Dear LPG,

I cannot help but think that we have all become a little more agoraphobic after lockdown, or at least more reluctant to get back into the swing of things beyond the perimeters of our homes.  I have read lots of internet offerings which suggest that we have learned to be safe indoors and that many of us are now so comfortable there that we have developed a reluctance or even a fear of going out.

I know that I have found lots to do over the past year even though I could have achieved much more than I have.  I think that not knowing when the restrictions will actually all be over has left me with that, ‘I could do it today but there is always tomorrow. I’ll do it then’ attitude.

We have all got so used to the government’s postponements of restriction lifting that I think that my subconscious mind has decided it will never really happen, and the frightening thing is that I have stopped being disappointed about that.  I have to admit to being quite content to stay home and be lazy and I don’t think that I am the only person who agrees deep down.

I think it is even harder for us pensioners because we have been through the whole slowing down experience before.  Personally speaking, I think that many of us initially look forward to having no routine to follow when we first retire, there is a feeling of liberation associated with not having the routine and time adjustments, but many of us tend to get lost in that freedom and put a whole new routine in place really quickly.

But in spite of the fact that, pre lockdown, we never really had the restraints and time pressures that our younger working counterparts have lost the rhythm of, we have all made yet another step into the laziness puddle and now thoughts of the realities outside our homes have had so much time to slip away that it is going to be really hard to get them back.

I think that we need to adopt that mode of thought that we used to get during the last day or two of a foreign holiday, that we felt as children during the last week before the summer holidays ended and we prepared for the next school term, or the pre 2020 mind-set that we adopted when the Christmas and New Year holiday fortnight comes to an end for another year.

In my view we over-seventy-year-olds are often regarded by the rest of our families as people that don’t do anything much and this is a time when we can break that train of thought.  It occurs to me that the Coronavirus interruption to our life schedules, has given us all an opportunity to show our younger family members that we also have a schedule before they again assume that will have the least to do to get back into our pre self-isolating routines. Now is the time to let our actions and plans remind our children and grandchildren that we are more than the family house sitters and babysitters, so we need to be seen to get back into a recognised routine too.

TK, Downham