Dear LPG,

I wonder if lockdown has had the same effect on you as it has had on me?  We all remember just how much confusion there was at the beginning but one thing that the Newspapers and TV reports all agreed on is that we older people were the ones who needed to be the most careful because we would be most susceptible to Covid-19’s effects. 

I am not sure that I am talking for all of us but perhaps a few readers will recognise what I am saying when I recall that my whole family made sure I had no need to go out as they brought my shopping round and made sure that I had everything that I needed.  They started out asking and I would say ‘No,  I can do it myself’ but I soon found it easier to let them take the strain.

Then came the two significant ‘J’s.  Firstly, December 2020 brought us the JAB, the Covid-19 vaccination, (and we oldies got it first).  That was finally followed by JULY this year when we were told that all but a few restrictions were off and it was safe to face the big bad world again.

I hope that I am not generalising too much when I say that we have all had four or so months since then to get brave, out and about again but after only needing to walk around the house for so long, for some reason, I have found it quite easy to not do that.   I suppose that for some people it is the case that not needing to walk around so much has resulted in leg muscles that used to hurt a bit in the pre-coronavirus past which, not having to bother for so long, keep telling some of us that we could always put off that walk or bus ride all the way to the shops or the club just until next week.  The long break has made the memory and anticipation of pain seem that much more vivid now that we have the freedom to get going again.

Some of us have got used to depending on our children or friends who don’t live too far away and have the time to get us around.  I remember my two offering to help and, reluctantly at first I would refuse while they insisted.  So I just let them and they got used to delivering everything I needed.   Lockdown went on so long that they kept delivering.  They assumed that I needed their help and gradually they stopped asking as I stopped protesting.   The deliveries have now changed into a lift to the shops or where ever I want to go.  They regularly turn up and I have let them for so long now that I have sort of forgotten how to refuse all that help that I don’t really need any more and that is making me a bit lazy. 

I think that writing this all down has made it more real for me and I hope that seeing the words on paper will spur me on to getting out there a bit more myself.   I don’t think I am the only person who can tell this story so I feel the need to encourage any fellow readers, who have a similar trend going on in their lives, to stop putting off stopping the kids from taking all  the strain and start remembering how to become, as the song says, ‘sisters (and brothers who again) are  doing it for themselves’.

DH, Lewisham