Dear LPG, 

Do you remember what you were doing on this day three years ago?   I keep a diary and flick back every now and then, and stopping on the page for 2020’s version of today lead me to this entry.

I was on the way home on a train that afternoon and it got stopped for an hour between stations because some young boys were thought to be messing around on the railway lines.  All the passengers were trapped for an hour or so and we spent that time talking about the inconvenience while we were inadvertently spreading all those covid-19 germs in ignorance.  In retrospect I suppose I am lucky to still be alive. 

Whether you can remember what you did on the day or not, I think most of us had some idea that there was a health problem which had started in China and that it was spreading, but I have always been a person that did not really pay that much attention to the news.  

This was the day that I first really begun to understand what the words ‘self-isolation’ meant, and it was the day that the statistics about how many people were infected and dying really started to sink in; the day that we were all told that we should all go home and stay home.  

It is not the nicest of anniversaries to acknowledge, especially when the statistics started to include people we knew, and it was not long before I, for one, thought that we would never come out the other side.  

I think that now, three years on, many of us think that we have.  We have all counted the cost in lives, livelihoods, all the missing shops, organisations and institutions that did not make it through.  what I have written so far will have brought to mind people that are no longer available to us and the consequences of the loneliness and depression that the lockdown aspect of it all caused is still being felt worldwide.

Perhaps I have brought back some upsetting thoughts to the many people who have managed to come out the other side and get on with their lives, and I would like to say that I count myself in that category, but I suspect that I am also not the only person who remembers pre-coronavirus days with sadness from time to time or who knows someone for whom the ‘new normal’ is not, and never will be normal again.

It is old news now and the many other world issues which have happened since have helped it to pale into relative significance, but I hope it will be the only news of that kind which affects the whole world during what is left of my lifetime.

At least we can leave our homes again with relative confidence that we will return safely now, but I am one of those who still chooses to wear my facemask when I go to the shops. 

BC, Lewisham

LPG found a Lockdown related timeline for those who may be interested in remembering in a bit more detail… 

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