Dear LPG, 

Lockdown seems so far away now, but I wonder if it is something that we will remember as significant as the years go by?  I have to say that, at the start, I thought it would be good to have an extended ‘at home’ holiday.  I was going to get all those things done that there is usually no time to do because so many of us are far too busy with activities that take us outside our houses.

But all that appears to be history now and, as we go out and about these days, there are fewer and fewer masks to be seen and the new normal is much like the old if you ask me, (apart from all the shops, buildings and people who are missing).  Even so we continue to hear that the numbers of cases are on the rise again although after all the jabs they seem less serious.  We know that we must continue to be careful and that it will never go away but we are all learning to live with it now.  

I wonder what our young Grandchildren will be telling their children when they describe what the early 2020s were like in a few generations’ time.  What will stand out most when they are telling their grandchildren what it was really like. 

I looked back, with Google’s help, and found a little information about a few other pandemics that the world has suffered from over the years, and it appears that Covid-19 may be the most recent, but it will not necessarily go down as the worst.

I suppose that such things only get real when their effects become personal, and even though, throughout our lives, we have seen and heard all the details of the other significant occurrences that have happened over the years, via television and radio news, it becomes real when it is more local.  

I am now a pensioner but when I was young I remember being told stories by one of my neighbours about what it was like to live through the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and the only conclusion I can draw is that it has happened before and will probably happen again…    

GF, Catford   

GF found us a bit of 1918 information..... 

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