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A triumph of hope over….everything else

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The last few weeks have been extraordinary.     On April 12 came the Big April Easing. Not as big as the May Easing or indeed, the End of Restrictions Easing in June. Which may or may not happen, incidentally.   April 12 was the day when hospitality venues were finally allowed to reopen for the first time since January. This meant we could technically sit outside a pub or restaurant in the spring sunshine, enjoying a Pimms or an Aperol Spritz.   As the old saying goes: “Man plans, God laughs”. The Great British weather has put the kibosh firmly on THAT scenario.   In February when we were only allowed to meet one other person outside for a walk, the heavens opened and the mud was biblical. Then in April and May – when we’ve been allowed to socialise outside pubs and restaurants once again - we’ve had nothing but rain, hail and howling winds.   But pubs and restaurants opened nonetheless and the punters turned up in droves, desperate for a glimpse of Other People having fun. But was it
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Mad hair day

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We’ve all been here before. Hairdressers have been closed for months again which means our collective locks are once more well and truly out of control. Boris Johnson has been in his element. His absurd blond tresses suddenly appear relatively normal and he can go about his business with his mad hair worn like a badge of honour to prove he’s one of us.   Brian has adopted the look of a crackpot professor, whereas I’ve regained my rat-peering-out-of-a-bush persona from Lockdown One.   Some people have been cheating. There were reports of people crossing national borders to circumnavigate the ban, while others have been sneaking off to rogue coiffeurs for Illegal Haircuts. You know who you are.    Most of these transgressions went unpunished. After all, do the police really have time to caution people for having unacceptably coiffed hair? And in any case, illegal haircuts are hard to prove. Who’s to say the person in question hasn’t trimmed their own hair with the aid of a pair of eBay s
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A second Easter in lockdown

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This time last year I firmly believed that Easter 2021 would be different.   I even blogged about it, complaining about the limitations of Easter 2020 and ending with the words: “I’m already excited about next Easter when we can take to the busy roads and do whatever we darn well choose.”   Well, I look pretty flipping stupid now, don’t I?   This period of our lives has been a bit like living through World War One. Only it wasn’t called WWI at the time, of course – for who could have guessed that a second world war was just around the corner?   So when we all went into lockdown last year we simply called it “lockdown” in the assumption that it would all be over within weeks, or months if we were unlucky. And from our new vantage point in the midst of Lockdown Three we find ourselves wondering: Will this one be the last?    One glimmer of positivity, however, is that this week’s minor easing is making Easter 2021 feel slightly different to last year. We’re now allowed to invite people i
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Blast from the past

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This week it occurred to me. We’re all living a life straight out of the 1950s. It struck me when I was walking along the Weymouth seafront with an ice-cream cone in my hand. I wasn’t actually wearing a kiss-me-quick hat, but I might as well have been. Though according to the government roadmap no-one is allowed to kiss me until June 21 at the earliest, and I don’t think a “kiss-me-in-around-two-months” hat would work quite as well as a concept.   Anyway, Brian and I were enjoying a newly-permitted jaunt following the March 29 “easing”, and a day by the seaside turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. There, you see? I’m speaking like a character straight out of an Enid Blyton book.   We’ve already experienced the wartime spirit, the make-do-and-mend attitude and the food rationing (“Only two packs of flour per customer!”) And with foreign travel now banned we’re all busily planning our summer holidays by the seaside, in the Cotswolds or at the New Forest. Just like we did bef
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A tale of two lockdowns

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Have I already written a post about the differences between this lockdown and the first? It’s hard to tell in this weird new Groundhog Day world of ours. But in case I haven’t, here goes.     •  In early 2020 we shared a collective gung-ho spirit which manifested itself in much making-do-and-mending and repeated singing of “We’ll Meet Again”. This year we’re too jaded to mend and have no inclination to sing anything other than “We’ve gotta get out of this place”.   •  Last year we were all in a state of shock and disbelief. “What do they mean we can’t go on holiday, go to a pub or eat in a restaurant?” This year we’re so accustomed to the “new norm” we can hardly remember a time when we popped into a pub or hopped on a plane whenever the mood took us.   •  The weather was glorious in spring 2020 and we kept up our spirits up by walking, hiking, running and playing garden games. This year’s lockdown has been a chilly, couch-based affair broken up with the occasional squelch through the
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The care home – revisited

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I went to visit Auntie Jean last week for the first time in six months. And like everything else these days it was a stressful and unsatisfactory palaver.   This was my fourth trip to see her since the start of the pandemic. My first took place in August, with Auntie Jean in her room and me on the garden steps outside (for socially-distancing purposes). This meant I was silhouetted against the sun and she couldn’t for the life of her work out who I was, nor why I was shouting in at her through her French windows.    The two subsequent visits were both in the garden proper. I was kitted out in full PPE and Auntie Jean and I sat at opposite ends of a long table. Unsurprisingly my aunt’s sight, hearing and cognitive powers aren’t the best at 103 and she was rather disgruntled at being wheeled outside in the cold and forced to attend some sort of Mad Hatter’s tea party with a masked “stranger”.   Auntie Jean moved into the home five years ago and wasn’t particularly excited about the prosp
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Rotten tomatoes for the young

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Shut the front door. Something actually happened last weekend.     It wasn’t anything cataclysmic, but it was lovely all the same. Robbie came home for Mother’s Day - and also because he had some stuff to pick up.   So the three of us enjoyed a weekend together, complete with the full Quarant Inn experience. And having a twentysomething in the house again made me look at the lockdown from a whole new perspective.   It’s absolutely true what they say about COVID-19 being hardest on the young.   It’s been nearly a year since we all put our lives on hold for the first national lockdown. Brian and I have mostly been okay - when you’re in your sixties, a year passes by in a nanosecond anyway. We don’t expect anything new to happen from one year to the next apart from maybe the appearance of another wrinkle or chin-hair. But for someone in their teens or twenties, a year is potentially life-changing.    This could be when your schooldays end and your university adventure begins, or when you
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