One Year On. I remember the 23rd March 2020 like it was yesterday. The beginning of a surreal dream I am still waiting to wake up from. A few days before, the schools in the UK had closed and, unbeknown to us, many kids had just had their last ever day of school. They didn’t know that at the time. They were still reeling from the news that public exams had been cancelled but had no idea how results would be calculated. They thought, like we all did, if we did as we were told and stayed at home for the initial planned three-week lockdown - we would be able to ‘save our summer’ - which now sounds such a pathetically optimistic slogan with hindsight. The UK sat glued to the TV at 8pm on Monday 23rd March as Boris announced the emergency lockdown measures, and the dawning realisation of what was actually happening to us hit hard. I was scared.
I had watched the news over the weeks as the virus rampaged through the world, not quite believing it would really have an impact on us. When I spoke with colleagues in America I was told of their ‘6 feet away or 6 feet under?’ expression, which at the time I though bizarre and unnecessary - although looking back they were way ahead of us on the social distancing front. The week or so preceding lockdown, we joked amongst ourselves about the lack of loo roll, the ridiculous price of hand sanitiser on Amazon and the rationing of pasta shells; but we were still going about our daily business – no masks, no enforced 2 metre rules, no one-way systems. Thoroughly washing your hands as you sang happy birthday twice and squirting a bit of anti-bac – was still the only guidance. Oh, and the boys at school had been told handshakes were banned.
Then the cancellations started happening. As March marched on, huge cultural, musical and sporting events began to crash out of the nation’s calendar. I do remember a sense of anger at what felt like a series of knee-jerk reactions to a virus – the death toll at the time was just over 300 people – a virus if you remember at the time was described as a flu-like illness which only really affected the very elderly or those with underlying health conditions. And although I had no plans to watch the annual Boat Race, attend Ladies Day at Ascot, wave my flag for the Olympics or shake my funky stuff at Glastonbury - I was astounded at just how quickly life was tumbling away around me as a huge black marker pen was crossing out the nation’s plans. I couldn’t understand the logic of cancelling things so far into the year when there were hardly any cases in the UK, and when the death rate was only 0.0005% of the UK population. Oh, how wrong I was.
One Year On. I remember sitting in front of Boris at 8pm that fateful night, not quite believing what I was hearing as he reeled off restriction after life-changing restriction. The nation took a sharp intake of breath as we digested the reality of his words. What we feared was actually happening. What we had seen elsewhere was real. We were in Lockdown and life from that moment on, changed for us all forever.
And then a communal hush descended.
Lockdown 1 (known just as ‘Lockdown’ back then as little did we know there would be sequels to follow). A time where the warm sun shone day after day, and the birds sang their little hearts out– louder and clearer than ever before as if they realised their sweet chirruping did not have to compete with the noise of traffic anymore. No-one called at the door. No-one drove past our house. It was so quiet you could hear the constant buzz of the bees and the low hum of hoverflies. The peace was deafening. A week or so in, the air seemed cleaner, fresher - as if the earth herself was taking a break from humanity, which in effect was exactly what was happening. The pace of life was slower for sure – school runs were replaced with our daily walks across patchwork fields, and we lost our sense of time as Sunday drifted into Monday and ran into lazy hazy Tuesday. The boys got on with a sort of routine of schooling and I tried to work; but we had time to talk or watch Netflix, get bored and enjoy our time as a family unit again. We felt protective of each other. We felt virtuous as we dutifully stuck to the rules and stayed put, knowing we collectively had to Flatten the Curve and Save the NHS. We truly believed Lockdown was just a temporary blip on our radar and of course we could sit this one out. Back then, the novelty of watching people making collective music videos online, or baking banana bread, or jumping up and down with Joe Wicks hadn’t worn thin. Zooming was still fun. People talked about kindness, set up neighbourhood watch groups and did shopping for those who were shielding. We displayed rainbows in our windows, religiously stood outside to clap the NHS at 8pm on a Thursday, and donated money when Captain Tom – RIP – walked his 100 laps.
One Year On. Am I looking at Lockdown 1 through rose-tinted spectacles? Did we just gloss over the daily rising Covid deaths announced on the evening bulletin or just not heed the warnings scientists were telling us that this was not a virus that would just attack the old and infirm and it wasn’t going anywhere soon? Did we not see that people were losing their livelihoods and many were losing their lives? Were we really that naïve to think we would emerge out of that first Lockdown fighting fit ready to get back to normality albeit with just a few social distancing measures and some hand sanitisers in place? When we opened the pubs in July and later encouraged to ‘eat out to help out’, mask wearing wasn’t even mandatory. Many of us got back into the swing of meeting friends, staying overnight with family and as there was so much confusion and mind changing about travel corridors, some were lucky enough to holiday abroad. All within the rules. And we wonder now why we had an even bigger resurgence a few months on? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
One Year On. With the death toll in the UK now standing at more than 126,000, I look around at our new world. A world where taking a lateral flow test twice a week is as common as brushing your teeth. A world where we wear a mask instead of makeup, where we are still forbidden to hug, where it’s normal we step aside off the kerb so to give others a wide birth. A world peppered with alien words that hadn’t even entered our vocabulary a year ago – PPE, Furlough, Lockdown, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Lateral-flow, PCR - words that trip off the tongue as if we have been using them for generations.
One Year On. As I light a candle on this anniversary of Lockdown, I reflect on all that has happened. So, so much is different. In just one year, life has changed for us all – some of us have lost friends and family. Some of us have lost jobs and security. Some of us have lost the will to live. All of us have lost that year and won’t ever get the milestones back. And yet, I am still astounded daily at just how quickly we accepted some really radical changes - and amazed at how well we adapted accordingly.
We may be living in a new era, but we are still the same people. And we mustn’t ever forget how important that really is.
One Year On. One we will never, ever forget.
© The Real Tilly Fairfax