Things I’ve learnt from lockdown

 

It’s late September and I really should be back at school… well, it’s early September, and I’ve got nowhere to go. But I’ve been away, and it feels like the end of summer and it feels like a time to take stock.

So, things I’ve learnt from lockdown.

The practicalities:

• I don’t like wearing socks.
• I don’t like washing my hair. But I don’t like the alternative much either. I tried the “no poo” thing and it’s harder than it sounds. 
• I’ll probably never wear make-up again.

The philosophical stuff:

• People are sometimes brave, helpful and altruistic. People are sometimes selfish and stupid. So, no change there.
• Our government is even worse than I thought it was. Enough of that.
• People are selfish and stupid when the government treats them as selfish and stupid.

The lifestyle stuff:

• I quite like not seeing people, except the people who I miss.
• Apart from worrying about the bank balance, I really like not having enough work to do. The last six months has felt like a practice run at retirement. Choosing how to spend my time. Slowing down. Not doing anything if I don’t feel like it. I could get used to this. (Except that the self-employed grant is going to run out at some point.)

Anyway, I’ve just been on holiday. The one that I should have had in June. The one I thought might not happen this year. We were on a campsite but not in a tent – in a small outbuilding that’s fairly basic (definitely not glamping) but has its own loo/shower. It felt safer being self-contained. (Nearly said covid-secure, but there’s no such thing and I’m trying to avoid government propaganda.)

We’ve been going to this campsite a lot, but it felt different this time. A higher than usual quota of posh people. Some with new, expensive tents. Then we realised: they’d normally be in France. 

We heard this a lot during the week:

“Have you got a face covering?”

“Oh, I forgot.”

How can you forget something like that? 

I realised the country is divided into two kinds of people. People who no longer have the pandemic on their radar. And people who are still taking it seriously.

You can tell the ones who are taking it seriously because they are wearing reusable cotton face masks in nice patterns. (I’ve got three so far. And yes, I did google “punk face masks” a few months ago. And no, I didn’t buy them.)

We heard this a lot during the week, too:

“The new normal.”

I realised that we are all saying it, but it must have come from somewhere originally. Someone has seeded it in our vocabulary. It must have been the government. Note to self: never say this again.

So, here’s the What I Did On My Holiday bit.

• Drank beer sitting outside a pub.
• Drank coffee sitting outside a café. 
• Sat indoors wondering when the rain would stop.
• Started hating the crossword compiler of our general knowledge crossword books. Realised they are Daily Telegraph crossword books.
• Read two books. It would have been more but Husband got bored.
• Played a lot of games of Upwords.
• Didn’t get on buses. Didn’t get on the heritage railway. Didn’t do a lot of things we would normally do.
• Gave lots of people my name and phone number.
• Had two social-distancing arguments with strangers.

It was worth it for this:

And now we’re back, and I  don’t know what the autumn will hold.

But I’ve learned this from lockdown:

It’s not over.