In my twenty-five-plus (plus how many doesn’t need to be clarified exactly) years of living, I will confess that I have developed an unbreakable habit of speaking to myself. In my head, out loud, it is an ever-reliable constant. There are many phrases that have become personal mantras that I will inevitably fall back on to repeat when times are tough. One of my personal favourites; “The sun will rise again tomorrow.” It is a certainty that has anchored me through the choppiest of waters. No matter how the winds howl, or how deeply the dark swallows the skies, or how dangerously close I come to mentally capsizing in an…
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The Lockdown Diaries: There Will Be Joy
As I write this, it is the 12th of January, 2021. We have been battling this new way of life, this strange, alternate ‘pandemic reality’, since the 23rd of March, 2020. That was when the first lockdown was announced – 295 long, long days ago. At the time, we couldn’t possibly have imagined that that very same announcement would be made nearly a year later. That was unthinkable, that those words could be echoed to us via our television screens in the year Twenty-Twenty-One. Not again? Stay at home, save lives. It sounds easy enough, noble even, that we could be saving lives by simply… staying inside. That us mere…
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The Lockdown Diaries: What I’ve Learnt During Lockdown
I feel as though I should preface this by admitting that I don’t really know how we’re currently defining this strange stretch of time we’ve found ourselves living through. It almost feels like the annual wintry limbo between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, except warmer and considerably less festive. ‘Lockdown’ as it was is over (?) but the pandemic is still very much present, and with a sporadic and ever-changing tangle of difficult-to-decipher rules and regulations handed to us every now and then, it’s hard to keep up. It’s not quarantine as such, it’s not isolation, but it’s something. There’s still an air of fear, uncertainty, the ‘not quite normal’.…
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The Lockdown Diaries: Looking Back To Look Forward
At the start of this year, I truly felt that 2020 would be a turning point. My year, the year that I could leave behind all the trials and tribulations of the decade prior. Let’s all laugh together, shall we? The sunshine has ceased and the rainy days I usually yearn for have become suffocating, enveloping the house in a constant downpour and putting a swift stop to the l a z y, sunny afternoons stretched out on the grass. Gone is the pretence that this is all an impromptu holiday. The empty hours and blurred future have suddenly become increasingly daunting and I’ve been dragged back to reality kicking…
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The Lockdown Diaries: A Love Letter To The Little Things
I believe this is my fifth week in quarantine. I say that without any real certainty because at this point, time is somewhat meaningless. The days stretch on, new hours to fill, new self-made schedules to mimic any kind of routine or normalcy. That’s all we really crave, now; normality. There have been many a silver lining to this ‘new normal’. New hobbies or skills or ‘time to ourselves’, many examples of ‘bright sides’ that we’ve plucked from our lives and painted positively. Baking bread, afternoons in the garden, finally watching that show you’ve been meaning to get to for months. It’s understandable, of course. If nothing else, looking on…
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The Lockdown Diaries: If You Want To Cry, Cry
An important question to start with: how are you? Genuinely. I know it’s all too tempting to be entirely British and stiff-upper-lippy, brush it off with a ‘I’m fine thank you, and you?’ – but honestly… how are you? To be perfectly honest, I’m not really quite certain of my answer myself. I read recently that the strangest thing about living through a pandemic is the feeling of over and underreacting simultaneously. It’s absolutely true – I’ve found myself living with a perpetual case of doublethink. A wreck one minute, rolling with laughter the next. Again, there’s something inherently British about ‘not making a fuss’, dulling potential hysteria with false…
