A second Easter in lockdown


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 into our gardens as long as we don’t sit too close to them, share our nibbles or let them come into the house. It’s hard to be the perfect hostess under these circumstances: “Did you bring your own peanuts? And if you need the toilet, would you mind driving home and using your own?”

 

In fact we haven’t even bothered inviting anyone over to shiver in our garden several metres away from us. We’ll be sticking to Zoom until the weather warms up and the restrictions ease further.

 

There are other ways in which this Easter will be slightly different. The garden centres are open, for a start, and we’re allowed to take day trips as per my 1950s post. 

 

But perhaps the biggest change of all is the fact that we’ve all gained a degree of patience, resignation and humour at our absurd situation. And we’ve learned to respect the coronavirus and its sneaky ability to morph, mutate and replicate.

 

So on we plod, trying our best to stick to the strange new rules, banning garden guests from using our toilet and providing separate snack bowls for everyone. And with the COVID-19 death toll fast approaching three million we have a very real understanding that things could be an awful lot worse.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let’s play nicely this time

Image
Change is in the air. You can feel it on the streets, in the parks and on the common. Things are gradually easing up and the excitement is palpable. Everyone has responded gleefully to the decree that we’re now allowed out to exercise as many times as we want. People to whom the word “exercise” was once an anathema are now swarming to the nearest open-air space to jog, walk, throw frisbes, kick balls around, ride bikes and generally run amok.  Meanwhile the garden centres have opened at last - to the boundless joy of us older folk for whom the urge to grow stuff seems particularly strong. I went to a nursery last week and joined the queue of happy seniors snaking around the perennials, scooping up bedding plants like gasping nomads who had finally happened upon a water source in the desert. And socially-distancing friends are now allowed to meet up in pairs, provided they walk two metres away from one another. Ha. Doesn’t work. My friend Sue and I tried it the other da
Read more

Google sees inside our soul

Image
Regular readers will be aware of a few facts about our little lockdown bubble. These are a) that I’m exercising online with Joe Wicks; b) Brian and Robbie are working out regularly with weights and c) I’m trying     - not altogether successfully - to grow vegetables. Turns out everyone else is doing pretty much the same thing. According to recent Google search data we’re a resourceful nation with great plans for using this lockdown time to good effect. The gyms may have closed, but not to be thwarted we’ll carry on exercising the best we can in the space we have available.  Not surprisingly, then, the search term “rent gym equipment” is going through the roof. In fact it has mushroomed by a whopping 3,600 per cent over the past 90 days while “yoga online classes” has risen by 800 per cent and "home workout” by 700 per cent. Google also reveals that we won’t be put off by food shortages in supermarkets: instead we’ll grow or bake our own. The search term:  “grow pl
Read more

VE Day takes on a particular poignancy

Image
Tomorrow is the 75 th  anniversary of VE Day. By the time World War Two officially ended, people had been struggling for years with food shortages and restrictions. Their love-lives had stalled and their careers had been put on hold. And many had lost family members and friends.  So VE Day marked a bitter-sweet occasion when some were able to celebrate the return to a new normal while others reflected on what they’d lost. Sounds familiar? It seems entirely fitting that we’ll be celebrating the 75 th anniversary of VE Day in our own homes, under lockdown and with our careers and lives on hold. And weirdly, the occasion also happens to coincide with the expected easing of lockdown conditions due to be announced on Sunday. Every November we observe a two-minute silence for our war heroes before immediately resuming our Sunday routines. We head to the shops, go to the pub or get together with friends. So until now we have had little in common with the wartime generatio
Read more