory Of War In Iraq
On a recent evening, the almost pre-industrial quiet of lockdown west London suddenly ended. Two Chinook military helicopters clattered overhead, their twin rotors hacking through the still of a warm May evening.
Here was a reminder of my time reporting on war. Strolling quietly along the river that evening, I remembered when I had flown in Chinooks, while covering the British military campaign in southern Iraq after the 2003 invasion. What a contrast: to remember the desert, the sense of danger–and the sense that my country had been foolish enough to take part in a military campaign that caused countless civilian deaths, and disastrous consequences that endure to this day.
AS THE HELICOPTERS BROKE THE CALM of that London summer evening, so the memories woke me from the gloom I had been feeling as I strolled, thinking about the world’s post-pandemic future.
Then I thought about how many times politicians and others have lazily used metaphors of war in discussing how to control the virus. As man born in western Europe during the 20th century, I have always thought myself fortunate not to have been born in the bloodier half of the century, when I would probably have had to go to war myself. I have seen enough of others’ wars to know they are best avoided.
The leaders who took us into that one had no such experience.
I was living in Gaza then, freer to travel the Middle East than that scrubby, strife-torn coastal strip’s inhabitants. When I did travel, I found my own country’s reputation declining as the bloody fiasco unfolded in Iraq.
Now we wonder if, in the time of Covid-19, our reputation is taking another beating.
‘Britain’s death toll serves as confirmation of deeper-rooted problems: a political culture of hubris and exceptionalism; atrophied public services; inequality and poor health,’ The Economist suggested recently, looking at the way our handling of the virus is seen overseas.
Once we are free of lockdown, another uncertain stage in Britain’s history awaits us.
Free of our ties to Europe on January 1st next year, we will enter an era of what some Brexit supporters hope will be ‘Global Britain’.
The Wider World Is Still Out There
My world today is much smaller than it was: no commute to my office, much less travel even in normal times.
This stretch of the river was once–and it is hard to believe it today–a shipyard. Torpedo boats were built here for the Royal Navy when it ruled the waves.
Even if the ships sail from here no more, and the skies above are empty of planes, the tide still rises and ebbs. Watching the river, I know that, cut off though we may be by pandemic and policy, the wider world is still out there–and I am grateful to the tidal Thames for reminding me.
All images and text © James Rodgers.