We’ll be talking about 2020 for the rest of our lives – ironic, because all we really want to do is forget it ever happened and ‘get back to normal’. But Those Who Know are talking about ‘the new normal’, so the old normal has gone. Forever? The past is always gone forever. Maybe we’ll just have to work with the new while we remember the old.

Memories of this coronavirus spring are a mixture of horror and grief and black, black humour, and often it’s the humour that gets us through the days. Barely a family is unaffected. We lost my uncle, who died of Covid 19 in his care home in England, aged 99. It’s tough when grief is mixed in with frustration and anger and fear.

But in beside the bad stuff, there’s the sense of not being alone. People ask more often, ‘you okay?’ We appreciate the small positives, we make more of them to fill the time. Neighbours offer help and home-made bread, strangers in the street smile and say ‘lovely day’ even while they’re giving each other such a wide berth it would have been considered rude, BC. Before Corona.

On the one hand, social media is busier and more ‘social’, on the other, we’re all now following dozens of scientists, epidemiologists, doctors and others who might know what they’re talking about. Social media is where a lot of that black humour comes from, too.
So I’ve made a selection – seven days of lockdown life. Not consecutive days, not a week, because time is timeless now. Most of these pics made me smile, and one or two of them will remain in my life even when the new normal is old:

1. Easter was a little different this year.

2. But my lilac tree was lovely. (Unfortunately, though, this has been the worst hayfever spring I can remember. Apparently birch pollen levels haven’t been this high for seventy years.)

3. So we had plenty of time for that #LockdownReading.

4. And we all learned how to Zoom. (This is my writers group, who, unlike friends and family, don’t mind being on blogs etc. The one you can’t see very well is Louise, the others are Sandra and Jill, and yes, I had a glass of something too…)

5. Looking at graphs is now something we generally do before breakfast every morning.

6. But there’s still the same old Friday feeling every week.

7. The big thing now is the Great Face Mask Debate. This is still ongoing, so here’s a useful guide.

So there it is, this coronavirus spring. I really, really hope there won’t be a coronavirus summer, but that might need a small miracle. Or a large one. And meanwhile, we all know what to do…