Friendeavours: In Coronavirus Lockdown, We Need Our Friends More Than Ever

In this week's column, Emma Jane Unsworth explains how her friendships have changed - and are getting her through.

Updated on10th April 2020 at 8.29am

God, I miss my friends. I miss their hugs. I miss sitting next to them in companionable silence without feeling the need to speak because we’re all on some kind of electrical device. I am ALL FOR the lockdown and keeping everyone safe, but you can’t help your feelings. I have now become a remote-contact junkie.

This is what the pandemic has done to me: it has made me a comms maniac. And not on social media (I’m mostly off that for anti-panic reasons). No, I am someone who is on WhatsApp at 6am, leaving eight-minute-long voicenotes; someone who checks on her friends on rotation, working through my contacts like a To-Do list, checking they are still well, still sane, still coping.

I think we have all become suddenly starkly aware of our proximity to each other – literal and metaphorical. Our dependency on each other. I’m making daily phone calls. ACTUAL PHONE CALLS. And I am a lifelong card-carrying non- phoner. I hate phone calls! Except I don’t any more. And on these calls I am talking to my friends. Actually talking. Not just catching up on the past few weeks or months.

I know their schedules: partly because our schedules are more limited and regimented, but also because we’re skipping the CV chat we have when we talk once a month, rather than once every few days. I like knowing that, at 11am, Sarah is tucking into her second breakfast, like a Hobbit; at 3pm, Alison is taking the twins out for a spin; at 8pm, Sally is having a rollie on her back step.

I’d got a bit out of the loop when I had a baby three years ago. Now I am very much plugged back in.

In these wobbly emotional times, there’s always someone up when someone else is down. Someone can always be Warden of Positivity when the rest of us are descending into Abject Doom.

Beyond the chats, my friends and I have been thinking of new ways to sustain ourselves and each other in the coming months. Friendships, like everything, are adapting to survive. My friend Katie has embraced the idea of the Kitchen Disco. She’s set up a Twitter account, @BigKitchenDisco, where every day she announces a song (followers can put in requests) that everyone then plays in their kitchen at 7pm sharp. And you dance. Alone, but not alone. You can’t see the people. BUT THEY ARE THERE. In their own kitchens. Dancing to the same music.

Katie and I have also decided to start watching Parks And Recreation ‘together’, ALL SEVEN SEASONS (which we’ve both somehow missed so far), while live-messaging each other. I might print off a big photo of Katie’s face, stick it on a cushion and prop it up on the couch next to me. Or is that too Tom Hanks in Cast Away, with his basketball ‘pal’?

As my friend MK says, ‘You sort the wheat from the chaff ’ in times of crisis. You learn who you can rely on for what. I’m grateful for a new group of Brighton girlfriends I’d just started having dinners with before all this kicked off. We’ve set up a WhatsApp (what else?) called ‘SURVIVAL’ – and it really is just that. Every day we send tips, thoughts, rants, mini-breakdowns etc into this safe space, and it’s genuinely getting me through.

In these wobbly emotional times, there’s always someone up when someone else is down. Someone can always be Warden of Positivity when the rest of us are descending into Abject Doom. As Jess in the groups says, ‘It’s not a marathon, it’s a relay, and we’ve got to pass the support baton.’

We’ve got a Zoom dinner planned for Sunday, where we’re all going to cook the same recipe, crack open the wine, log in and chew the fat. And the bonus? Everyone has a short walk to bed.