A Personal Reflection

It was winter 2019 and news travelled of a mysterious virus taking hold in Wuhan, China. When any disaster strikes you watch with intrigue and empathy yet seem far removed geographically.  You just get on with your normal day to day activities.  But this news story didn’t go away, and we were hearing  new ingredients  added to the news reporter’s narrative each day. My response to this remained solely focussed on the office, preparing our people for the possibility of home working, continuity planning and sourcing additional hygiene products – placing tissues, antiseptic wipes and anti-bac about the office. Despite the news changing each day and the vicious spread of the virus to northern Italy, I still decided fly to Les Arc in France for the annual girls’ ski trip which was part of my planned year-long 50^th birthday celebrations. My primary focus being my return back to the slopes after recovering from the previous year’s ski accident and the fitting of my new knee brace. Little did we know that the World Health Organisation (WHO) were about to announce a global pandemic and we would enter into lock down during the visit; it was the 13^th March. 

The laughter and frivolity of the out-going flight had quickly disappeared making way for a sombre realisation that perhaps we should not have travelled in the first place. Had our naivety not only put our own lives at risk but also that of the many other people around us? But how were we to know?  None of us, as well as billions of people across the globe, had any experience of living through a pandemic. Contagion was what you saw in films or read about in history books but now it was actually happening.  I returned home safely and took the decision of self-isolate and keep myself at a distance from the family, choosing to sleep in a separate room and offering no return home cuddles for at least a week. My youngest daughter would stand at my door to say goodnight desperate for the usual hug coupled with ‘l love you’ and whilst I longed to wrap my arms around her it concerned me that I could have potentially caught the virus. I found it hard to distinguish whether I felt dreadful after four days of the normal ski trip drinking and sleep deprivation or I had contracted the virus from the many crowded ski lifts and bars, at the airport or on the aeroplane.  I was even more relieved that the business founders at my workplace had decided to send all staff to work from home and I was proud that we could take advantage of our digital business status with a ‘plug and play’ set up providing an easier transition to remote working than many other businesses. My thoughts each day were with the founders and staff, having to adapt and change course quickly to help stabilise the business. A pandemic is something you hadn’t planned for, causing chaos and confusion in its wake. 

Our days became punctuated by the daily government briefings as the virus took hold and more countries locked down. The streets and roads emptied, everything was closed, leaving an eerie silence and a feeling that we were in some military coup where everyone was curfewed. On Thursday evenings we would bang our pots and pans to honour those key workers who were putting their lives at risk and a joyous undertone that finally everyone, [of all political persuasions,] perhaps now understood why the NHS was so valuable and vital. The pandemic categorically brought home the certainty and importance of our healthcare system. The new word on the block was ‘furlough’ and within days of the regular government business rescue initiatives, it had become ubiquitous. It was only a matter of time before I would find myself on the furlough list; putting the founder’s salary aside I was the highest paid member of the team and as managing director I found myself lost with no office to run, excluded from the contingency talks along with the many day-to-day senior management team decisions. When the day came to be on the furlough short list, I graciously accepted the reality never doubting their decision. If I had been in their shoes, I would have done the same thing to reduce overheads and to help the business to survive. What I hadn’t prepared for was the ‘furlough side effects’ hoping that the official cold generic letter might have been accompanied with a set of health warnings: ‘you may experience feelings of: ‘why me?’ ‘did I do something wrong?’ ‘what if I had only done x and instead done Y?’ loneliness, isolation and so on. I had gone from being the managing director of a fast-paced digital agency to ‘Mrs. Nobody’  over-night finding myself on five months’ furlough and eventually redundancy. I never to this day have lost the side effects, there are not as acute now but from time to time I will still have a restless night overthinking what I could have done better. Work has been a large part of my life and I was always hugely validated by it. I didn’t prepare myself for this total crisis of confidence. The other major side effect was having too much time to overthink which also spilled over into my friendships and family life. There was also the overwhelming fear of spending so much time with my husband, who would normally share most of the week divided between home and London. I remember one Sunday night early on in lock down despairing and worrying whether we would make it through. ‘Mrs. Social’ who constantly and consistently over committed herself would now be confined to the house without the escape route to the many weekends in the Lake District and social gatherings.  I now look back with a smile – of course we made it through, and our marriage is even stronger than ever; so how did that happen?

Don’t get me wrong there was also the unedited version of what I term ‘the Covid Years’ as we began to live our lives through a self-censored lens either looking like mother earth or sending signals of virtue. I took to this new-found time like a duck to water and started planning how to have fun in different ways. I felt incredibly lucky to be in the vessel I found myself in, sitting in a position of privilege with a house facing the sea, most of the family at home, surrounded by space and fresh air and sun. Nick had also become incredibly busy with his work, ironically as I took my foot off the gas, he was full force back on the accelerator and remains so be nearly 12 months on. My plan was to first and foremost focus on the family and their wellbeing led initially by the introduction of the family rota that included a schedule for cooking and cleaning with lunch prepared for 1pm and dinner at 7pm. These timings became ritual creating a convivial setting and a moment to check-in with one another at least twice a day. We decided that one skill the kids could all benefit from was the ability to cook, a key life skill that would bring real rewards. We were lucky that we had managed to avoid home schooling but didn’t escape the uncertainty that prevailed with the impending exam or no exam GCSE and A level process and a disappointment of being robbed of the normal end of year rituals that years 11 and 13 would normally bring. We exercised, played board games and cards, swapped jigsaws with friends, walked, chatted, did the obligatory zoom quizzes, cook-offs and drinks nights. We became about living for the day, planning ahead was so 2019. Living for the moment was where it was at. We did everything to spin the positivity but there was a constant distraction with the pandemic throughout these times and often we would find ourselves tired holding a heavy head trying to balance our brains as we rationalised the reality yet longing for a normal life to return. It was still early days and we were only at the beginning of a very long journey. At this stage we didn’t fully understand how long that journey would be for this unique set of experiences that had no pre-determined roadmap to follow. 

After a while the government briefings faded, we definitely suffered from message and warning fatigue, the case numbers were decreasing nationally, the weather was amazing and we had time and plenty of it on our hands. We continued to stay safe, wash hands, give space and cover our faces already embedded in our daily habits. We continued to eat and hang out together even if we did feel like we were driving each other a little bonkers at times. New skills included paddle-boarding and wild swimming, leaving government bulletins to be replaced by monitoring the daily low and high tides, sea swell and wave size. We watched the sunrise and the sunset, drank stubby’s on the rocks many an evening and even though we were still living through a restricted lens our sentiment had turned to the many different range of feelings associated with feeling bloody lucky. 

My self-help group residing with a core set of friends who share a common discourse, values and politic persuasion. Our favourite terms residing in ‘#shitshow’ and ‘FFS’.  The group became the place where unedited thoughts and rants could be vented without judgement, a safe place to get a daily fix of sanity, giving permission to miss your old life. There was almost an exhaustion trying to be so positive at all times it often left us drained. This group allowed you to sit in a bus shelter with a can of gin and tonic and say ‘it’s a shitshow isn’t it?’ and then ten minutes later after watching the sunset admit it wasn’t that bad after all. Before we knew it Christmas suddenly came and went forcing us back into stricter lock down measures but with the deep dark winter as its backdrop and not the light and long days we had so enjoyed in the summer. It is now 2021, the numbers of cases and deaths are escalating exponentially and nearly 100,000 people have died of the virus. A new variant of the virus makes its way at a phenomenal speed through communities now taking younger, healthier people in its clutches. The difference now being that you know people who have had it, got it and perhaps not recovered from it. The not knowing how your body would react to this virus fills me with fear despite being a fit and healthy 51-year-old.

The New Year brings daily news of the vaccine roll out programme, giving hope and a return to believing normality would perhaps return by the summer picturing oneself traveling to a European city break or a sunny beach destination. It is now January 17^th; the government announces the vaccine programme will not complete till at least September. There reality kicks in that we will almost certainly live a restrictive life in a tiered society till then. My reaction to this being to simply lower my expectations and just be glad that by summer you might be able to sit in a café with your mate. 

 A new distraction manifests itself across the pond, the insurgent attack on Capitol Hill, violating democracy and signalling a rise of the extreme Right who bathe in paranoia and conspiracy theories causing a potentially unrepairable divide in American society.  Despite the US 2019 election opting for change a tension prevails the impending inauguration that will leave the Democrats and its leader with an insurmountable number of problems to fix not discounting its main priority getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control. 

As deaths in the UK nudge near 100,000 I questioned what has happened in the government’s narrative from first lock down that has prevented them from mitigating such consequences? I liken it to the workplace when we don’t act on the evidence presented to us, don’t react to changes quickly enough, make the rules ambiguous and confusing. Clear communication is always where it is at, tiers cause confusion, lock down means lock down. 

As we turn our attention to the business community, we see a whole cycle of growth in sports and leisure, technology, social media, online dating and electric vehicles. Who would have thought that Moonpig, an online personalised greeting card company, could potentially float with an estimated valuation of £1billion? The founding fathers of retail are crumbling as we watch heritage brands such as M&S fall victim to the pandemic reporting a 24% loss in its 3^rd quarter. But what about the smaller businesses who were encouraged to open to ‘help out to eat out’ only last August then told to close weeks later with stock wasting in the fridges and no guarantee of a re-opening date. 

Despite the backdrop we continue to play Zoom bingo, exercise online and sea swim. We find time in the diary to link up with other couples online for scotch egg making and we search for new ways to interact, feel part of something, and be close to people even if it is behind a screen. The whole house has been decluttered and my personal paperwork filed so well I simply cannot find anything. My outfit du jour remains slightly more relaxed and at best I upgrade to a pair of jeans and a darker lipstick. The home edit of my wardrobe continues – only keeping things that are sentimental, are useful and I still like. All of a sudden people are favouring suburbia to city life making Whitley Bay, the once run-down seaside town, a desirable place to live. I ask myself often how coronavirus might change the way we live our lives and for one thing we will be much more hygienic and I am personally comforted that men will now be washing their hands after using the bathroom. The revival of the QR code and the track and trace app provide me with the reassurance that I can be reminded of where I have been as I move into the menopausal fog. 

Yet this lockdown takes place mid-winter in one of the darkest months of the year and the impending hope feels so far away. Nothing happens but yet everything around us is happening and changing. We remain in this lockdown together, but I fear the world is moving back to the ‘I’ after giving us a glimpse of what the common good must of felt like in the days after World War II ended with a chance to remake society in a better way. We are all at risk but some significantly more than others given their work, age, ethnicity  and health. We need to remain respectful and never lose sight of the things we can do to look after ourselves and each other.. Are we the ones who can drive change or will those in power bring back the behaviours that we are so accustomed to, steering our moral compass away from doing the right thing? The one good thing to come out of this for the working population, especially women, is the final realisation that we can work remotely, with flexibility, and are able to still carry out our jobs effectively. Fingers crossed we don’t have to remain pinned to the  9 to 5  institutionalised by an office environment. 

Conversably Nick and I have come out of this stronger, our relationship intact and developing a mutual respect. We now celebrate our differences as a mechanism for intrigue where I no longer view his passion for books as his ‘mistress’ realising that I too had a little affair going on my own study. My books might not be Keats or Shelley, but they do represent learning and as my  son said, “only those with intelligence, question their own intelligence”. Thanks Chris, I will treasure those words forever. We didn’t need therapy after all just one simple ingredient, time and also learning how best to get the odd jobs done. Just book them in, using a list that only contains the three priority ones for that week, providing a full five days for him to process before actioning. Why had I never thought of that before?

My own paranoia seems to have disappeared as it is replaced with a daily barometer check measuring the family’s happiness and whilst I still feel displaced in some way this provides me with the exact dose of validation that I need which leads me to think that perhaps it hasn’t been too much of a #shitshow after all.