Lockdown Diaries 2020/21

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 t...

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 exci...

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 univers...

This week we passed a big personal milestone. It’s now a full 12 months since Brian set foot on a plane. And it’s the first time this has happened since the 1980s.   Of course the same could be said about most of us, since few people these days go an entire year without a foreign holiday, business trip or city break. But Brian used to travel to Sweden at least once a fortnight and between trips he would slot in meetings in Germany, the US and the Netherlands. So basically, he was a Weekend Husband.   There were pros and cons to this scenario.   Pros:    • I could take on hare-brained DIY projects and have plenty of time to clear up the mess - and repair the damage - before Brian came home   • I became more creative and would litter the floor with bags of sewing and knitted squares without having to worry about anyone tripping over them   • I was no longer bound by invisible protocols that dictated when I should be in bed. So if I chose to rise at 4am t...

Going for our jabs was actually a bit like attending a Santa’s Grotto for grown-ups. But the “elves” were all masked, we didn’t get to sit on anyone’s lap and our only gift was The Needle.   We arrived at the pharmacy ridiculously early, determined to make the most of our outing. After a half an hour’s wait in the car we trotted along to the shop where we were greeted by a “vaccine marshal” in a high-viz jacket. “Here for the vaccine?” “Yep”. We waved our NHS letters smugly – we’d been told we would need to bring these along. But the marshal ignored them and asked instead: “Do you have your NHS booking references?” Luckily these were on our phones, but they might not have been. However, this was the only part of the operation that wasn’t supremely slick and efficient.   We were then ushered through to the first room of the “grotto” where our details were checked (name, address, date of birth, allergies). Once we’d been deemed fit for jabbing we were shuffled along in the socia...

Well, today’s the big day. The one we’ve both been waiting for since news of the vaccine first broke in November 2020.   Brian and I are off to get our jabs this afternoon. Brian has spent all week referring to me as the Vaccine Queen while I’ve been calling him Jabby McJabface. I think we’ve finally lost it.   You’d think we were kids heading out on a big school outing, wouldn’t you? Mind you, the vaccination centre is six miles away so that more or less counts as a “big outing” these days. Yep, readers of my previous post: you’re right. We’re having to schlep to Watford or Northwood to be vaccinated after all.   The official NHS letter arrived earlier this week, instructing us to visit the very same “loophole website” that I complained bitterly about only a few days ago. Turns out it was bona fide.   We were then urged to book ourselves in at one of their “centres” which in today’s weird world can be anything from a town hall to an Asda car park. We chose a pharmac...

I don’t feel particularly vulnerable. I don’t have an underlying health condition. Not as far as I know, anyway. But I still feel disgruntled whenever I hear of people younger than me who’ve already been called for their vaccination.   I look at them closely, checking them over for subtle health flaws. They’re not overweight – in fact most are annoyingly fit. These are the people I go walking with, who end up striding ahead of me uphill while I puff and gasp behind.   This feeling of malaise is exactly what happens when queueing is embedded in your DNA. There’s a recognised order of things, and queue-jumping is an anathema to us Brits. And since we’ve all been told that vaccines have so far been strictly limited to the over-65s and the vulnerable we expect that to apply to everyone.   However, this week we were told that the over-60s are up next – our own age group, in other words. So Brian and I have been checking our phones from minute to minute for The Call.   How...

This phrase was first coined by ancient Jewish leader Hillel the Elder, then recycled by Emma Watson in 2014 when kick-starting a gender equality movement. And Boris Johnson used it only the other day during his climate change address to the UN Security Council.   For me, it’s all about venturing back to the Co-Op after a two-month abstention.    The figures are down. The vaccine is imminent. More people are self-distancing. And I’ve run out of veg.   So I think today might be the day. I waited more than a month before braving the butcher’s and baker’s in February (luckily I didn’t need any candlesticks, otherwise I might have made it a hat-trick). And since today is March 1 it feels like the ideal moment to walk back into the Co-Op as though I’d never been away, ready to reclaim the chilled goods aisle.   At last I’ll once again be able to choose my own vegetables. No more tiny white cauliflower heads nestled in a forest of wilting greens; no more over-ripe tom...