Taking (Personal) Stock After The Lockdowns - Part One

Sunday will be the second anniversary of the UK Lockdown.

Just to be clear: f**k everyone who imposed, administered or enabled lockdowns. A special Circle of Hell is being dug for them now.

It's supposed to be over now. I will believe that when we get through Winter 22/23 without any backsliding "Plan B's".

Anyway, let's take stock (*).

I've been trying to work out if I'm suffering from any kind of Post-Lockdown-Stress-Disorder. After all, I keep reading that I should be. Everyone else is, if they are a journalist.

I wasn't scared of The Virus. I had a laptop job and I live on my own, so I wasn't ever going to get close enough to anyone to get it.

I was concerned about a bogus stay-at-home order from some bored track-and-tracer having a lark.

So I took sensible precautions: no Track and Trace app, no signing in anywhere, no PCR tests, get the jabs to avoid pariah status, stay away from travel, and have nothing to do with people in the NHS (hospital workers are a primary vector of contagion, because hospitals are where all the sick people go).

I walked every day. Still do.

I did not put on a `lockdown stone'. Nor did I binge-watch anything. Well, unless you count You Tube. I did not have problems sleeping. I did save a bunch of money.

Basically, my strategy, after the first six or so weeks I spent in mild shock, was: wake me up when this b**ls**t is over. It seemed to have served me well.

Eventually I got into ordering stuff online and that is not going to change. I still shop for food, and I shopped for headphones, and I prefer to buy books and CDs from actual shops. Not going back into department stores unless it is utterly unavoidable.

What did I miss?

I used to go to Sadlers Wells, to a good gym in the West End, to the London art museums and galleries, to restaurants, and the Curzons and Everymans, to the big London bookshops. I used to walk in the parks, travel on the buses. Sit on the platform at Barons Court on a warm summer evening waiting for a District Line train. I used to sit in cafes reading or writing for half-an-hour, watching the people go by, feeling the atmosphere. And I'd take a foreign trip now and again. There were some light social interactions with various people, usually behind counters.(**)

Not much, but it was enough.

But I didn't miss it, because you can only miss something that is happening without you. The Lockdown cancelled everything like a hyperactive Millennial on Twitter. Nothing was happening, so there was nothing to miss.(***) The Lockdown was a two-year void.

What did I do before the Great Void that is still worth doing?

What do I drop?

What do I do instead?

It occurred to me after a while that I would have been asking those questions last year in a no-Virus alternative universe, because those questions aren't about the Virus, but about retirement. Under the circumstances, the two have been a little muddled for a while.

(*) This is about my life. If you lost a loved one, or a job, or a business, or your children were badly affected, or you got divorced, or your health was compromised, my condolences.

(**) For complicated but tedious reasons, office socialising was de minimus.

(***) This only makes sense if you live One Day At A Time. Normies can miss things that used to happen, but don't now. But that's Normies for you: they don't make sense.