How to help your kids get cash savvy

Fiance’s being really nasty about my family

“PUT £1 in the jar if you mention coronavirus”. This was the cheeky sign above a clear glass jar in the last pub I was properly in before the world changed.

It was this week last March, I remember it well because it was fellow columnist Gillian’s birthday.

A few friends gathered together to celebrate right before we knew just how serious Covid would get.

At the time, the jar was witty, a sign that we all had to stop banging on about it – be it to our mates round the table or to the bar staff serving us drinks.

We hugged, we laughed and we chatted about plans for the year ahead as you do with friends. “Let’s go here in a few weeks, have you tried that new place for dinner?” was heard among us.

Round the table we all enjoyed the merriment of being out in Glasgow. There was the odd joke about hand sanitiser and a few did have to add a £1 to the jar behind the bar. But everyone just wanted to have a good time, and not worry about the new Big C in our lives.

Yet here we are 12 months on and it’s literally all anyone talks about. Ever.

Yes, you try to discuss other topics but conversation always comes back round to the pandemic. It’s never-ending.

Even when I sit down to write this column I try to think of other things to talk about but it’s difficult when life is just a cycle of sleep, work, walk, repeat.

On one hand it feels like the slowest year of my life, filled with worry and stress. And on the other I can’t believe it’s March again.

If me in the pub with my friends knew what was ahead I’d have stayed for “just one more drink” or had “one for the road” back at my mate’s while waiting on a taxi.

I’d have put another few songs on the jukebox and danced a little longer. Hindsight is a great thing.

I do long for a time when we can return to a crowded pub, music on and full of atmosphere. A time when I can have drinks with friends or dinner out with loved ones and not fear.

A time when we can take off our masks and smile at people we pass in the supermarket. Hopefully it’s not too long a wait.

Gillian and I plan to visit that very pub when we can, I guess to book end the shared Covid experience, and raise a glass to celebrate all the milestones we’ve missed in our lives since being separated.

I do hope however that the jar remains as a reminder of what we overcame, but that we never have to put any cash near it ever again.