Covid recollections - five years on

We recently had a 'National Day of Reflection' about the Covid-19 Pandemic, marking five years since the first lockdown orders were issued. The week after the day of reflection, I met up with my former work colleagues Heather and Tracy, and we talked about the last week we worked together, as in, together in the same office. 

We were a team of three who worked in an office tucked away under the Children's Hospital. I used to refer to the room as the bunker, because although we had a window, we were well below street level. The window looked out onto a concrete area surrounded by high walls. We were located below a ward that acted as temporary housing for patients from various wards as wards elsewhere in the hospital were being renovated. In the time we were there, the ward was a cardiac ward, then a renal ward, then something else.

In early 2020 it got turned into a respiratory ward. Patients admitted with breathing difficulties caused by the new virus were being cared for there. I found this out in an inter-departmental meeting on a Tuesday morning. I also knew the kitchen serving that ward was located just down the corridor from our office and staff were preparing food for the ward and transporting food trolleys along the corridor without any protective gear. 

I went back to the office and said to Heather and Tracy that we needed to pack up our things, take our laptops and work from home for the rest of the week until we got some clear answers. Within an hour the three of us had left the office... and that was the last day we worked there. 

Just before I moved to a new job the office was permanently requisitioned for another team and I went in with Heather to clear it. I threw away so many half-completed to-do lists! 

Covid hit our wider network hard. Many of the teams we worked with had staff redeployed. There was a huge shift to virtual consultations and home working. Most of our teams had tried to start virtual consultations but had always been frustrated by a lack of support from IT and sometimes point blank blocking by Information Governance. Suddenly, everyone was on Microsoft Teams and encouraged to talk to patients that way. As one consultant said to me 'For years we have been trying to go virtual, and all it took was a global pandemic...!"

I feel a bit guilty, really, talking about my experience working in healthcare during the pandemic. I recognise that I got off very lightly. I know people who ended up in Nightingale Hospitals and others who were given minimal training handling needles and were launched into vaccination centres. One former colleague worked in ICU and talked about having to intubate people she worked with who had caught the disease. 

But my experience was being at home, locked away. Cathy and I spent more time together than we had done for years. It was nice eating lunch together every day. Yes, it was all a bit scary. I was flicking through an old journal and for a long time I was noting the covid death statistics that were being published daily. 

Along with journaling, I got into blogging a lot more. One of my lockdown projects was launching my (now sadly neglected) blog about baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn. That was one of several Lockdown Projects, which I wrote about in May 2020.

I didn't blog excessively about the pandemic, but I did record some things, which make an interesting read now, with the benefit of hindsight. (That Lockdown Projects blog post was the first mention of the pandemic on my blog.)

In the first few months of the pandemic, lots of people put home made rainbows in their windows as a message of hope and solidarity with each other. Blog post: Grangetown Rainbow Art

Shortly after the Covid-19 lockdown began my Uncle Malcolm and my good friend Ben both died, although not from Covid. I wasn't able to go to their funerals, which added to the pain. Blog post: The fractional losses, being human in a viral world

A bit like the Rainbow Art thing, we joined in the first Grangetown Zoo. 

In the October, lockdown had been eased a bit and then suddenly returned. Blog post: Lockdown freedoms (a "Fire Break" post)

At the end of 2020, I listed five positive things from the year. One of them was being at home for Christmas - yes, it was another lockdown but it was still nice. That was the Christmas my mum went to Edinburgh for Christmas at my sister's and wasn't allowed back into England for four weeks due to emergency travel restrictions.

By February 2021, I was really missing going to football matches. As a result it felt like the 2020-21 season never really happened at all. 

But then in March I got called for my first covid vaccination, in the repurposed former Toys R Us building in Cardiff Bay. It wasn't long before it was known as Jabs R Us. Blog post: Jabbed

I really remember that day. Firstly, when I walked in I met my colleague Nick who worked in the Service Improvement Team in the health board. He had helped design the mass vaccination centre and was there checking it was all running smoothly. 

The second thing was just the feeling of tearful relief when I got back into my car after being vaccinated and suddenly feeling like I had some protection at last from this awful thing that had been threatening me for so long. I have such a strong memory of that emotional response, but I didn't mention it in my blog post at the time. 

That year there was a weird anti-lockdown party in the Senedd Election. Blog post: Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking

I had a surprise when I cleaned out the detritus from my car. Blog post: Mundane markers of pandemic life

In June 2021 we went to the cinema for the first time since before lockdown. We saw In The Heights. 

And in July 2021 I was able to go to my first football match since early March 2020. Blog post: Back to football after 16 months away

I posted several review posts of 2021 at the end of the year. One of them was all about the pandemic. Blog post: Reflecting on 2021 – the second year of the pandemic

In early 2022, I wrote about how Covid-19 was a good example of how sincerely held beliefs - however strongly they are held - are no protection against reality. This is a lesson that has become ever more apparent politically since I blogged about it. Blog post: The boat of belief and the rocks of reality

I also noted how the pandemic had left it's mark when I took part in the Keep Grangetown Tidy litter pick in January 2022. 

In May 2022 I caught Covid-19 for the first time. I was due to start my new job and had to spend the first week of it attending virtual meetings and apologising to people. It was a key part of my blog post review of the month that month.

In September 2022 I had my fourth covid vaccination and was very pleased to finally get a sticker! (Cathy got one the very first time she got vaccinated.)

And in October 2022, we went to our first gig since before the pandemic - a postponed Counting Crows gig in Manchester

Covid was still around in 2023. I caught it again in March, as mentioned in that month's round up post. (And yes, I might have caught it off a giant rabbit!)

Happily, I have managed to stay free of the virus since then. 

I hoped that after the pandemic settled down the world might be a more reflective and kinder place. Sadly, that hasn't happened. We have had two years of war in Ukraine now, and a year and a half of atrocities in Gaza. The USA seems to be spinning apart, headed up by a destructive narcissist. It seems like the chaos caused by covid wasn't enough and some people just want more. 

In the Heights marks our return to cinema-going

Cathy scored us some preview tickets for a film called In The Heights last week, which marked our first trip to the cinema since the beginning of March 2020. That 15 months gap has probably been the longest stretch between going to a movie theatre in absolutely ages. 

We got into the cinema and Cathy suddenly asked me if I knew how long the film lasted for. I looked it up, and said "Well, it says here it's two hours and twenty three minutes long... and it's a musical!" We looked at each other in mild, apprehensive horror. Neither of us particularly like musicals. Oh, well, it was a free preview, and how bad could it be?

It turned out it wasn't bad at all. It was excellent. Mild spoilers follow.

The film is set in Washington Heights in New York City, a predominantly Hispanic immigrant neighbourhood. It's written by Lin Manuel Miranda, who wrote Hamilton, which everyone raves about but I have yet to watch.

The story really pulls at some big themes, especially the tension between loving your community and simultaneously wanting to escape it to something better, with associated feelings of disloyalty and guilt for daring to dream of somewhere better. 

The character have a mix of dreams. Characters dream of setting up their own businesses, returning to Peurto Rico to open a bar on a beach, or even just gaining American citizenship because they are 'undocumented'. A father is willing to sell his business, built up over years, to pay for his daughter's tuition at university. His dream is that she will eclipse him, and there is a powerful moment when he tells her that she is better than him because of her hope for the future. 

Mixed in with this, are themes around gentrification and the changes being made to poor neighbourhoods in the name of progress. That really resonated with me as my neighbourhood changes and big plans are put through by the council that will displace people and nibble away at parkland. But the story makes the point that areas always change as people flow through them and this is part of the life-cycle of any community.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed the music. There are some fantastic song and dance sequences and the mainly young cast all carry it off with depth and feeling. A few recognised Hispanic actors appear, including Jimmy Smits. The only one that jarred was seeing Stephanie Beatriz as a nail stylist with big hair, because I'm used to seeing her as the scary Roza in Brooklyn NineNine. After the initial shock though, she was very good and it's nice to see actors playing completely different roles. 

Overall then, I not only survived a two hour and twenty three minute musical, but I would happily watch it again. Because of covid restrictions the auditorium was only about a quarter full. We had to leave gaps between rows which meant nobody kicking the back of our seats, and nobody with big hair sitting directly ahead of us. I could get used to that kind of cinema experience!