Caroline O'Donoghue: 'Last week Gavin got coronavirus and we’re stuck inside'
Caroline O'Donoghue in London. Picture: Andrew Dunsmore.
About a month ago, Gavin and I went Out Out for the first time since February 2019.
Things have opened up again here, and things felt normal for an evening. As we picked up our cocktails, packed with egg whites and cardamom reductions and all the other things we could never get at home, we called for a toast.
“You know,” I said. “Considering we’ve both just lived through the most significant moment of societal upheaval since the second world war, I think you and me are doing pretty ok.” He agreed. We reflected smugly on our own success. We said that, on the whole, we enjoyed being at home together more. We have heard so much about couples who have driven each other crazy, or worse, have simply realised that they have nothing to say to one another. It’s easy to see how this can happen. In the old world, where you went to work, came home, went to the gym or watched tv, spoke to your partner for an hour or so and then went to bed – it was easy to paper over cracks, then. The pandemic has left nowhere for unhappy couples to hide. We’re happy to discover that we really are happy.
Then last week, Gavin got coronavirus. It was bad for a few days. I did the Florence Nightingale thing, miraculously never getting ill myself, and then he came around.
And now, days after his full recovery, he still doesn’t have his sense of smell or taste back.
Everyone has heard about the taste thing, by now. What I didn’t realise is that the people who have experienced this symptom usually fall into one of two camps: they either get the symptom early, and get over it early; or they get it late, and it lingers.
Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for months. At the moment, poor old Gav is staring down the barrel of a possible summer without flavour.
It sounds mad, but for the first time since the pandemic hit, I feel like there’s a gulf between us. We’re still stuck inside, and the only thing there is to do is eat. I order big online shops full of our favourite things – Perello olives, fancy ice cream, giant Wotsits – but I’m enjoying them alone.
It’s like we’re looking at one another across a widening chasm. “Oh no,” my friend says, when I explain our situation on the phone. “But you’re the hungriest people I’ve ever met!” I never really thought of us as foodies.
We have, for starters, quite different attitudes to food. This really stems from the fundamentals of a Catholic worldview versus a Protestant one.
He wants to earn his treats at the end of a long work day and a rigorous gym session; I want us to order two pizzas and hot wings on a Tuesday night and then wake up with stomach cramps, ready to apologise to god. He thinks this is nonsense, that I’m just greedy, and that religion has nothing to do with it.
Which is, of course, a very Protestant thing to say.
A lot of couples get their bonding done by watching TV together in the evening, and that has never really been us. We’re rarely interested in watching the same thing. I hadn’t realised it before, but the majority of our chats happen with me sitting on the kitchen counter while he’s preparing something, both of us grazing on nuts and crackers smeared with peanut butter. We organise our week around our meals: what we’re taking out of the freezer for dinner, what we’re eating, when we’re eating.
Even the silly mundanity of agreeing that one granola flavour isn’t as nice as the other, or one supermarket’s veg isn’t as fresh as the other – it all had a place. Our weekend treats, usually a takeaway on a Friday and a meal out on either Saturday or Sunday, could be gone for some time. We keep hearing from other people who have not got their taste back for months. One girl who had it last year and still hasn’t got it back.
Every few hours I give Gavin an olive, a salt and vinegar crisp, a French fancy. “Can you taste that?” I ask. “No,” he says sadly. “Just textures.” I keep thinking about that Twelfth Night quote: “If music be the food of love, play on.” Music isn’t the food of love. Music is the food of attraction. Food is the food of love.
It’s how you celebrate, commiserate, soothe, show your affection for one another.
Surprising someone with an almond croissant from the takeaway coffee place.
Planning a birthday meal. Glancing over at each other’s meal in a restaurant and declaring who “won”. I miss it. I miss it more than I ever missed anything in lockdown: going to the pub, going to Zara, seeing friends, all of it. Because that stuff was always just extra. This feels like it’s messing with the essence of my home life.
Our isolation officially ends on Thursday, and while enjoying food together might not come back right away, at least we’ll be able to touch again. At last, there will be something in the house worth devouring.
