The lockdown might have flattened the curve of infection and death, but it has also flattened the curve and swell of life. Existence has shrunk to fit within four walls; life ‘outside’ has largely been compressed within the flat rectangles of my phone and computer screens. You might think that, as an academic, I would revel in the life of the mind, the kind many of us now have to accept whether we like it or not. And I do, normally.