THE COVID MONTHS | THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS

RED KITE Photograph by Simon Zippi

Christine looks back over the last year.

To prepare for the March Team Meeting I did what I always do and opened up last year’s agenda to cut and paste into. And there it was, the skeleton of our last face to face time together. All it took was to open up an old word document and like a swimmer caught in a cross current I started to sink under the waves of shock, sadness and disbelief. Was it really a whole year since we had been together? It felt both longer and shorter all at the same time. Images of our last time together flashed in front of me. The horrible, dark, windowless room in the Holiday Inn that we were trying out to see if it worked better for our now large team. (It definitely didn’t.) Some people sat as far as possible from others because we had all just heard that things were now so bad that there was probably going to be something called a ‘Lockdown’ very, very soon. Some of the team were visibly upset whilst others were quieter than normal and seemed lost inside their own worlds. High voltage currents of tension zigzagged backwards and forwards round our circle. I felt I was trying to do the impossible, to run a meeting that had really important points we needed to discuss and simultaneously try my best not to seem completely oblivious to the herd of elephants stampeding around the room charging at us and screaming ‘ COVID-19’.  The stampeding elephants won when a message came to say that one of the students on that night’s evening course might be nursing covid symptoms and so couldn’t come in. It stopped us all in our tracks. I wanted to shout at fate and tell her that she had got her timing completely wrong. Didn’t she remember? Our Zoom induction training was in the afternoon and this was still well before twelve, her news had come too soon, far too soon. The tension in our group ratcheted up a notch, the elephants had us now and we were helpless. Then Marjorie (the tutor for that evening) and Sarah T announced that they were going off to sort out Zoom for the night’s class, Sarah already knew a lot about it and she would help Marjorie get set up with the students. Yes! 15 All.  Northern Guild was fighting back against the Elephants. Sarah and Marjorie strode from the room to attend to their mission, our Titans whose knowledge and power would steer us through this first turn of the new and very bumpy road ahead. I don’t remember if we actually clapped them but in my head that is how I recall it. If I had known how soon hugging was to become banned I would have leapt out of my chair and given them both a huge hug.

Zoom has become a fact of our lives. Now when we ‘zoom’ it means we log on to a video platform where we can both see one another and talk together. It no longer means what it once did - to enlarge something. Or rather we have forgotten that is how we used to use the word. Nowadays Zoom is a proper noun with its own popular verb. A reminder of the organic and evolving nature of language. This time last year students were writing in to share how distressed they felt about the hatchet job Zoom had done. On the one hand people were generally appreciative of all that had been done to make it possible for their training to continue (many other organisations actually paused their trainings for many many months) but they felt keenly the loss of being together. We had requests to reschedule workshops to September when it was felt things would likely be back to normal and we could all be together again with in-person teaching. So we rescheduled hoping it would be true. But many of us on the team felt it was probably unlikely. We were uncomfortable saying it to each other so we tended to come at it obliquely. Another elephant to try and ignore. But as we now know all too well, Autumn saw things start to get worse again. How did that happen? In July things had seemed so much better. We had had our very own Independence Day on 4 July 2020. It was intoxicating. We Ate Out To  Help Out, neglected hairstyles were spruced up and we jetted off to warmer shores in search of the healing summer sun. But slowly with the return of autumn we realised we were paying an unimaginable price for those heady summer months.  Hopes of a return to normal life faded with the summer’s warmth and we steeled ourselves for more social distance. Northern Guild made history by starting all teaching on line in Autumn 2020. There was a resigned acceptance amongst both tutors and students that there was no point making a fuss because it was the best we could hope for. Zoom was beginning to feel  more user friendly and less intimidating and we all got on with making the best of things. Technical glitches happened less frequently, Zoom had upped its game and so had we. Now when something went wrong we knew what to do and had good contingency plans. My brother told me about a tricky moment he had had with whiteboard. He volunteers to help train motor bike riders, and during a session on the highway code an abundance of Free Child expression from the participants exploded to the screen in glorious Anglo Saxon expletives. His story made me laugh. At least this was one piece of disinhibition we were unlikely to encounter in the digital zones of Northern Guild. But, oh, what fun it would have been to see someone else deal with it!

September brought two unexpected personal losses. First Jennie’s much loved oldest sister Kath who had been like a second mother to her. We found out first hand what it is to lose someone in Covid times when Kath became unwell. There was no possibility of visiting her. As her condition deteriorated, we got more and more frantic about seeing her. But the Covid straightjacket didn’t budge an inch and her last breath was in hospital with only the comfort of strangers. We were miles away in another town. An inner primal scream took hold raging in every fibre against the craziness of rules that kept families apart and smashed the bonds of connectedness with a ruthless cold, clinical detachment.

Kath had been a true matriarch full of life and energy. When Jennie and I became a couple she was horrified. She made her disapproval palpable. It mainly took the form of an icy coldness towards me at the annual family events which I attended reluctantly. Eventually, it culminated on the day of Jennie’s mother’s funeral, in a nuclear battle of words between Kath and Jennie by the black car that was to take the family to the crematorium.  The row centred on whether or not I was entitled to ride with the family in the big black car. I tried to speak up for taking my own car (I longed to) but nobody heard me. The battle raged in the hitherto quiet suburban cul-de-sac, voices at screaming point, neighbours’ curtains twitching and Jennie’s mother waiting patiently in her own car for her final journey.  In the end, backed by her other sister, Judith, Jennie won and I climbed in. Seven minutes later we drew up at the crematorium. It was the longest car journey of my life.

In time Kath overcame her initial hostility and I could only feel huge admiration and respect for someone who had shown such willingness to overcome her old values and doubts and embrace change in all its prickly discomfort. We all had some wonderful times together culminating a couple of years ago in a cruise to the Baltic. Kath relished every minute and was up for anything including a fair amount of flirting. Her holiday tipple was a late night whisky and lemonade which she took to her cabin. For some reason she decided it was my job to order it and bring it down each night. More than once I was dispatched back to the bar to return the said drink as having been mixed in the wrong proportions. I took comfort in the five hundred or so extra steps these forays racked up on my device, opting for virtue over irritation.

Then my precious little Maisie died unexpectedly (The Covid Months | Paw Prints 19 October 2020). Life felt bleak. The next few months passed in a bit of a blur. The dark nights brought with them another layer of constriction and confinement. And then Christmas was on the horizon twinkling and glittering with yet more promises of a return to normality. I didn’t buy it. It sounded like more crackpot hyperbole and downright stupidity. I took to following a few people I thought talked scientific and medical sense Devi Sridar, Neil Ferguson and Richard Cree (There Are No More Surgeons www.nomoresurgeons.com) amongst them. I thought there was no option but to wait for Spring and hope for vaccines.

Healthy Meal Kits hit our kitchen at the start of 2021. The lead up was exciting. Choosing from all those mouth-watering descriptions with their accompanying photographs was fun. Almost like going to a restaurant only better because you were heroically putting in the effort yourself and eating food that was healthy to boot. Could it get any better? It turned out that it could. The instructions were convoluted and took real concentration. We tend to eat supper about eight as part of winding down and coming together. I like a bit of culinary prep. – steaming some veg, cooking fish or chicken en papillote – but meal kits were a whole different ball park. I shouted at the instruction booklet so much that Jennie pleaded to take over. One meal came topped with an egg. A single egg in its own blue, gift box carton was part of the kit. I mindfully opened it declaiming to Bertie (Scottish Terrier) who is a bit deaf and doesn’t really care what I say, that this was probably the future of egg merchandising to come. We could expect to say goodbye to half a dozen eggs in a box and hello to single eggs in their own carton at hugely inflated prices. Opening the box and consciously, attentively and thoughtfully taking out the egg was the only piece of instruction I was ever able to follow from beginning to end.

On the 16th February 2021 I got the first stamp on my Get-Out-Of-Jail Card with Pfizer EN1185, followed eight and half weeks later by my second stamp. I’ve had many injections in my life. Generally, I’ve thought of them as something to be done and occasionally I’ve felt a bit of dread about the side effects of things like Yellow Fever which always makes me feel grotty. But never have I counted the days and weeks to an appointment, longed to be asked to go along before the appointed time or felt like hugging the nurse who gave me the jab. Driving back home from my local Primary Care Hospital I was full of tears. Relief, hope, happiness and gratitude flooded my soul. In the weeks that followed I began to dare to re-imagine life in the ways that I had known it and to take small steps back into the world I love and have missed.

And so here we are, about to engage in re-entry. Our journey in space is slowly coming to an end. There have been 569 astronauts from 41 countries who have gone into space so far. 12 have walked on the moon and only 18 have lost their lives. Covid has been much less kind and much more lethal.  Re-entry from space into earth’s orbit and then touchdown are some of the trickiest moments. We need to stand together and keep supporting each other through this next phase just as we have through the whole journey. We need to show understanding, feel respected and held with care, love and warmth as we meet again.

BERTIE