Feeling in Suspension: Waiting in COVID-19 Shopping Queues

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent UK lockdown were a catalyst for mass waiting. This paper will focus on a phenomenon, a particular form of waiting observed in shopping queues during lock down in the North East of England. Waiting practices formed through the COVID-19 pandemic have opened new forms of feeling, requiring new forms of articulation. As such the paper experiments with language and form speculatively describing feelings and temporalities through a metaphor, suspension. Initially the paper outlines what waiting is and does in order to provide a touchstone when considering the feelings formed within new practices of waiting. It then outlines and considers what liquid suspension can open as a writing device. Then working with suspension and aligned concepts of surface and viscosity, the paper explores the morphologies of mood and sensation felt and shared within COVID-19 pandemic shopping queues.