Dear LPG,

I think that because we have had so much time to ourselves over the past few months, I have had the time to do so many things that were always there to be done, but that I just never had the time for before. 

When I worked, I felt that I never had the time to really keep in touch and then when I retired I was aware that though I had the time, the younger members of my family did not want to spend hours on the phone when they could be doing so many other things.   So making those telephone calls just to say hello are usually only shared with a few.  While nearly everyone was trapped with relatively little else to do, I have learned a lot more about some of my more distant family member’s day-to-day lives because there has been time to make more frequent telephone calls and I have become closer to many of my family members that have grown, married and become mothers and fathers while I was busy getting on with my own daily routine.

One such family member is my niece who I was very close to when she was a little girl, but she has married and moved out to Medway, and produced three children that other family members have told me about.  For want of things to do during the pandemic we have been talking on the telephone much more often and I have learned all those details that I didn’t know.  She tells me that calls like mine helped her to stay sane during a time when she had to become teacher and full time peace keeper, as well as everything else while her three, often warring, young children had nowhere to hide and so much extra time to bicker and argue with each other.  I have spent time chatting to their ‘working from home’ dad, mum and children and during those chats I have learned a lot more about my grandnieces and nephews.  I have learned so much more than their ages how well they are doing at school.   The little personal things that you don’t learn when you only hear about them from another family member have suddenly come to life.  I know which television programmes they like and each one’s favourite food, which one is the trouble-maker, which ones like to get up early in the morning their favourite hobbies and what their favourite subjects are at school, all of which, if nothing else, will make it much easier to choose a more appropriate birthday present for each of them when the time comes. 

They have taken the time to learn a little about me too.  They have asked and shown interest as I explained what life was like when I was young and I have even been able to help with some of their school work. 

We all tend to see pictures of our more distant relatives from time to time but even if you cannot use video calling it is as if they have popped out of their pictures and come to life.  My hope is that as we get back to the time when they have to return to school, and their parents to their busy lives, there will still be just enough time not to lose touch.

For me, and I suspect, for many other older people lock-down has allowed us to learn so much about friends and family that we only ever knew of, and I hope that now this period of our lives is coming to an end, we take some of the lessons learned through to the ‘new normal’ with us.

The fact that she lives nearly 30 miles away from me became completely unimportant, to either of us while we were all forced to stay at home because in the virtual world we were forced to live in for a while, next door was as far away as the other side of the world. 

AN, Selhurst.