Walking around a ghostly Truro in lockdown left me shocked

It shows how much the lockdown has worked that when I had to head into Truro city centre this week, even as a key worker, I felt a sense of guilt and trepidation.

To be honest, the drive in from my home outside the city would suggest it was business as usual, although business as usual on a Sunday rather than a week day.

The A390 between St Austell and Truro has seen a constant flow of traffic since March 23 – I’d like to think the majority of it is essential workers going about their business.

Even when I pulled up at Moorfield Car Park it was akin to a normal day in Truro – the outside area was packed. As Cornwall Council has made it clear it has left the car park open and free for essential workers, I could only hope that’s who the cars belonged to.

It’s easy to grasp for dystopian sc-fi clichés while walking around a city frozen in time, but there was no denying that as I rounded the corner into an uncannily quiet Lemon Street I could almost hear the fighting machines from War of the Worlds cry out “ulllaaahh” as they prepared to step over The Plaza cinema.

Instead, all I heard were the sarky cries of seagulls where the hustle and bustle of hundreds of shoppers and workers should have been.

And speaking of The Plaza – to walk past and see all the billboards devoid of posters was slightly unsettling.

As I got to Lemon Quay – nothing. No happy smokers outside Wetherpoons, no office workers hurrying to M&S for lunch, no buskers pretending to be Sinatra. Deathly quiet with a lone seagull basking in the sun slap bang in the middle of the piazza.

Yes – second movie cliché coming – it now felt like I was Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Then I found the first open shop. Spar on the corner of Lemon Quay was selling essentials (believe me, chocolate at this – yes, let’s use that word – ‘unprecedented’ time is essential) but the warnings were enough to put you off.

‘Do not enter the store if you have any of the following symptoms: Temperature, persistent cough, shortness of breath’. After dodging all the seagulls, I had a case of the latter, so left it.

Walking into an eerily quiet Prince’s Street, the low hum of distant security alarms from locked businesses became apparent. Now it was all getting a bit 28 Days Later (film cliché number three).

And there were people roaming around like lost souls … and this was the bit that shocked me.

From walking a circuit of the city – down Lemon Street, around Lemon Quay, into Boscawen Street, up Pydar Street, into River Street and Victoria Square – I counted the pedestrians.

I played a quiz with friends and family afterwards. Five was the highest amount of people guessed. I actually counted 70.

To put that into perspective, on a normal Wednesday afternoon there would be hundreds if not thousands of people in Truro.

The 70 people were spread out – mostly individuals or couples going for their daily exercise or shopping at Co-op or Wilko – so it wasn’t quite as shocking as it sounds. Though it was a lot more than I was expecting.

Having grown up in the city in the 1980s I can remember Truro on a Sunday when the most exciting thing you were likely to see was a crisp packet caught by the wind or a lone skateboarder.

This was the closest the city has been to that desolate scene in over 30 years.

That sense of a world gone skewwhiff was exacerbated by the Hotel Chocolat window display in King Street, which I’ve written about previously.

The contorted faces beaten into submission by the sun seemed to sum up the whole unsettling experience of the past few weeks.

I must admit, I kept uttering the same mantra as I walked around: "This is ****ing weird!" I'm definitely not the only one to start talking to themselves since this all started, am I?

There were signs of ordinary life struggling to be felt – six shops open for business but only the most important, such as Reeds Pharmacy, Boots and Holland & Barrett.

And there was excitement in Nazim in Calenick Street as bag upon bag full of takeaway food was being lined up for delivery.

Mostly though there was quiet which showed that, largely, people are adhering to the lockdown ensuring that Cornwall’s only major hospital, just up the road, won’t be overrun.

That doesn’t stop the heartbreak of seeing so many shops, restaurants and pubs in stasis though.

Here’s to the day when we can all get back to normal life in Truro.