I was really hoping not to write about coronavirus ever again. With only another 10 blogs between now and the end of 2020 I thought that was going to be highly possible.
Yesterday’s shock announcement changed all that. With Boris effectively cancelling Christmas for large parts of the south and restricting it to just one day for the rest of us I can’t stop thinking about Covid-19 (or should it be 20 and 21).
We seem to be caught in a constant lockdown loop and all the optimism of the plateauing infections, better treatments and the blessed vaccine is withering away.
As surely as night follows day the new mutant strain will no doubt make its way north and west speeding up the M1 and M4 quicker than an Amazon juggernaut.
That will, no doubt, plunge the entire country into the new Tier 4 restrictions – another full lockdown in all but name.
So January, the bleakest month of the year, will see no respite – all but essential shops shuttered, no pubs and restaurants, gyms closed, most outdoor sport cancelled – for me that means no parkrun or tennis – and absolutely no prospect of travel.
As has happened a few times this year, half asleep I half awoke in the middle of the night catastrophising about how I’d get through these bleak first months of 2021.
Next morning with a run under my belt, a session in the hot tub and the satisfaction of sorting out a plumbing leak, thanks to a can-do tradesman I felt a bit better.
The truth is, of course, I will get through it day by day, not counting the days is one of the my learning points of 2021
I know, of course, things could be so much worse, as they are for most of the rest of the world and those unlucky enough to be born in virtually any other time but it still feels like shit!
To be honest I don’t know what to think any more. I hate the idea of my liberty being curtailed but it’s not as if anywhere else in the world is doing anything different.
When will it ever end, I ask myself. Easter, they say which in 2021 is on April 4th, earlier than usual, and just a hundred days away – there I go counting the days again.
Surely then we’ll be over this but I’m starting to doubt even that with antivaxxers springing up in the places you don’t want such as care homes and BAME communities.
Then there are doubts about the level of protection that vaccine offers, my lack of confidence in our Government’s ability to deliver any large scale project and concerns about mutant strains and even perhaps a new virus.
Lockdown, mask-wearing, social distancing and the health – physical and mental – and economic carnage that comes with it could be our new normal. What a bleak thought that is to end 2020 and to begin a new year that I so hoped would be so different.