Twenty Eight | Local Lockdown
As we celebrated birthday’s during the height of lockdown there was never a moment I envisaged mine would be spent any other way than donuts at work and a weekend with my two tiny girls. And yet here I find myself on October 17th, my twenty eighth birthday, in local lockdown, still slightly incredulous that we’re here.
I am sure everyone who had birthday’s in March, April, May and beyond can relate that lockdown birthdays are hard to get excited about and I am full on in the pity party for one. A summary of the restrictions in my area of Wales; local lockdown means I can’t see my parents, brother or nieces, nor have our usual Craddock takeaway with Jos’s family. Avoiding non essential travel means a long drive to somewhere pretty is out of the question, let alone the fact it’s illegal to leave my county. People from parts of the UK with high cases of infection are banned from entering Wales and we’re heading toward a ‘short sharp circuit breaker’ which will mean a full lockdown at the end of next week more than likely.
I never go mad for my birthday, a day with my nearest and dearest is all I need and even that this year is proving impossible. It’s been a rough year for all with our support networks ripped away from us, job worries, money worries, health worries and general distrust of the government and a weekend of nothing maybe is exactly what I need for my birthday.
The second half of 27 went slightly awry (minus getting married, soz Jos) and it looks like the first half of 28 will be much the same with a long winter ahead of us so to readdress the balance of woe and documenting my feelings exactly how they are now, here’s 28 bits of the pandemic I HAVE liked. A reminder that there is joy and beauty in even the bluest of days.
1: I spent lots and lots of time with my husband. I didn’t expect to be in lockdown with nobody other than each other a mere month after getting hitched but in hindsights, we got time together that we never would have had. If I’d rushed back to work and got on with our busy lives we wouldn’t have had the time to spend eating lunch together every day or the long walks we took when we could get our daily exercise.
2: I saved a load of money. In those first few months when we couldn’t go anywhere and everyone offered bill breaks I saved the majority of my furlough money every month and my bank balance was left looking a lot healthier than it did after we finished paying the last bill for the wedding.
3: Rainbows. Anyone else become obsessed with rainbows since they became the symbol of hope? I am drawn to anything with it on and have found myself ordering mugs, key rings and even planning a rainbow painted onto my porch until I couldn’t get a tester pot of paint for love nor money.
4: Online grocery shopping. I just feel like I’ll never spend two hours a week trawling Tesco on a Saturday morning ever again? Online delivery slots were like gold dust at the beginning but after my first one at the end of April I have managed to keep up the routine of securing them every week and they were a god send when I was shopping for 6 different families back at the start. Click and collect is the new way forward imo and I cannot see myself returning to my old habits even when it’s safe to do so.
5: Instagram. Horribly first world and horribly millennial but my grid never looked so cute as when we were in lockdown. I was always out and about in the garden, in my local area, in the forest, on the farm getting snap happy with portrait mode and the weather helped make everything in my house live it’s best filtered life too.
6: Getting outdoors. I have never been more grateful for where I live than in the height of lockdown. We live in the arse end of nowhere and were able to be out for hours on end without seeing a soul when everyone else was confined to their government allocated hour. Long walks in an evening, the seven mile trek we accidentally found ourselves on and getting back out to do the couch to 5k (which we didn’t manage yet again!)
7: Zoom catch ups and pub quizzes. Ok so yes I think we all got to the end of our tether with it after a while (imagine my joy now 90% of my job is online video calls) but wasn’t it fabulous when we first got into it? We did weekly quizzes with the work girls, my blogging friends and I had a lush catchup and I spent hours and hours with my school friends. Some of us were more social than pre pandemic for sure!
8: We cleared our ‘to be watched’ list. I mean not quite (does anyone ever come to the end of such a list?) but we binged a load of the boxsets we’d been saying we wanted to watch. We spent countless weeks enjoying This Country, Gavin & Stacey, Detectorists, Peter Kay’s Car Share and more (and I finally caught up with KUWTK).
9: Being Welsh. I am proud as punch at being Welsh and feel very strongly about it and my heritage but it took on a whole new meaning during lockdown when the Welsh government started moving away from those in Westminster. Sure having different rules is confusing but I have never been more happy to be living in Wales when there was carnage scenes in England when pubs reopened (except maybe when we’ve won the Grand Slam).
10: Seeing my nieces again. I didn’t see my nieces in the flesh for 16 and a half weeks and the day we first saw each other again was hard. I cried a lot behind my sunglasses and had to pep talk myself into going to my Mum’s to see them and my oldest niece was terrified of me and the virus but as the weeks have gone on we’ve had some of the best times. That first hug was the sweetest hug I have had in 5 years and we have made some really special memories in the short few weeks we’ve been together.
11: My house. I love where I live I really do but spending so much time in your house can either make you fall in love with being there more or make you immediately want to put the house on the market. For me luckily it was the latter and I caught myself many a time thinking how lucky I was to call this mine. I also had time to plan massive renovation work that won’t happen till next year now but good things come to those who wait (and save money).
12: St Moriz instant tan. Slight curveball from the majority of this list but I swear by the fake tan I use and it got more use this year when I was at home in my shorts and flip flops than it has done probably ever and I feel like the best version of myself when my pins are bottle brown.
13: Community spirit. Nothing like a shared bit of misery to bring a country together is there? The community spirit and the feeling of 'we’re all in this together’ at the beginning of lockdown (remember, tiger king time) was a joy to behold. Everyone was that little bit friendlier, people were going out of their way to help others and key workers were celebrated in every walk of life.
14: Creating new habits. More time at home meant lack of routine but it also meant more new habits I have continued as we gradually crept out of the last lockdown and into the next one. I take better care of my skin, I have perfected a french plait for sleeping in, an app tells me when my house plants need feeding and Jos and I spend every Saturday eating something a bit more special and watching a movie.
15: The little gestures. Sending cards to Jos’ grandmothers, popping a bunch of flowers in my shop for my mother in law, sending craft kits to my nieces, a bag of tomatoes picked from my Mum’s greenhouse. Afternoon tea deliveries were harder to buy than drugs as people sent pick me ups flying through the postal system for their loved ones and we love to see it.
16: The importance of friends. Family is everything to me, truly everything but that’s not to say they don’t add an extra element of stress and upset to my life. In fact, frequently, they ARE the biggest stress and upset to my life but this pandemic has shown me yet again the importance and value of truly great friends. The online pals at the end of Whatsapp for a rant, the work pals who send you a quid for a chocolate yoghurt in a card, the life longers who see you’re not on Instagram and message a simple “you ok?”
17: Lazy morning’s to myself. Jos worked throughout the pandemic as his business diversified from markets to selling online and local delivery so I often found myself on my own in the mornings. Don’t get me wrong, for as many were spent enjoying a peaceful breakfast or a lie in there were as many spent wallowing in self pity or feeling anxious but those blissful ones were true bliss.
18: Making more of an effort. Jos’ grandmothers both live away from us and we' normally see them a few times a year but with lockdown in place, it’s likely our wedding will be the only time we get to hang out in 2020. They’re both in their late eighties and live alone so they were hooked up to iPads and smart phones and every week we skype or facetime them and have a good natter - something we want to keep up whenever the lockdown ends.
19: The ‘old me’ days. The pandemic hit me pretty hard mentally and I know I am not the only one. I found myself worried, anxious all the time, down in the dumps, upset a lot and generally not able to cope with it all and perform lots of basic tasks so the days where I bossed it, where the sun streamed through my windows and I accomplished a million and one jobs and felt like ‘old me’ again were a welcome reminder I was surviving.
20: The garden. My Mum was overjoyed when some of my nicest days were spent pottering about in the garden. As a mad keen green fingered gardener herself she gave me lots of tips and helped me weed the borders via Facetime and I loved having sorted the space so I could enjoy it. Many an afternoon was spent lazing about at my patio table blogging in the sun and I miss it now the weather has turned.
21: Furlough coming to an end. I massively feel like I ‘wasted’ my furlough time because I spent so much of it trying to find out when I was going to go back to work and if there would be a job for me at the end of it but tbh, part of the reason there WAS a job was that I badgered so much I was the first to be brought back on July 1st. I didn’t love being furloughed, it was a constant source of stress for me and having the routine of work back has been welcome.
22: My week’s quarantine. Back in September I had to move out of my house for a week for various reasons and I found myself isolating with my parents and brother, all four of us in my childhood home. I loved coming home to my husband and my own bed but I also loved 7 days of being cooked for by my Mum, laughing with my brother and watching TV with my dad. I got to spend more time with the kids, slept horribly, cuddled the cat and got shouted at for using the wrong saucepans but we had our first chippy in 6 months and organised a games night and all watched a film together on the weekend and it was a brilliant piece of novelty in a weird world.
23: Knowing I was helping. For sure there were many many days, weeks, evenings where I didn’t love helping everyone with their shopping. When I was trying to plan how I was going to meet everyone’s needs with the 3 item limit restrictions or when I was failing to come home with break making yeast every week I definitely needed a break but ultimately I know I did my bit to help my family and Jos’ when they couldn’t get out and about themselves.
24: Daily walks with my Mum. We decided to do this way too late into the initial lockdown but about 8 weeks in my Mum and I decided to go on daily walks together - but apart. We had a travel ban in Wales that meant we couldn’t make journeys without good reason so I’d leave my front door at 9am and she’d leave here 15 minutes down the road and we’d chat as we walked round our respective villages for an hour.
25: Blogging (when I could). I by no means blogged as much as I thought I would and my big comeback definitely didn’t happen but I did finish my wedding series and keep a diary of the lockdown up to date so I didn’t do too bad. I redesigned my whole website, social media and branding back in April and it was a great project to get creative and inspired again.
26: The weather. The weather was BANGING for lockdown wasn’t it? We had a bbq in the first week sat outdoors and that was March. The whole of lockdown was blue skies and heatwaves and it made it so much easier to deal with mentally. As if the gods knew and gave us all a break.
27: Feel good stories. And there really have been a lot of them during the pandemic. From Sir Tom to Marcus Rashford to schools celebrating missed birthdays to people just going that extra mile for someone else, amid all the dreary news there’s been some bloomin lovely ones to bring a smile to your face too.
28: Health. In the midst of a global pandemic that is not set to end anytime soon, it would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that luckily neither myself nor any of my friends or family have been unwell during this time and long may it continue.
So here’s to those with a lockdown birthday, because if you escaped one…..I truly do not know how.