Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman

Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.

- Sue Segar

“Once upon a time in New York City, in the year 2020 to be precise, there lived a kind, medicinally-managed depressive: a neurotic hypochondriac by day, a neurotic insomniac by night.

(Who’m I kidding? He was a hypochondriac at night too, often mostly at night.)”

“What am I writing here? Jesus, I didn’t go into this thinking this will become my opus. But I’m never going to be able to stop writing this diary, am I? It’s now my curse,” wrote Wohlman on Day 61 of his much read and much-loved lockdown journey.

“Addicted to his phone and for the most part going about his simple life not hurting anyone, our antihero was told by everyone he knew that he should write. ‘Oh My God you have to write!!’, they’d all say whenever they saw him. The man chose not to write but instead whined about not writing to a team of expensive shrinks for years.

And then one day, when he was least expecting it – at the time he was getting a massage at All Asians Body Spa on 79th street – an evil virus arrived in his shtetl called the Upper West Side. So on that fateful winter’s day, the man befalls the wicked curse of the virus. He will be trapped in his tower in the middle of Gotham City and will have to write a daily diary entry for the rest of his life. Or until Brad Pitt in a Dr Fauci costume arrives to kiss him on the lips and inject him with a vaccine that’s proven and effective. And maybe kiss him on the lips again, and also on his neck… But only then will the spell be broken.

But hear ye, hear ye, word is that this might take years and years. Like 2 years minimum. Can you imagine for just a second me sitting here in 2022 with the resting face of my grandfather?