So, lockdown, how was it for you? Did you do yoga every day and learn a language and write a book and create quizzes for your friends and family while making sourdough from scratch? Or did you become nocturnal and watch all of Netflix, flicking from Tiger King to Ozark, unable to concentrate on either while eating your own bodyweight in crisps and cheese and scrolling through your street WhatsApp group, sighing. Did you argue with your partner about who types the loudest (he does), have to have TikTok explained to you by a child, and go in a mood because someone else did the edge pieces on your jigsaw?
As we start to see a little glimmer of hope ahead there’s a lot of talk about what we’ve learnt from this experience, because of course, in the same way that going for a walk without your Fitbit renders that walk pointless, there has to be meaning to the last year, we have to measure it in some way, there has to be a point to it. Are we all better people now? Have we used this time to reassess our priorities and work out what really matters? Or have we been so isolated, shut away with our phones for a year, that we’ve forgotten how to behave without the constants of normal society to remind us of our boundaries.
Lockdown seems to have held a giant magnifying glass over us as a society, exaggerating our faults. The nice people carried on being nice, the annoying people carried on being annoying, they were just nice/annoying in slightly different ways. It showed us where the inequalities are, highlighting the massive differences in our society, particularly when it comes to class, gender and race.
Despite it being 2021, when we have robot vacuum cleaners and can track our heart rate via our phones, more people than ever before are needing to use food banks and schools have relied on donations to ensure every child has access to an education that is usually available to everyone, rich or poor. The divides that we’ve worked so hard to fill were suddenly blown wide apart during the pandemic.
Yes, people pulled together and we clapped every week to show how much we care but at the same time race-related hate crime, which was already on the rise thanks to Brexit, has been on the increase throughout the pandemic. (Don’t call it the Indian variant then act surprised when people are shouted at in the street.) Domestic violence figures have risen and we’re facing a mental health crisis in teens who have been robbed of a really important year.
Think back to yourself as a teenager, (I know, we all looked amazing and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar), then imagine being forced to stay in with your family and not being able to see your friends or do any of the usual things that teenagers do. No sneaking in after your mum and dad have gone to bed, trying to avoid the creaky stair so they don’t wake up and realise how drunk you are. Not being able to form those relationships that shape the way you do relationships for the rest of your life. Not having the freedom to do all the stupid stuff, to make all the stupid mistakes that are a vital part of being a teenager. Having your exams cancelled, which in theory sounds like a great idea, I’d have been all over that as a teenager, but actually, it’s things like exams that mark the end of your time at school, it’s a definite line under it all, almost a free pass to enjoy your Summer. Without this distinct ending their summer just stretches out ahead of them. There aren’t the jobs around that are usually available during the summer, and where can they go? Yes, they have social media, which is great because it keeps them connected and entertained, but it also puts an unattainable filter on the world around them and can be very isolating. I struggle as an adult with the cliquey attention seeking of social media, I can’t imagine how hard it is to deal with without all that life experience behind you.
And these are the teenagers with a ‘normal’ home life; what about all the kids for whom home isn’t a safe place? Imagine how hard life has been for them in a difficult home life made harder because of the associated pressures of living through a pandemic, the mental health issues, the money worries, the sheer boredom, the constant fear of being trapped in a house with a violent adult.
I read so many complaints about teenagers, about how they’re out in gangs, leaving rubbish lying around, making a noise, but what would you have them do? It’s bad enough being that age and having no rights or agency, even worse when the people who are making the decisions that will affect your future don’t seem to know what they’re doing. How are you supposed to trust them? No exams/do these exams/leave school/no come back/wear a mask/don’t wear a mask.
I’m surrounded by teenagers at home and at work and I have to say that it’s the middle aged people who I’ve had the most trouble with. Lots of teenagers that I know were targeted by the police throughout lockdown, meanwhile middle aged people were breaking the rules willy nilly but none of them were bothered by the police. It was a middle aged man who stepped out in front of my car the other day, glued to his phone, a middle aged woman who was rude to the young cashier in the coffee shop just now.
And as ever, women have also borne the brunt of this pandemic. For the best part of a year they’ve been reduced to 1950s housewives, stuck at home doing the majority of the household chores and childcare but with the added, modern twist of having to maintain a full time job too, while also home schooling and having to jump around their living rooms to bloody Joe Wicks. The industries that have been hardest hit by the Covid crisis, such as hospitality, retail and entertainment, are industries with a higher proportion of women workers, often on a casual basis.
At first, the streets felt safer for women because there weren’t as many people around and for a while this was almost liberating. You could go out without having to brace yourself as you walk past a group of men, waiting for a comment about your body that you can’t quite hear, followed by laughter that you know is at your expense. No awkward walk down the street as men in vans discuss the size of your breasts/arse while you try to cover both up simultaneously with your handbag. But this means that when you do get catcalled it feels so much more threatening, it’s more acute when it’s not diluted by other people, there is just you and the other person. In ‘normal times’ when you’re walking alone at night, clutching your keys between your fingers, you’re constantly checking who is around you, seeing who might be able to help if needed. It’s exhausting, but when you’re in the middle of a lockdown and find yourself on the set of 28 Days Later there’s an added edge to it, because chances are there is nobody around to help.
And while I personally loved walking around my city without having to play British Bulldogs with the tourists, I only ever did that during the day. It was isolating and limiting.
The constant reminders to go out and exercise didn’t help either. Please, for the love of God (and my knees/sports bra budget) will you stop telling us to run. What if you’re working all day and the only time for you to go out is at night? What if you can’t afford the right footwear? What if you haven’t got childcare?
One article suggested taking a longer lunch break, or starting a bit earlier so you can fit a run in, but what if you work in a factory, or a shop, or a care home? What if you’re already limited by a chronic health condition? Just going for a run isn’t an option for lots of people for lots of reasons and it felt like yet another way of making us feel not quite enough.
So what now? Who cares that we’ve all forgotten how to do small talk because surely we’ve all watched the whole season of Bridgerton at least three times by now so are experts on social etiquette and anyway, all anyone talks about nowadays is whether or not they’ve had the jab. I haven’t been this desperate to be older since I was 15 and queuing outside a nightclub memorising someone’s big sister’s date of birth from their borrowed ID. In a modern day version of Logan’s Run, people keep being taken off for their vaccine while the rest of us get left behind, feeling like the people in the 90s who pretended that they didn’t want to see those damn Magic Eye pictures anyway.
I was talking on Twitter earlier about how people seem to have forgotten how to be, they’re ruder in shops and on the roads. There seems to be such a sense of entitlement at the moment, whether it’s about a parking space, a foreign holiday, dumping your rubbish in a park or doing a poo on a beach (yes, really). People are acting like they’ve earned the right to be an arse.
We’re all over the place, we want to go out, but then we’ve had so many things cancelled at the last minute that we can’t quite let ourselves get excited and we can’t really be bothered anyway. What do we wear? Is it true about skinny jeans? Remind me again how to do eye liner.
We’re desperate to get back to normal, but what even is normal? Can anyone remember? A time before masks and apologising for your hayfever and not hugging your friends and missing your dad, and desperately wanting to have a work meeting without having to look at your own stupid face on the screen in front of you (do I look like that in real life? Seriously? Why did none of you tell me!) while asking if anyone can hear you and who else is joining you, like some mad Victorian seance.
We can’t just flip a switch and delete the last year and while we know we should be grateful we also need to let ourselves feel a bit sad, and process what has happened, and, just as importantly, what hasn’t happened.
So hold onto your jogging bottoms and give yourself a break. We’re so used to being in control of our lives to a certain extent, this last year has thrown us all and it’s natural to feel angry and anxious and uncertain. This idea of us all having an Awakening and living a simpler life with re-ordered priorities feels a little bit offensive, you can’t put an Instagram filter on a pandemic. It’ll take more than a year to reset a society with as many issues as ours. You can’t treat lockdown like a yoga retreat in Bali and expect us all to find ourselves; some of us were too busy, too deflated, too ill, or just too sad to even look.
We made it, we’re here, and that’s the main thing.
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