Writer’s Guilt: the irony of going viral in a pandemic.
Reporting from Italy in February and March 2020, I was one of the first people on Medium to write about Covid. Three years on, here’s how I feel about it all.
Three years ago, I watched from my balcony in central Florence as the unthinkable happened and the lively, vibrant, 24/7 city was silenced as Italy became the first European country, and the second in the world after China, to lock down.
I had lived part-time in Florence since 2017, new wife of the chaplain of the Anglican church. One of the first things my husband said to me as I began my four-year stint of three weeks in Florence, two weeks at my house 30 miles away in the Italian countryside, was that Florence was busy. Really, really busy. He warned I might have trouble sleeping as the Renaissance palazzo housing the church and our apartment was smack bang in the historic centre and the noisy buzz of humanity was a constant sound track, punctuated by the sounds of the city’s relentless cleaning crews who work day and night to keep the streets pristine and the famous sights event-ready.
It was true, Florence was never silent. The hum wasn’t ever threatening or annoying, but it was always there, as were the people causing it. I used to…
