First lockdown anniversary thoughts

Today is the first anniversary of the first Covid lockdown.

I’m conscious of the memorial services for those who have died, so apologies if I appear tone deaf, but this is my experience of the last twelve months.

First, I sympathise with anyone who has suffered a death in the family, or been seriously ill, or lost their job as a result of the pandemic, but do I know anyone personally who has experienced any of those things? Only one.

I know several people who have tested positive or been diagnosed with Covid but in most cases it was asymptomatic or the symptoms were very mild.

Truth is, from a strictly selfish viewpoint, the last twelve months have been ... alright.

My first brush with Covid - or the impact it was about to have - took place a few weeks before the first lockdown was announced.

A business meeting was cancelled because the person I was due to meet was told by their employer not to travel to London because of the risk of infection.

This genuinely surprised me so I suggested that instead of meeting in London I could travel to their office instead.

The offer was politely declined. In hindsight I can see why but at the time I thought it was overly cautious.

Talk of a national lockdown also seemed excessive, although I can’t deny it was subsequently justified.

But here’s the thing. Unexpectedly, I rather enjoyed it.

I’ve worked from home quite a bit in recent years so it was hardly a culture shock to wake up, make a Nespresso, and sit down at my computer.

In fact it’s 15 years since I commuted to London every day (a three-hour round trip) so lockdown was neither a loss nor a gain in that sense.

Meetings in Brussels and Ireland had to be cancelled but other than that very little changed, work wise.

Media appearances were fewer than normal as smoking, contrary to some expectations, took a back seat during Covid.

There was a short burst of media activity in May prior to the introduction of the menthol ban, and a longer burst in June/July when the anti-smoking lobby tried (and failed) to hijack the Business and Planning Bill by forcing through a ban on smoking in new outdoor eating and drinking areas.

But most of the media work, including radio and TV interviews, could be handled from home using FaceTime or something called Zoom.

Ah, Zoom. Where were you before Covid? Suddenly everyone was organising online meetings on an app I had previously never heard of.

I’m a bit of a technophobe so it took me a few weeks to catch up but even I saw the benefits once Forest had hosted our first Zoom meeting in May.

Since then we’ve organised a number of online meetings with a variety of guests including the former leader of the Green Party, Baroness Bennett of Castle Manor.

Formerly Natalie Bennett, she was a great sport and addressed our meeting from the side of a road in France on the first day of her summer holiday.

On average 60-70 people have registered to attend each of our online meetings with 40-45 joining us on the day.

It’s not the same as a physical meeting, obviously, and I miss the post event drink and chat in the pub, but I suspect that online events and webinars - even conferences - may be here to stay.

They suit our audience, many of whom are over 50, and they make it possible for people in other countries to join us.

The time difference rules out Australia but we regularly attract guests living in America in particular.

Dan Donovan, who has worked with Forest for almost 15 years, made an interesting observation when he told me, “There’s a nice grass roots feel to the Zoom meetings that we don’t get at many of the [main] events.”

He’s right. Our events in London and at party conference attract all ages, including younger think tank staffers and political activists, very few of whom smoke (which is fine!).

They are there partly for ideological reasons and partly because Forest organises some of the best events inside the Westminster bubble! (The same is true at party conference.)

In contrast the online meetings tend to attract a more representative group of supporters, many of them confirmed smokers who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit.

Anyway, I can see online meetings continuing long after Covid because they’re easier to attend if not as sociable after the event.

You can also post a video of the meeting online at little or no extra cost. It’s a damn site cheaper than filming and editing a physical meeting.

The only issue might be timing. At present 6.00-7.00pm works because it’s at the end of most people’s working day but before dinner.

Once people return to their offices they may be travelling home at that time.

Apart from work, what else has kept me occupied over the last twelve months?

I won’t deny that the first lockdown was remarkably pleasant. We live in a village where there’s a small shop that sells most essential items including newspapers.

We have a dog so we never felt housebound because it was the perfect excuse to go out once or twice a day.

The supermarkets in the nearby towns were open and initially there were so few cars on the road it was a joy to drive to the shops.

Even though the roads are now much busier, and have been since the first lockdown ended, I can’t remember the last time I got caught in a traffic jam.

Queuing outside stores has never been a problem around here - five to ten minutes at most - but most of the time I’ve been able to walk straight in.

The limit on the number of customers allowed inside at any one time has made a significant difference to the supermarket experience, including shorter queues at the till.

The one thing I hate about Covid shopping is wearing a face mask. I wear glasses and they always mist up forcing me to take them off and peer short-sightedly at the item in my hand or on the shelf.

I chose not to wear a mask until I was forced to by law. I can see why it is mandatory and if it makes other people feel safer then I will wear one out of consideration for them, but I do worry that we could be forced to wear face masks long after the threat of Covid recedes.

It took a long time to catch on or be accepted by the majority of the British public but I suspect that even if the law is changed most shoppers will continue to wear masks for some time to come and that will put pressure on the rest of us to conform, if only out of politeness.

What else do I remember about the first lockdown? The weather, of course. If spring 2021 is half as good as last year no-one will have a right to complain.

We even bought our first ever barbecue, although everyone else must have had the same idea because there was a shortage of gas canisters and we had to wait our turn.

Despite the good weather however I initially spent an awful lot of time indoors and with good reason.

For the best part of a decade friends had urged me to watch Mad Men. “You’ll love it,” they said. “Everyone smokes!”

I don’t know why but I never got round to it. Thanks to lockdown however I watched every episode, 92 of them. And my friends were right. It was brilliant.

The easing of travel restrictions in May (or was it June?) allowed me to visit my 89-year-old mother in Chester. She only moved to the city at the end of January - after 40 years in the tranquil Peak District - and since then most of her time had been spent officially shielding in her new flat overlooking the River Dee.

Unofficially she kept active and most days went for a walk but most shops and all the cafes were of course shut. Did she complain? Of course not.

Unfortunately we were unable to celebrate her 90th birthday in person in December but I’m sure we’ll make up for it this year.

In August, unwilling to risk a foreign holiday, my wife and I spent four nights on the Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland.

En route we had lunch in York, dinner in Harrogate, then visited my mother-in-law in Glasgow. On the return journey we had two nights in Hexham, Northumberland, and visited Whitley Bay.

That was one of three domestic breaks in 2020. At the beginning of September my daughter and I squeezed in an overnight stay in Bournemouth before she returned to Birmingham.

In October my wife and I also had a short break in Bath. The highlight? Well, apart from lunch at Menu Gordon Jones, we discovered the rather wonderful Tivoli cinema.

Going to the cinema is something I’m very much looking forward to after lockdown but only if it’s a Tivoli or an Everyman!

Pre-Covid I would visit London two or three times a month. Since the first lockdown was introduced a year ago I have been to London twice.

The first time was to be interviewed for The Fence magazine. (No, I’d never heard of it either.) Covid restrictions meant we had to sit at a table outside a Caffè Nero in central London.

Needless to say the interview has never been published. Was it something I said?

The second time was to take my son out for lunch on his birthday in October.

Incidentally, I greatly admire the way both my children have coped this past year because in many ways Covid has hit students and twentysomethings harder than the rest of the population (with the exception perhaps of those in care homes).

I know the risk of serious illness has been minimal for most younger people but I can’t imagine what it must have been like for those stuck in small flats or bedsits, often on their own, with the pubs shut and very few ways to socialise.

Living in tier four London my son couldn’t even come home for Christmas which was a bit of a blow because Boris only announced the new restrictions five days in advance.

My daughter too has had a disrupted year but at least she has been able to spend some time at home between jobs. Nevertheless I am proud of the way they have both managed the situation without (too much!) complaining.

They are far from alone of course so to every student or twentysomething who has found the last twelve months a bit of a struggle at times, the good news is you have most of your life ahead of you and the best is yet to come. In a few years this will seem like a distant memory.

Meanwhile my wife and I have been extremely lucky. We’ve both been working throughout the pandemic and neither of us (touch wood) has caught Covid. In fact, we’ve both had our first jabs with the second due in May.

In January we had to self-isolate for ten days after we were notified that we had been in contact with someone who had tested positive but that was a very minor inconvenience.

I was working from home anyway. Food and other essential items were delivered to our door and if you were self-isolating the local pub would deliver anything from fish and chips to Sunday roasts.

It’s true we are beginning to get itchy feet and a short break or longer holiday would be nice, but it’s not a hardship to go without.

I get what some people are saying about lifting lockdown restrictions ahead of schedule but we’ve come this far, why risk screwing things up now?

Sooner rather than later we are going to have to lift the restrictions and trust the vaccines to protect people (understanding there will still be some deaths, as happens with flu), but I can wait a little longer.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far I’d interested to read about your Covid year.