A couple of weeks into that first balmy lockdown, a bed sheet appeared on the hedge of a house along our lane. There was a message painted in red, or was it black? My husband remembers it stating: “Fuck off cyclists.” I remember reading, “Go home joggers.” It only remained on the hedge for a day or so and disappeared. I often think of this bedsheet when contemplating our collective response to lockdowns. Did another neighbour take it down? Or a cyclist or jogger? Or did the people who put it up consider their words to be a bit much and remove it in embarrassment? Where is the sheet now? Washed and returned to the airing cupboard, burned, or used as a dust sheet? I couldn’t possibly ask my neighbours, for then I would have to admit I noticed.
That the exact memory of this aggressive sheet is already fading, worries me.
Before we all forget similar lockdown episodes, is it now time to officially record ordinary life in 2020-21? Future historians will surely thank us – for who could make up the scale of small yet devastating insanities?
I’m thinking of a dinner party we attended in a greenhouse, whitewashed so no-one saw, and muggy beyond belief. And our terrified friend who decided not to visit his father in hospital, “to be on the safe side”, only to desperately regret the decision when the old man died alone. The bunch of flowers we ordered mis-delivered to neighbours, left in their garage for three days, “to decontaminate” and die. Locktails and quarantinis in the woods. Sourdough: an alarming post on WhatsApp where someone requested a new “mother” as his had ended up in the dishwasher. Green tape pasted onto the Victorian tiles in church to ensure social distancing; as if the church had ever been crowded. The chap who videoed children climbing into the taped-off, empty playground, threatening to call the police.
Not so funny now.
According to the U.K.’s National Police Chief’s Council, 525,738 of us made calls to the police about lockdown infractions. Half a million. If there was a historical endeavour to record people’s activities in lockdown, would anyone actually admit to how they behaved?
How many people actually kept their own children in their bedrooms and left food outside the door if they were sent home from school with a message to “isolate” because “someone in their bubble” had “tested positive”? I know of one family whose children were prevented from leaving their home for three months for fear of death. The garden too was verboten.
Etiquette decisions about face masks and when to Covid test. The buying of ‘exemption’ badges. Homemade hand sanitiser. Pleas on WhatsApp to make PPE from pillowcases – hastily cancelled because it was a scam. The washing of online food deliveries. Socialising with your own cutlery and shared bowls of guacamole. Window concerts with socially distanced chairs on the lawn. A decision to use a fan to blow out candles over a birthday cake. The now forgotten ‘House Party!’ app. The pingdemic. Dispiriting family quizzes via Zoom. The National Theatre Live on a Thursday. Joe Wicks.
Oh Lord, the pans. Have we already forgotten the pans? Will people, now part of an NHS waiting list of 7.75 million, ever admit to having banged them in celebration of ‘our’ NHS? One night, on the hill, an old man played his fairground organ.
Perhaps our involvement is still too raw to rake over. The fallibility and greed of politicians is to be expected, but the strange and fearful compliance of the population, and the contortions some made to get round the rules, and others to hug the rules tighter, is vital for future historians to understand.
Four years on, is the scab healing? Could we begin to have a look?
I propose someone arrange straight interviews with everyone willing, in one village, one street, one estate close, in various parts of the country. Any diary entries or relevant emails could be shared and participants would be encouraged simply to record what they did during lockdown, and those half lockdowns, the tiers, the rules of six: their daily routines, the things that frightened them, their doubts, their ways of finding joy in the strangeness of it all and, possibly, actions they took about which they’re now ashamed.
Dare we remember the truth?
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor. If you are a publisher interested in taking up this project – or run a national historical archive – you have a willing writer/helper. Contact me here.
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What I remember:
– Cycling up to a reservoir when we weren’t supposed to be out, tearing down all the tape that had been put up to deny entry. Seeing the small handful of people sat quietly around the water – the knowing looks, the deep bond I felt with these people I’d never know.
– Standing outside a supermarket, waiting for wife, and some idiot woman with her kid refusing to walk past me unless I cleared a two metre space for her. Telling her to f*ck off and stay at home if she was that petrified.
– The dentist. The refusal to stand in their silly little marked out standing spots. Their prior refusal to allow me entry because I declined their hand gel and mask.
– The pride I felt in my daughter when she followed my lead. The looks of compete embarrassment from burly men as my 5ft, 20 year old daughter boldly walked around in supermarkets unmasked.
– The rows. The constant arguments.
– The madness of it. The feeling that the world had gone stark, raving, bonkers. Or was it me?
– The desperation.
– The anger.
– The need for revenge. An eye for an eye.
Yes, the anger. The all-consuming, constant anger. Rage and bewilderment all day, every day. I will never forget, nor will I forgive.
Never. Anyone that wants to either didn’t experience what most of us did, or doesn’t understand the significance of what happened. What they did to children for god’s sake – will make my blood boil till the day I die. I’ll forget about it on my deathbed, until then I need my pound of flesh.
I was walking in the woods with my partner and we passed an older couple, who immediately turned their backs on us until we’d passed. I was livid and let my feelings be known.
Another time I was out walking and came across an old couple who’d pulled up with a flat tyre. It was very late and nobody else was around so I tried to help, jacking up the car. The wife was taking hubby to hospital and walked away to call her daughter for help. In the meantime I’d started a pleasant conversation with the old gent when the wife returned and told me to get away from him. I didn’t even get a thank you, although that’s not why I stopped.
A friend of mine does massage and an old gent made an appointment. She was willing to wear a mask out of respect but when he arrived for his appointment, he first asked her to remove the mask and then asked for a hug as he was so very lonely.
That last paragraph, that sums up the utter inhumanity of it all.
Never forgive, never forget, and hope one day some of those bastards (we know who they are) get their comeuppance. Prison time at the very least!
It’s not so much about forgetting, although certainly the culprits responsible for the epic abuses of our human rights and civil liberties and the damage those individuals caused us personally, societally and economically would love nothing better, but more about seeing the futility and tedium in harping on about the same thing again and again. I spent best part of three years moaning on here, posting my angst, outrage and frustration, and you move on and get over it because there’s now more pressing things to be concerned with and moan about. I’m done with it all, truth be told. I see no point whatsoever banging the same drum, regurgitating the same exact points year in, year out, broken record-style.
Fortunately the internet is bursting at the seams with receipts, though, and we’ve had/got some amazing experts who have all been chronicling and compiling evidence of the damages lockdowns caused, many individuals on here, actually, have been very helpfully posting their graphs and various data throughout. But what is there left to say? Nobody’s getting sent down or even held to account for the biggest crime against humanity ( if we include the dreaded death jab roll-out ) that many parts of the world ever experienced. There’s only so many times you can say the same things and I’m done dwelling in the past.
Crossgates Mid Wales on the Roundabout: “Stay out of Wales”…..As someone Welsh that was disgraceful to drive past.
Same in Cornwall – ‘Go Home’ signs hanging from bridges over the main roads – awful!
I’ll never forget, neither do I wish to.
Same here. I’ll never forget …. and I’m never going to forgive.
One day around midnight, when I had just started my usual, solitary after-work-stroll¹ around Reading and Caversham, I encountered a lone woman walking towards me around the bus stops close to the minster on St. Mary’s Butts. When she saw me, she, after a very visible start, commenced to dig frantically through her pockets until she finally managed to pull out a cloth mask she then hastily affixed to her face just in time before I had actually reached her.
¹ I’m still doing that almost every night because Lockdown never ends — all the people I used to know before it are gone and the ones who replaced them, especially the bouncers, are way too aggressive now towards anyone they believe to be somehow weird² for it to be much fun to be around them.
² I usually prefer to stay on my own. I sometimes talk to people, but certainly not every day and this only after I’ve known them for at least some months and the usual, non-verbal communication with them wasn’t all unpleasant.
I do sympathise; lockdown blew me to pieces and I’m still picking them up.
It’s really not good you continue to isolate yourself however. Bouncers aren’t usually the most likeable bunch.
I find there are plenty of good people in and around Reading, although there aren’t so many who are willing to talk about the topics we discuss here. Give the Ale House a try sometime, very few a-holes there. Solitary or social either is fine.
Thanks for the tip. I’m usually in The Hop Tap for about an hour (or a little more) every evening. I remember the Ale House from before it was the Ale House. That’s one of the places I instinctively shy away from because it looks too like – no disrespect intended – locations in other towns where I’ve gotten myself into trouble, especially because it’s so small that everyone in there gets noticed (this may be a prejudice).
I was really referring to the Friar Street night clubs and the Purple Turtle. I used to be a regular there about from the time when it had the refurbishment until one day before lockdown (always a bit troublesome, though) and also in the Walkabout. Post-lockdown, I went to both places exactly twice before things became seriously unpleasant.
There are a lot of regulars who go there, I now include myself. They/I care a great deal about the place and the staff but there are no concerns or judgement if solitude is your thing. I started going there after work to finish reading the paper, sitting on my own in the booths at the back, but I eventually got to know several people there now and regularly chat or play chess.
When lockdown hit, my first thought was that the place wouldn’t ever reopen which worried me immensely.
I’ve never really got on with Walkabout or the Turtle, although I think a couple of the latter’s bar staff drink there sometimes.
You should have run up to her and said boo
There were some real idiots, total retards!
I used to to just walk along the paths, if someone wished to distance they had to move, made a few exceptions for elderly frail people, it was just ludicrous! Outside FFS.
Well written article & yes we should never forget that crazy insane period. A lot of people say they are over it. But we shouldn’t let history repeat itself & I fear that covid lockdowns were a rehearsal? I hope not
Never forget and never forgive. Exact whatever revenge you can on the scum responsible whenever the opportunity presents.
If anyone wearing a mask spoke to me I always said I couldn’t hear/understand them no matter how much they went on. If it was important they’d eventually take off the mask. Little victories.
In Australia I was unable to return to my home and children for 9 months as they refused to let anyone cross the state border. I expected empathy from my “friends”, but most turned on me for being so selfish as to want to put them all at risk. The state I was in also had no Covid cases for much of those nine months, but it made no difference. It turned out later that exemptions were made to cross the border during that time. Significant political donors to the labor party (who were in charge) were fast tracked for exemptions. Seems that the colour of your money mitigated risk. Mine is far from the most tragic story around the border closures, it is just one of them.
It’s the everyday stories which are important. The core idea behind the whole COVID circus was to kill human society slowly with thousands of needle pricks. As I already wrote above: They even managed to do a real lot of apparently lasting damage. The medium-term hope I have is that they’ve damaged themselves more by putting their masks on in order to let them fall than us.
I never forget about that poor girl in Australia that got kidnapped from her home and taken to a quarantine centre because she was next to someone that tested positive a few days earlier. If someone barricaded himself in his home armed to the teeth, they would probably send armed officers to bring him out dead rather that risk letting someone go who were close to someone with those fake PCR tests. Clown world.
Clapped once at the beginning then completely forgot about doing it. Was out on a solitary walk with the dog (apart from her of course) one evening and there was an almighty row in the village, the populace banging their pans.
Any clapping for those TIK TOK dancing angels of death should be clapping them in irons!
Great project!
I remember being with my daughter on a big wide empty beach near our home in Cornwall during the first lockdown – sand, sea, sky as far as the eye could see and my daughter being anxious that someone (where?) would report us to the police for sitting down to eat our sandwich.
The surfers at Polzeath carrying on regardless and the coastguard helicopter swooping down over them repeatedly to try to get them out of the water.
Walking along the River Fowey near Lanhydrock (which we had made an ‘unnecessary’ drive to reach) and freezing at the sight of a police car as we crossed a lane – and the police inside the car giving us a friendly wave.
A policeman on my doorstep, cautioning me and filming me with his bodycam because the neurotic owner of the village shop who used to walk around in the middle of the night logging addresses where cars were missing overnight and informing the police, had reported me.
A masked man on a virtually empty train screaming at me that I wasn’t wearing a mask.
Under the restrictions but when they were first eased a bit, I went out for a walk with a friend and suggested we go to the Station Cafe for a takeaway coffee. The Cafe was safely out of sight of the road (and any potential spies) and when we got there we discovered about 40 people enjoying their takeaway coffee, bacon baps and socialising!
My “city-boy) adult son had returned home to live and was getting restive in my small town so I suggested we drive to another location using a circuitous route on the small local lanes “where they’d be no patrolling police cars” because they are rare as hens’ teeth around here. When we got to our destination for a walk/picnic I discovered it had a very rare surviving Police Station with several police cars parked outside!
I’m afraid you just had to have the guts to ignore the nonsense and get on with life. And most people didn’t.
I keep on thinking I should write about the past 4 years. If nothing else to record my journey through it all.
I keep on thinking I should write it all down. If nothing else to record my journey through it all.
I remember on a walk around Glasgow seeing the bijou neighbourhood I lived in almost empty, after a tV broadcast by The Scottish government. . I remember seeing it later on the news.A chart (the one and only shown),by Sturgeon and her public health Gauleiters. That graph which showed cases wasn;t on a logarithmic scale so that it looked vertiginously scarily exponential. Jason Leitch the dentist of doom nastily intoning the word “exponential”. I remember the madness of masks, the lost, scared looks of old people shuffling round supermarkets. A school friend I had recently re-connected with out running dropped dead of a heart attack. His funeral was verboten. My own wedding on a beautiful autumn day only 20 guests. When they opened up a bit according to case numbers. Sturgeon grim and scolding, reluctantly let us out, but if the cases went up again we were back in. The dire mediocrities seizing power through a public health police state. The joy of football though only with three jabs. The oppressive nature of that policy still irks. I remember pumping out spreadsheets with actual admissions, ICU cases and deaths, all of which were down everywhere. Yet still the liberty takers continued. I sent my analysis to journalists, as a counterpoint to the biased press briefings they were all using. No they couldn’t handle the truth literally. As a behavioural researcher I saw my colleagues clam up as they sucked in Covid funding. Reason went out the Overton window. The solace of the Daily Sceptic,Spiked and Unherd. The brilliant work of the Barrington scientists, The American sceptics like Matt Taibi who like me saw a ruthless political power grab by institutions placing themselves above democracy. Finally the pubs opening up again. The truth is now out there but as Mulder and Scully knew it can’t be acknowledged.
I live in a leafy area probably not too far from your bijou one. I’m proud to say that I never saw a single Sturgeon or Leitch broadcast. Sturgeon makes my toes curl – a truly despicable woman. My neighbourhood is full of ‘good’ people who did what they were told. Everyone talked of vaccinations and when they were getting them.
I found the whole thing appalling and nerve-wracking as I kept quiet as I was/am the only person I know for sure who didn’t get vaccinated. I look on people differently now as I saw and heard too many well educated stupid people holding forth on what they thought should happen to un-vaccinated individuals.
I find solace in knowing now that I’m not alone even if I don’t know other sceptics in person.
I don’t know anyone where I live in Berkshire for certain who’s unvaxxed, apart from me!
My wife stopped after the second, but when my surgery called chasing me for my 1st injection and I refused, my wife who’s 5 years younger than me asked if she could have mine, they said no, her age group was not yet eligible. Tough times.
Both my adult daughters and their boyfriends had at least 2 shots.
I do still struggle to get to grips with what exactly happened to people, and yet I never went along with any of it! I knew it was all a lie, as soon as it hit Italy and the mortality age was released, I thought with that and then the HCID downgrade it would all stop, how wrong was I?
There are a couple over the road from me who still social distance in their own garden, wearing gloves. And every Thursday have 3 friends round to clap for carers, all wearing masks!
Dear God! And they said we were the crazy ones, us unvaxxed.
My wife and I are no longer speaking to another couple in our town post lock down (or more specifically, after they found out that we are purebloods). It’s a shame about the woman in that couple, as she is otherwise really nice; husband was always a posturing leftist dick so no great loss there. Her brother in law died suddenly from a heart attack in the night, roughly around the same time – mid 2021 – as my next door neighbour did, another neighbour a few doors down did, and a couple of colleagues did (reasons unstated – I suspect suicide in one case). Funny coincidences that.
Other than that, no major losses, and we are still on good terms with our best friends (they explicitly said they don’t care about our vaccination status – possibly impacted by one of them experiencing major side effects).
I never had a big group of friends to begin with, as I’m a bit of a loner with some ‘spectrumy’ traits. The biggest impact the 2020-2022 experience has had is that I am no longer able to get very close to other people, as the suspicion is always there that they were on the wrong side – that is of course expectionally likely. A bit like expecting a jew in Germany in the 1950s to be able to make friends with random non-jewish Germans.
To be frank, I don’t expect to make any more close friends (always tricky once you reach middle age), and I hope that my wife sticks around and we can keep each other company into old age. I also of course hope that my children still like us when they grow old, and we them and their future husbands.
I remember not being able to post a card through a friend’s letterbox as she left things out for 3 days on the porch to decontaminate. The front door was inaccessible because of the decontaminating Amazon parcels!
I live in a small rural village up until Lockdown it was a community, no longer, people have tried to ressurect the old spirit, but it has gone. Factions sprung up those who were the true believers those who followed, for a quiet life, and those who refused to comply. The true believers mostly previously people that I considered to be kind and intelligent turned on the very very few of the non believers, especially those of us who did not take the injection, the quiet lifers passively watched, disagreed with the treatment but did nothing.
So we were excommunicated from permitted activities, shunned, talked about and treated like we were disease ridden and a danger to everyone and everything. Time has moved on and the true believers have once again dressed in their costumes of kindness and generosity, and have attempted to behave towards those that they disparaged as if nothing had happened. But it cannot be fixed, those of us on the receiving end of what was a hate filled mob cannot forget what we saw when the masks of kindness were shed and the true characters revealed. How is anyone expected to ever trust these people again, or those who followed, who disagreed but did nothing except comply when we know if something similar happened again they would turn again, and who knows to what extent these community members would be willing to go to rid themselves of those who did not believe.
I will never forget and I will ensure that my children and my childrens, children know what was done and to be wary of “communities”
Hells teeth!!!!!!!!!!!
I have read all of the comments and although I did read the mail on line I cannot believe how so many people were taken in by the convid crap. I think there were about two weeks when we weren’t allowed to leave our town or use the beach. The beach – well this went by the board as everone just sat on the wall looking at the sea. TPTB soon relented and we were allowed back on and then to travel freely around the island.
Masks – that was a laugh – you didn’t have to wear one when you were exercising so walking to friends house for a drink meant you were exercising!!!
There was a rule of eight but again no-one took much notice if it was a family meal even if the faces and voices were dramatically different to the giver of food.
What I did find very strange and sad was that a now ex-friend of mine was completely besotted with the mask, hand washing and anti-social distancing to the extent that if she went out she would leave all her clothes in a bag by the door and walk sttraight in to have a shower. Complete and utter madness. She was a highly respected GP prior to her retirement.
I reckon I got off lightly.
PS needless to say I wasn’t in the UK or any of the other crazy places.
My stunt was to dress up as a polish painter cycling to do painty painty .
Cycling round west London as the planes flew in from China
MR Plod never did interview me in Polish .
And laughing at the social distance markers on Hammersmith Bridge..in metres not yards , or was it verse visa?
I was threatened with arrest by 2 Policemen on an Avanti train from Birmingham International to London for drinking water from a bottle. I had just cycled from a clinic I was running in Redditch so I was thirsty.
The second time they spoke to me in the nearly empty carriage they told me:’ You can’t drink that all the way to London.’
They were wrong!
Not sure how I kept my temper,but I still despise the Police.
A friend of mine (director of an engineering company) had a bucket of bleach solution near the front door in which all mail delivered was dipped to sterilise it and then hung up to dry.
The intentional fear messaging and gaslighting caused normal critical faculties to shut down. My wife and I spotted it very quickly I’m pleased to say.