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. 

Senedd 2021 Election Leaflets Review & Ranking

With less than a week to go to the Senedd Election, here is a review of the political literature we have recieved so far. I introduced the scoring template in a preview post, but to recap, parties earn points for SMART goals, the number of leaflets, being bilingual, contact details, candidate photos, and endorsements. Parties are docked points for vague objectives, throwing shade - 1 point per target, photos of politicians from other parties, photos of the area that don't include the candidate, stock photos, and typos. I'm also going to list "pandemic points" as a possible tiebreaker.

As of this post we have received 20 pieces of post so I am going to list them by most leaflets then alphabetical order, which means we start with Labour.

Party: Labour

Number of items: 4. 2 of them are general for the list votes and 2 were from Vaughan Gething, the constuency candidate. Only 2 were bilingual, so 6 points

Quite like this design

SMART goals: 3 points - not many, as the leaflets tended to focus on what "Welsh Labour has delivered" rather than making promises. I like the idea of a new national forest - and that's a measurable goal. We will either have one or we won't.

Contact details: a total of 10 ways to get in touch with either generic Labour or Vaughan himself.

Relevant photos: 10, including lots of Vaughan in the consituency. All 4 regional list candidates had pics. Including the one called Mr Death. (He's never going to be health minister, is he!)

Endorsements: 6 different ones. Vaughan got an endorsement off Lynda Thorne who is one of my local councillors who has been very helpful in the past.

Vague objectives: -7. Including to make Wales "a greener country".

Shade: -2. Main targets are the Tories who get unfavourable comparisons across a lot of policy areas. Plaid Cymru apparently "want to put up barriers to our neighbours just over the border".

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: -1

TOTAL = (35-10) = 25. I think this is the most points Labour have ever scored in one of these rundowns. True, they racked up the easy points with the contact details, but overall their literature is a lot more positive than it has been in previous campaigns. If there was more detail to their goals they would have scored even higher.

Pandemic Points: 10! Vaughan Gething mentioned it a lot in his 2 leaflets. But then he is the health minister so I think that's reasonable. 

Party: Liberal Democrats

Number of items: 4. These all came like letters in proper envelopes. We had 2 from the local candidate, Alex Wilson, and 2 from the regional list candidate, Rodney Berman. All 4 mailings were a letter and leaflet, so 8 pieces of literature in total, all bilingual = a whopping 16 points.

Comms note: one of the leaflets is a CV of the candidate, which is quite a nice piece of literature. Given the lack of space I'm not sure why they needed to include his hobby of running a theatre group, though.

#TopTip: Only include necessary information on a CV

SMART goals: 3 - not much really that could be measureable. A lot of space on the regional list leaflets is used up explaining how to vote tactically and "lend your vote" to the Liberal Democrats. 

"Pssst! Lend us a vote, mister..."

Contact details: 3

Relevant photos: 9

Endorsements: 2

Vague objectives: -7. Things like "better schools and hospitals" are laudable, but not specific.

Shade: There's a personal swipe at "our current MS", ie.e. Vaughan Gething, but they don't mention his name. In it's own way that's extra-insulting. Plus "The Conservatives simply don't have the answers for Wales' future" while Labour "is a wasted vote" and "Plaid are focusing on consitutional issues ahead of the COVID recovery." While asking Labour voters to lend a vote to them, they say that could have kept UKIP out of the Senedd last time. I'm going to count that as shade too, so the total shade points are -5.

Irrelevant photos: -1 for a stock photo.

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (33-13) = 20, a respectable score

Pandemic Points: 3

Party: Plaid Cymru

Number of items: 4. 2 general ones and 2 for the local candidate, Nasir Adam. All bilingual, so 8 points.

Is it just me, or is this Labour's colour scheme...?

SMART goals: 11. Lots of these including specific numbers. 1000 more doctors for the NHS. 5000 more nurses and other healthcare professionals. 50,000 new homes. And a promise of an Independence Referendum before 2026.

As a note, just because a goal is SMART doesn't actually make it smart. I have grave doubts an extra 1,000 doctors could be recruited in just 5 years.

Contact details: 4

Relevant photos: 10 - lots of photos on Nasir in action including on a community litter-pick wearing a t-shirt that riffs on the cover of Straight Outta Compton by NWA. An interesting photo choice. Judging by these leaflets, Plaid have one approved photo of party leader Adam Price, which must appear on all their literature. Just that one photo. No others.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: -10. Lots of aspirational stuff like "a fair deal for families". What does that even mean?

Shade: The thing about encouraging tactical voting is that you end up throwing shade on parties by just saying they can't win. That's said about the Greens and the Lib Dems. Generally though they don't really go after anyone. -2 points.

Irrelevant photos: 3 stock photos! -3 points. 

Typos: It's not a typo but on the leaflets from Nasir, he lists 4 pledges on one leaflet and 3 pledges on another leaflet and the pledges are different. So I'm going to ding a point for inconsistency. -1

TOTAL = (33-16) = 17

Pandemic Points: 1

Party: Conservative Party

Number of items: 2 bilingual leaflets = 4 points.

SMART goals: 5. Promises of 1,200 more doctors but only 3,000 extra nurses. 5,000 more teachers and lots of big new roads, all heading out of Wales, incidentally. Also a very cunningly phrased promise about council tax - constituency candidate Leighton Rowlands will "vote to fund a council tax freeze".

Contact details: 2

Relevant photos: 3

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: -5, including "more police on our streets". How many more?

Shade: Just the one reference to Labour failing Wales before the pandemic. -1 point.

Irrelevant photos: -5. Stock photos of policemen, a hospital, a motorway.

Typos: 0

TOTAL = 14-11 = 3 points

Pandemic Points: 1

Party: Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: 0, unless you count the name of the party

Contact details: 0

Relevant photos: 0

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: Do we count hashtags? #SaveWales #SavetheUnion. They reckon a vote for them will bring about one education system, one health service and one government. No real detail on what that would look like. I'm going to give them -2 for the hashtags.

Shade: This leaflet doesn't say anything beyond slogans.

Irrelevant photos: 2 stock photos, one of the Senedd with a red cross through it and a landscape. -2 points

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (1-4) = -3

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Freedom Alliance 

(This appears to be some kind of anti-Lockdown party. There are also are a few conspiracist-tinged phrases in their literature, like "the current political structure and its controllers".)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig, although it does say "For the love of Cymru vote for freedom")

SMART goals: I guess "no lockdowns, no curfews" could be measureable. A generous 2.

Contact details: 3, including a QR code.

Relevant photos: 1 photo of the constituency candidate, Alan Golding.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: This whole screed is a vague objective, starting with "a new way of doing politics is needed". Alan promises to return Wales to a position "where people matter more than our politicians". This will be through "honest conversations" and asking "difficult questions that need to be asked". To be honest by the time I got to the appeal to "common sense solutions", I had checked out. However, a quick run through brought me to a tally of 19 vague objectives. A new record. 

Shade: All other policial parties and "career politicians". And their controllers too I guess. I'm going to just give -1 point as he is the only candidate to throw shade on the controllers. 

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (7-20) = -13

Pandemic Points: doesn't actually mention the pandemic, despite claiming "Lockdowns have plunged the Uk into unimaginable debt, caused a national mental health crisis, devastated our children's education, and have been directly responsible for many avoidable deaths from cancer, heart disease and suicide." Still, 0 pandemic points. 

Party: Independent (David Rolfe)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig) - the smallest leaflet received so far.

SMART goals: There was no room for any on the leaflet.

Contact details: 4

Relevant photos: 1, of the man himself, David Rolfe.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: David listed 3 bullet points, but with no details, they all count as vague objectives so -3 points.

Shade: David claims to be "An independent voice among the political chaos of mainstream parties" but he doesn't actually throw shade on anyone. 0 points.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: there's a word missing in the legally required text on the leaflet. -1

TOTAL = (6-4) = 2

Party: Propel

Number of items: 1 bilingual leaflet = 2 points

SMART goals: "We will end Welsh lockdowns". OK. Well I guess that's measurable. It also mentions that Propel candidates have signed a "Contract with Wales" to introduce 10 Acts in the Welsh Parliament. The leaflet invites me to look them up online, but I'm not really that invested. So there may be details there that would turn them into SMART goals. I'm only giving 1 point though.

Contact details: 3 social media channels

Relevant photos: 1, of leader Neil McEvoy. And his signature. Which potentially gives graphologists a deeper insight into Neil's personality.

Don't need to ask for his autograph

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: the summary of the Contract with Wales lists 4 vague objectives. There is another vague objective listed as part of their proposed Coronavirus Recovery Act. So a total of -5.

Shade: Nothing. 

Irrelevant photos: 1 landscape stock photo, so -1

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (7-6) = 1

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Reform UK 

(This used to be the Brexit Party)

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: The one measureable goal is to halve the number of councils in Wales from 22 to 11. They are also promising no more full scale lockdowns. 2 points.

Contact details: 3 social media channels

Relevant photos: 2. There's a photo of the local consituency candidate Alan Pick, and one of party leader Nathan Gill (who was previously elected to the Senedd as a UKIP candidate and then quit that party).

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: They want to reform a lot of things but don't say how. I counted 5 vague objectives.

Shade: They accuse Welsh Labour of keeping children out of schools without good reasons. Otherwise, they use a good chunk of the leaflet to claim that 50% of people don't vote in Welsh elections so seem to be trying to cultivate people who don't vote rather than steal voters off other parties. So that's just the 1 shade point for the Welsh Labour reference.

Appealing to people who normally can't be arsed

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (8-6) = 2

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: UKIP

Number of items: 1 (saes yn unig)

SMART goals: They want a referendum to scrap the Senedd. They also want to cut alcohol duty and scrap business rates for small companies. I'm going to give them 3 points.

Contact details: 0

Relevant photos: 6 of their list candidates and Neil Hamilton who is the party leader (and is beginning to look like the Emperor Palpatine), so 7 points in total.

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: Lots of comments like "UKIP Stands against the knee-taking cultural vandals who want to erase Wales' history by removing statues to its fallen heroes." Talk about fighting imaginary enemies. 

Culture warriors screaming at clouds

There's other stuff too like ending illegal immigration and funding the NHS instead of sending foreign aid, which has echoes of the lies told during the Leave campaign about all that money that could be spent on the NHS and which then disappeared. I counted 9 vague objectives.

Shade: Lots of it. The Tories and Reform UK "are desperate to keep their snouts in the trough", the Abolish the Assembly Party weren't nasty enough to displaced people in a migrant camp, Mark Drakeford "cosies up to Plaid Cymru who want to destroy the UK and drag Wales back into the EU." They mention the EU a few times. It's clearly a bogeyman for them. The only people they don't mention are the Liberal Democrats, which must be quite demoralising for them in a way. -5 points.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (11-14) = -3

Pandemic Points: 0

Party: Worker's Party

Number of items: 1 bilingual leaflet, so 2 points

SMART goals: 1 (free bus travel for kids)

Contact details: 3

Relevant photos: 4. (3 photos of the people I think are the named candidates and 1 of George Galloway, party leader, who is also on the regional list.)

Endorsements: 0

Vague objectives: 8, at least. But a lot of statements that aren't anything, like, for example: "There should be no homelessness in Wales... Affordable housing projects are not affordable for normal people." There's no actual commitment to do anything.

Shade: there's a swipe at "big business" but no mention of any other parties. 0.

Irrelevant photos: 0

Typos: 0

TOTAL = (10-8) = 2

Pandemic Points: 1

And that, dear readers is it, for now. Well done if you have made it this far. Hopefully you will get your strength back in time to vote on Thursday.

March 2021 End of Month Review

So, that's March done and dusted. We are one quarter the way through 2021, and definitely a year into the pandemic now. On that note, the big personal pandemic-related event for me in March was being invited to have a Covid vaccination (blogged about here).

March also marked the one year anniversary of my work team's hasty "temporary" departure from our office when we discovered the ward above us was where all the patients with Covid were being parked. In the past year my team has successfully transitioned to working from home and we even had a meet up on the Spring Equinox for a takeaway cup of coffee and socially distanced walk. 

There has been a slight loosening of the various Covid restrictions and that meant I was able to get a hiarcut for the first time since October! I needed it.

Lockdown hair!

For a couple of days before my trim I kept singing "Goodbye, Lockdown Hair!" to the tune of Candle in the Wind as I walked around the house. It amused me if nobody else. It was so nice to have a cold neck again after my trip to the barbers.

The 21st March was Census Day. One big change for me compared to ten years ago is that I said that I was a Welsh speaker. It's funny to think that potentially a researcher 100 years hence will read my records and see that I went from not being a Welsh speaker to becoming one. I don't get to use my Welsh as often as I really should if I want to maintain my fluency. I want to attend further classes, but I found the Zoom version of Welsh classes less enjoyable, so I'm waiting to see if it will be possible to continue in real life classrooms any time soon.  

Zoom is a fact of pandemic life, though. I've been a member of the British Thematic Association, which is for all 'thematic' stamp collectors, for several years now. I've helped them start running Zoom presentations for people to talk about their collections over the past few months. In March I was the presenter, talking about my collection of stamps featuring the Statue of Liberty. 

My presentation included the two postcards pictured above, which had a personal connection. Cathy sent one of them to me, which was part of the impetus that got me focused on collecting the Statue of Liberty on stamps. I enjoyed presenting, but there was a bittersweet aspect to it when I dug out my collection and found some notes that my dad had written to me about some of the stamps.

The notes from Dad were poignant as we also saw the two year anniversary of his sudden passing. It was also the one year anniversary of my friend Ben's death, who died a year to the day after Dad. (This photo of me and Ben was taken on Shrewsbury Town's first trip to Wembley in 2018 - a very wet day and a defeat in the Associate Members Cup final.)

On the one year anniversary of Ben's death a lovely online memorial service was held. We were sent an order of service beforehand and it included a fragment of poetry that Ben really loved. It feels like a fitting way to end this monthly report.

Review of 2020 - 5 positive things

As it's New Year's Eve, I thought I would close out 2020 with a blog post. While it's a hard year to review, for fairly obvious reasons, here are 5 things that made my year a bit special. 

1) February's Five Football Saturdays

It feels like a long time ago since I was freely able to go to football matches. Although the pandemic derailed my matchgoing last season, and has meant I haven't been to any games this season yet, I still feel pleased about getting to a game on all five Saturdays in February. This can only be done in a leap year, and only when the 1st and 29th of February are Saturdays. 

I blogged about the games I went to here

2) Achieving a collecting target

On 9 May I started a blog about baseball cards featuring the Padres greatest ever player, Tony Gwynn. I set myself a target of collecting 394 cards featuring him - in honour of his batting average in 1994, when he recorded a modern day record of .394. On 7 October I completed that mission. I've actually exceeded my target by some way and have now blogged well over 500 different cards.

3) A surprise knock at the door

Quite unexpectedly my former colleague Sean, who now works for Diabetes UK Cymru, knocked on my door and presented me with a Diabetes UK Cymru Director Award for Campaigning and Influencing Change. It was both unanticipated and humbling to receive that recognition and in the middle of a tough week, work-wise, it was a timely encouragement. 

Sean also took a photo of me and stuck it on Twitter. I'm holding up a planter that came with the certificate. In hindsight I could have posed a bit more elegantly. At least Sean timed his call when I'd just had a haircut and wasn't sporting Lockdown Hair!

At the end of October many of my NHS Wales colleagues were successful at the Quality in Care Diabetes Awards. There's a full write up here. One of the projects I've been involved in was shortlisted. It's a picture book about a dinosaur who has diabetes and the two girls who wrote it were also given special awards - which I was really happy about.

4) Dwi'n wedi dysgu Gymraeg 

I started learning Welsh in September 2019. In January this year I sat an exam and passed my Lefel Mynediad (Entry Level). I then went on and completed the Sylfaen (Foundation) course, most of which had to be taught on Zoom. I didn't find the remote learning as good as the classroom experience. 

I didn't enter for the Sylfaen exam because it would have been on a date I was supposed to be at Hampden park for a Euro 2020 game. That game didn't happen... and neither did the exam!

I have really enjoyed learning Welsh. It's a challenge because languages were never my strong point, but I am able to write the occasional email in Welsh now, and have some very basic conversations. I can also understand a bit of the commentary on Sgorio when watching the highlights of the Cymru Premier games, although I have a bit of a way to go before I'm able to follow it properly. 

5) An unusual Christmas

I blogged a couple of months back about "Lockdown freedoms", which were some of the good things about this horrible year. I worked from home from the middle of March. Although I miss my office colleagues and seeing people face-to-face, it does mean I have had lunch with Cathy nearly every day.

Another bonus for us was planning to have Christmas at home. In the 22 years we've been married, we had only spent two Christmases at home. Once we had a last minute change of plan when I was really poorly with a terrible bout of 'flu. And two years ago we had Christmas at home with my sister-in-law as Cathy recovered from surgery.

We decided a few months back that the most sensible course of action that was least likely to be derailed by events, was for Cathy and me to plan to have Christmas on our own at home - for the very first time. As it turned out, this plan worked out best for everyone. My brother's family expanded with two new children in November, so they needed some space. My foster-sister was given an appointment for dental extractions two days before Christmas and needed my Mum to go and stay with her to help with childcare. (They travelled up on the day the Tier 4 restrictions came in and Scotland closed its borders about an hour after Mum arrived in Edinburgh!)

So Cathy and I had our Christmas together, just us. And you know what? It was lovely. We had a leisurely time opening presents. I made a roast dinner. We went out for a little walk in the afternoon. We watched the new Pixar film, Soul, on Disney Plus in the evening. And it was just really nice and relaxing. 

So, looking back on the year, there have been some good times and I've managed to achieve a few things despite the best efforts of a nasty virus. Even the small wins are wins. 

Meanwhile, to kick off 2021, I'm planning on doing my Annual Christmas Card Audit for the 9th consecutive year! So keep an eye out for that...

Lockdown freedoms ( a "Fire Break" post)

Wales is back in lockdown, although this time it's got an end date specified from the outset. The Welsh Government has branded it a "Fire Break". We are all supposed to stay indoors and not see people.

I know people who have really struggled with all the restrictions placed on us during the pandemic. I've talked to friends who were desperate to go to a pub as soon as pubs reopened, and who were equally desperate for their children to go back to school. It was hard on people to have their children at home all day, seven days a week. 

On the plus side, I've not had to deal with any of the veiled pity normally measured out on child-free people like me. But then I've not really had to deal with people generally. 

As someone with a lot more introverted characteristics than are obviously apparent, I don't mind not seeing people. In fact, the summer just gone was one of the few summers where I have felt free to sit indoors on gloriously sunny days and not feel like I was somehow wasting the good weather by not being out in it. I'm an indoor person, quite happy working in a bunker with no windows.

I've also been free of the pressure to socialise. I can be sociable. I like people and I like meeting up with them. But I find big groups harder to deal with. It takes energy. Some people get energised by walking into a room full of people and talking to everyone. I'm the reverse. That's not how I recharge after a hard week. The lockdown removed some of that pressure to be outgoing and expend energy on group situations. 

I have enjoyed having more free time with less guilt that I'm not out doing stuff. My lockdown project - to blog about 394 baseball cards featuring Tony Gwynn - has exceeded expectations. I met my target after 152 daily blog posts, and am continuing both to blog and to accumulate more cards. I have also heavily modified a Lego set (actually combining two Lego sets) to build a big station building for my Lego train. 

I haven't written a draft of a novel or a screenplay, or anything, but my creative output has been higher than for a good number of years. I've felt like I've had permission to stay inside and do things I enjoy.

However, there has been a trade off. I wrote back in May about the fractional losses from the pandemic. We have experienced a few more of those recently. 

Some friends had twins a couple of weeks ago and we have admired their cute little faces through a window. We have no timeline in place for actually holding them. One of our best friends is turning 40 during the fire break and we are not allowed to party with her. Similarly, our godson is hitting double digits and Cathy's Grampy is having a birthday too. The football season has kicked off but the teams I support are playing behind closed doors. My work colleagues had some fabulous success in some industry awards last week, and we all had to watch in our own living rooms instead of clinking beers together at a fancy soiree.

Overall, I would trade the small freedoms I've found in lockdown for being free of the threat of Coronavirus. While I have enjoyed having time to myself, I would like that to be something I choose rather than imposed by a viral threat. I really hope this fire break works.