Alas, poor lockdown, we knew thee so well

THAT was it. That was the last one. We’re out now and we’re never going back. It won’t be the same as before, not yet, but the restrictions we’ve endured for much of the last year can now be consigned to history. Yes, there’ll still be worrying moments, daily spikes, queue hopping, quarantine confusion, and economic uncertainty, but this is the end game.

They won’t lock us up again, they can’t, and if they do we’ll just emigrate; pay the fines, get on the planes, and leave them to it.

Yet already, having only just sampled freedom, I can feel a bit of lockdown nostalgia stirring in my chest.

It wasn’t that bad, was it? There were some good times, some memories worth cherishing, a few highlights amid the unrelenting misery and despair. And so, in what may turn out to be the most ill-advised of retrospectives, here are the things I’ll miss most about lockdown.

Late to bed, late to rise.

Whenever I read about high-powered go-getters who exist on four hours sleep a night, I wonder how far along the evolutionary chain I really am. Because I’m the opposite of those people, a low-powered don’t-getter who struggles if he doesn’t get nine hours in a vegetative state every night.

Previously this meant going to bed after Home and Away, eating my breakfast and brushing my teeth at the same time, and still arriving to work ten minutes late.

But lockdown changed all that. Work starts at 9.30 a.m. so I set the alarm for 9.29 a.m., still managing to be ten minutes late. Furthermore, it meant I could stay up past the watershed, late enough to see Prime Time (yeah right, I was watching The Queen’s Gambit like everyone else). It meant every day could be a duvet day.

As a result I began to look like a hobo surfer dude, a paunchy vagrant who kids threw stones at. But that was okay because...

You didn’t have to go anywhere.

I know, it was terrible, staying indoors all the time, having nothing to do, nowhere to go. So boring, so upsetting. But it was also brilliant. There was something delicious about knowing you never had to go anywhere again. It was the dream scenario us lazy introverts had been fantasising about for years. And it came true.

No nights out, no weekends away, no visits, no visitors, just you, yourself and the couch. Utter bliss. No more dressing-up, trying to look nice, tucking your shirt in or wearing uncomfortable shoes. Just let it all hang out. No-one cares, it’s a pandemic.

The absence of guilt.

Ordinarily you can only over-indulge at certain times of the year: ‘Go on, it’s Christmas.’ ‘Drink up, it’s your birthday.’ ‘Buy a new car, she’s not coming back.’ And so on.

But lockdown gave us a permanent excuse to treat ourselves; the phrase ‘sure it’s a pandemic’ acting as a get out clause whenever we fancied a bottle of wine, a kilo of chocolate, buying clothes we’ll never wear, a hissy fit, daytime sex, anything at all.

And now that it’s over, and we’ve all got loads of money (allegedly), we’re going to have to reward ourselves for getting through it. I’ve always fancied a speedboat.

Restoring the natural order.

In recent years we’ve forgotten what it is to be Irish, become obsessed with careers and education, bettering ourselves, living our best lives. We became busy, efficient, driven, and it didn’t suit us at all.

But it was nothing that a good lockdown couldn’t cure. A few months contemplating the future of humanity was just what we needed. We forgot about that promotion, that Masters degree, the desire to outdo our frenemies, and took a moment to breathe.

We talked to our mammies, listened to the birds, admired the lovely green landscape, and saluted our neighbours. It was wholesome, the wildlife chirped its gratitude and we all felt great.

That’s all over now though. In the coming weeks we’ll return to ignoring our mammies, shouting at traffic and sneering at our neighbours. We’ll have lovely hair, lovely clothes and trim waistlines, but will feel guilty all the time for no apparent reason.

We’ll be exhausted from having to go places and do things, and will hanker for just one day in lockdown, just one precious day. But that’s all gone now. They’ve let us out and we can’t go back.