A Sudden Realisation

You see, it has only just occurred to me.  As I fast approach retirement I was looking back over my last three years of part time employment and I remembered… 

…On 4th January 2021 the UK government announced our third national Covid Lockdown in a year.  All non-essential shops were to be closed from 6^th of January and the shop I had spent over thirty years of my life working in would not open again.  My boss opted for full retirement, while I didn’t really want to simply stop, so agreed to work two days a week for a friend as soon as shops were allowed to re-open.  This final Lockdown lasted until mid-July with inter-household mixing banned, football matches played in empty stadiums, night clubs, theatres and music concerts also closed – again.  It was a bleak bleak time – the third in little more than a year: many grandparents missed all contact with new-born grandchildren whilst many new-born grandchildren missed the opportunity to see their grandparents – ever. 

For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with The Lockdown, it basically involved going nowhere and meeting no-one – including family – for months on end.  Initially, we were not allowed even to exercise outside.  People died alone and scared; people went mad with loneliness; the world started to fall apart.  As ‘outside’ restrictions on exercise eased, the daily walk became a salvation for millions.  Greetings were waved across the street – nobody (with the exception of certain politicians) got any closer than that – but at least you began to realise that you were not the last survivors on earth.  Despite being the world’s worst pre-Covid runner, I was kept sane by running (or what, to the outside world, might well have appeared to be a protracted drunken stumble) right through the majority of Covid and blogging about it regularly, along with all the other vagaries of lockdown life.  I suppose it is the ability of human beings to laugh during crises that enables us to survive.  Looking back, there seems so little to laugh about but, at the time, my blogs were definitely wilfully aimed at being funny – maybe it was some kind of delirium.  Perhaps we were all going stir-crazy.

Trying to put it all into some perspective now, I think that like everybody else I have probably blanked out great portions of those 18 months of turmoil.  I remember the fear of the early days – sterilising all our food, everything tasting vaguely of bleach, avoiding all human contact like the… well, like the plague – but I also remember the weekly full-family Zoom get-togethers and how much I looked forward to them.  Otherwise it was mostly reading and binge-watching TV series I think.  Whisky and sanitized chocolate…

In April 2021, just over a year from the first restrictions, in the middle of the third and, for everyone growing evermore weary of the whole thing, the most exhausting lockdown, it was announced that whilst many constraints were to remain in place for months to come, non-essential shops would be allowed to re-open with strict mask-wearing and social distancing protocols in place and I embarked on a life of semi-retirement.  It seems a weird thing to have been excited by now, but it was a life saver.  Three years!  It seems so long ago.  It seems so recent.

Anyway, this has all just occurred to me because, as I approach full-on retirement, I was thinking about how very much I have enjoyed my last three years in a semi-employed state and especially the people I have spent them with.  If you are one of them and you accidentally read this, then you’ll know.  If you don’t, I’ll tell you soon enough.  Thank you.

And coming next here?  Well, I love the blog, so probably more of the same I’m afraid.  I’ll get my apologies in early…