It's been a year (58/365)

[white_hart]

It's a year today since I last went to the cinema. The last time I travelled by train will be a year ago sometime in the nebulous space between Sunday and Monday, because it was on the 29th, and it turns out that the last time I had a meal in a restaurant, which I thought was early March, was actually on the 21st of February, so that's already more than a year ago. It's strange, looking back. I know I was already worrying about COVID by then, but I had absolutely no idea (how could I have done?) just how quickly things would escalate from there.

At this stage, I feel quite ambivalent about the prospect of lockdown easing. I'm very much looking forward to being able to swim as a three again, and it would be nice to be able to go for walks somewhere different. And I really want to see my parents again. But I don't want to go to shops, or the hairdressers, and even though working from home has its downsides I don't miss the commute. And it no longer feels like "going back to normal". This is normal now, and while it would definitely be improved by occasionally going to different places and having a wider choice of takeaway options*, I've got used to it, and I'm quite worried that I've actually forgotten how to exist in spaces with lots of people in them and that it's going to be hard to relearn that.


*if we want delivery, and who wouldn't, it's curry, Chinese, kebabs or Dominos, because none of the Oxford restaurants will deliver outside the ring road. I am very jealous of friends who can get sushi and Wagamama and pub lunches delivered.

Comments

[mrs_redboots]

I am certainly looking forward to getting my hair cut! When our hairdressers were last open, they were very good about safety procedures, and, in fact, both times I had my hair cut I was the only one there.

I last ate in a restaurant on 13 March 2020; we knew lockdown was coming and my sister and her - friend? - had gone for a dirty weekend to Portugal; they had been going to go to Italy, but that couldn't happen. We were providing respite care for my mother, and took her out to lunch at Devil's Dyke, which was packed out as everybody knew it would be the last time for awhile. My mother is convinced I caught Covid there - she may be right, but then why didn't she get it? At 92, as she then was, she was a heck of a lot more vulnerable than I am!

It is, however, over a year since I last picked up my grandsons from school - or went on a Tube train. Or any other kind of train, for that matter. I haven't stopped going on buses, though - couldn't, as after I was ill I simply couldn't even get down to Tesco (about 250 metres away) without getting the bus back!

[white_hart]

I'm very glad I bought clippers last March - short hair needs a lot of cutting, and there hasn't been any point since last March that I would have felt comfortable going into a hairdressers. (Someone should have set up doing outdoor haircuts, I'd have been OK with that!)