I wrote in my diary every day for the last year and reading back over the pandemic is emotional

From standard.co.uk

By Katie Strick

Can you remember what you were doing on March 23 2020? The joy of journalling is looking back on the smaller, less historic moments, too, says Katie Strick

What were you doing on March 23 2020? If you’d have asked me before I’d read my diary I’d have assumed it was a day of nervous WhatsApping ahead of Boris’ big announcement. But according to my scribbled entry from the day we went into lockdown, there are a few things I’d forgotten.

Like every millennial adjusting to life on screen, I’d just discovered the joys of Houseparty (so had mummastrick473, much to my horror) and lolled with my housemates about the strangeness of my GP giving me an elbow bump. On a post-Joe Wicks high, I’d also drafted an article that feels tragically fitting: the joy of keeping a diary to document this historic “few weeks”. Remember when it was only supposed to be a three-week circuit-breaker?

52 weeks later and the fact that I optimistically started each diary entry with “WFH Day x” tells you all we need to know about the strange bubble of naivety most of us found ourselves in this time last year (more on bubbles later).

We’ve all reminisced about those little-did-we-know moments since then - that last day in the office, that last meal out with friends - but the joy of keeping a diary is that I can look back on the smaller, less historic moments, too.

 

                                   Katie Strick

Like any year, there have been some diary entries that make me smile to look back on, and certainly some that don’t. I like how we spent those first weeks calling it coronavirus, not Covid. I like that we once had to explain the significance of Joe Wicks to readers, before he became a verb. I like that my friends and I raved non-sarcastically about Zoom quizzes and spent hours on compilation videos for the unlucky (lucky?) few to have birthdays early-on.

Even the bits I’d rather not remember are still worth remembering. I’d forgotten about the old man who welled up next to me in an empty veg aisle in Sainsbury’s, but my diary brought me right back to the sadness of that moment. I’d had to hold it together while I comforted him, but beneath my mask (apparently masks were still a bone of contention back then) I was just as frightened as he was to see that the stockpiling headlines weren’t just fear-mongering.

Other memories came flooding back too. I’d forgotten the difference it made when neighbours I’d never met dropped notes through the door in those first few days. I’d forgotten about the magic of joining a virtual choir and the shameless comfort of singing to a screen alone in my living room. I’d forgotten quite how moved we all felt the first time we stood on our doorsteps banging pots and pans. That evening, I’d leaned out of my top-floor window thinking I’d be the only one clapping. Moments later I had my first wave of Clap for Carers FOMO as the real party raged on below me at street-level - it’s a shame that wartime-like spirit tailed off as the months went on.  

With the benefit of hindsight, I’d even forgotten how real that fear was when the Prime Minister, my parents’ age, joined the thousands of patients fighting for their life in intensive care.

“Think I preferred it when Sunday night dramas weren’t immersive,” I tweeted a month later as post-Covid Boris addressed the country at the height of the first lockdown. The Stay Alert and work-from-home-don’t-work-from-home orders made for a thousand amusing memes, but beneath all the Live Laugh Love posters, “support bubble?” WhatsApps and Bernard Castle quips, most of us were anxious, confused, and still more than a little bit scared. We’re used to the news impacting our everyday actions now, but it’s easy to forget how the feeling was new to us back then. 

A discussion around the dinner table recently saw my family reminisce about the little things we missed from life pre-lockdown. Hugs were up there, obviously, as were spontaneous dinners out, sipping a friend’s drink before deciding what to order, and weekends flitting between London and our parents’ house without the need to pack our bags for four-month stints in our childhood bedrooms. These moments have always brought us joy but if it hadn’t been for 2020, would we have ever stopped to recognise the freedom in them?

I’ll continue to miss all of the above (did I mention hugs?) but I hope that in years to come my diary will be a reminder of the highs and lows of lockdown, too. The joy of a hot bath. That knowing smile you exchange with a stranger on a lunchtime walk. The week-defining intensity of Normal People, I May Destroy You and Quiz (you’d forgotten about that one, hadn’t you?).

As the world prepares to reopen, slowly, it’ll be those little things I’ll be holding onto - and logging in my diary to reel off in March 2022. After all, if the last year has taught us anything it’s that sometimes, those little things are the biggest things of all.

https://www.standard.co.uk/escapist/one-year-pandemic-lockdown-coronavirus-memories-b925588.html