Lockdown lessons

September 20, 2020

Hello, lovelies.

We did it. We survived the Coronavirus. We won. We stayed at home, washed our hands and wore our masks. We clapped for our NHS and Key workers every Thursday evening. We stayed away from all non-essential shops. We did it! And now, joy of joys, the lockdown is easing. But what if it's not? What if COVID has been hiding in the shadows and now that the autumn is here it's ready to come and get us. Will we have to face a whole new lockdown? Are we ready? Or will we fight, tooth and nail, for our freedom?

I can not tell you how much I love the freedom of walking into almost any shop I want, just so I could have a look around, not just being there to buy the basic essentials for the week. Yes, there can still be queue's at some supermarkets at the weekends, but mostly it feels like life is going back to normal. Restaurant's and Cafe's are opening. You can now wander in when you're hungry and grab a bacon butty and a cup of tea. Can we all now take a collective sigh of relief that things are finally going back to some sort of normal? No. We can't. On the news this week we hear a murmuring that a new second wave is coming. I had an email from my son's school to say that they are now putting into place some more measures to ensure the safety of all the pupils and staff. We haven't defeated the virus. We've just escaped its clutches so far, but now it's back. And what worries me most is that we're not ready.

When we first went into lockdown, we all shielded in our homes, only venturing out when absolutely necessary. I work as a private keyworker, so was out on our deserted streets every day. It was so strange being out. It was all so new and scary. The shop shelves were empty, and so were the roads. An hour-long car journey to one of my jobs was only taking 20 minutes in Lockdown. I had to use my car because they had closed so many of the local underground stations. It was hard not to see London as if it were in some crazy apocalypse movie.

We all learnt the value of a loo roll. How many fantastic new food inventions were created in Lockdown? How many banana breads were made and eaten? As we stayed at home and began decluttering our lives, we let go of a lot of accumulated junk he had. And we learnt that we could not only manage on less, but it was so liberationg having less. Less stuff. Less clutter. We didn't need all of those new fancy and expensive things. What was important was having that phone call with our family and friends. Reaching out was way more important that buying that one thing we thought we needed. We all learnt how to navigate Zoom. What we truly needed was having that human interaction.

We learnt the true value of the NHS. And that we must fight for it's future. But we also learnt that there is no such thing as an unskilled worker. How quickly we could see that those working on the front line made sure that we had food and utilities. Lorry's delivering food kept on driving. As soon as the deliveries came in, the shelves were stocked by shop staff, who daily had to put with with verbial abuse. Our rubbish was collected. The nurses and care workers, they kept on working. The police and firefighters, they were still there for us. The public transport workers, and road maintenance, they never stopped. Our teachers, who tirelessly tried to teach our children remotely. Our farmers. What would we have done without them? They were the cogs that kept on turning when they were truely needed. We know to never devalue an 'unskilleed' worker again!

We saw as the most poluted parts of the world were bringing to clear. The sky that had been full of pollution began to shine in the fresh air. Fish began to return to polluted rivers. In our absence the world was beginning to heal.

We also learnt that the world kept turning with us not taking part in it every day. In fact, the world was a better place for us not in it. We learnt that we don't have to run around all day spend all our time at work. We saw that the most important part of our lives was having a work/life balance.

So when the second wave hits, surely we will be ready for it. We will take to our homes and wait it out. No. It seems that we've had enough. We don't want to sit in our homes waiting for this virus to go. I see people all the time not wearing their masks in shops. Openly flouting the rules of no more than 6 people at a time together. And I don't blame them for that. We have Covid fatigue. It took away our freedom and kept us all prisoners in our own homes. We all began 2020 saying that this was going to be our year. The year we all got our lives together. But instead it sent us all so far apart from each other.

When the second wave hits, we will be ready because we will have to be ready. We can't go back to the way it was before. And we won't. Because we have learnt how to keep ourselves safe. I am not a fan of this Tory government. But I do agree with their message of: