"I did lockdown completely on my own, in a house with no internet, and with a phone whose screen broke during my return flight to Dublin," says Ros na Rún actor Colm Mac Gearailt
The official lockdown began mid-quarantine for me, continues the man who plays the conceited Briain in the popular soap.
This sounds counterintuitive, I know, but having been forced to return home early from a trip to Sicily at the start of March, I had almost finished my mandatory two-week quarantine when the nationwide lockdown began. Start as you aim to go on.
I saw lockdown through in Dublin, while my parents went home to Kerry. This meant that between March and May I did lockdown completely on my own, in a house with no internet, and with a phone whose screen broke during my return flight to Dublin. Not ideal.
But this forced isolation from the world gave me the time to stop, to breathe, and to allow my life to quieten down. Until this point, my time had been spent living out of a suitcase, between Galway, where we film with Ros na Rún; Dublin, where I completed my PhD on the Teaching of Irish History in Secondary Schools, 1924-69, (awarded by TCD in 2019) and where I am now lecturing in Marino Institute of Education on the B.Oid trí Mheán na Gaeilge and the B.Ed; and Kerry, where I'm from.
I now had no choice but to park the bus (metaphorically), recalibrate, and relax. I enjoy being busy, so this newfound freedom was disconcerting at first, but what are we as a people, if not adaptable and resourceful?
First thing first, how to pass the day. I have always enjoyed cooking, having worked as a Sous chef in a number of restaurants throughout college. Living on my own allowed me time to play around with new recipes. I would spend two or three hours cooking and not solely as a means to an end, but to enjoy the process. The cooking itself was the activity. Every meal was a new episode of Cócaireacht le Colm, with an audience of one. RTÉ’s Lyric FM was my usual soundtrack. I especially enjoyed John Kelly’s Mystery Train (from 7pm each evening).
I began reading Walden; or life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau at the beginning of lockdown. A text about living simply in natural surroundings, this was a work that I had been meaning to read since my undergrad days, but never got around to.
Essentially, Thoreau self-isolated 150 years before the rest of us, and jotted down his beliefs on the essentials of life, of living clean and paying attention to the beauty of the everyday. It definitely resonated with me in this period of forced seclusion.
It was also important to stay somewhat fit, and so having discussed it with my football team, Na Gaeil Óga, we agreed that during the month of April, we would complete 500km, 5,000 press-ups and 5,000 sit-ups as a squad: keep people active, and give us a collective to goal to aim for. I did laps of the town (staying within the 2km radius), so that every week I would have at least 20km done. Not a huge amount, but enough to make me sweat.
We smashed our target, with the senior team completing around 900km, over 5,600 press-ups and nearly 7,000 sit-ups. It showed that even though we were separated, we could come together as a team, which I was very proud of. This was especially important to offset the negative moments, the times when things were increasingly difficult, and the isolation got to me. By maintaining some semblance of a routine, by talking with friends on the phone, and by being part of a team, I was able to bounce back from any dips of this sort.
I also began Yoga for the first time, first following classes on YouTube, (somehow hot-spotting my cracked phone, to the laptop) and later, alongside other members of Na Gaeil Óga, via Zoom, where Ciarán Mac Fhearghusa (director of Óga Yoga) was willing to do a weekly class for the club. I’ve never been especially flexible, so I’m sure there were a few poorly posed Cobras, but I enjoyed the classes all the same.
