Zooming back to our happy days of childhood

Anton Rippon says those who have kept the country running during the pandemic deserve a medal

ANOTHER week in lockdown. As usual, nothing much has happened over and above routine visits from the supermarket delivery driver, refuse collectors, postman, and various couriers, all of whom we rightly value so much more these days.

When it is all over, the Government could do worse than strike a campaign medal for all these workers who kept the country running while the unessential remainder of us sat it out at home. It’s not much to ask: stay indoors and let others look after your needs. Such a pity that not everyone can manage it.

In the meantime, we keep hearing about the variants of Covid-19 – Brazilian and South African, and, much more worryingly, closer to home the Kentish strain and the Bristolian version. By the time that this column appears, there may well be more.

It is so unfair on the locals of these places that their hometowns may become synonymous with the pandemic, just as the Germans still get blamed for German measles, even though it was simply a mid18th century chemist and physician from Halle, Friedrich Hoffman, who made the first clinical description of the illness that isn’t measles anyway (isn’t Google wonderful?).

The other day with a few mates – on Zoom, of course – I was exchanging memories of growing up in the immediate post-war years, and, of course, we all like to say how tough it was, and that today’s youngsters don’t know they’re born. The fact is that you can lead only the life that you’re handed. It’s not the fault of today’s younger generation that they never knew cold lino.

I spent most of 1949 with either measles, mumps or chicken pox. I was in my first year at infant school when Gran Rowley held me down while Mum applied a red-hot kaolin poultice to “draw” a boil from my armpit. Childline didn’t exist then, but if it had I would have probably tried to call it, although we didn’t have a phone at home, and I was too small to reach the one in the call box in Alma Street, so maybe not.

Happy days, though. Those summer holidays where we went off to Darley Park “tadpoling”, each with a packet of sandwiches, and a communal bottle of water. By the time I got to it, the water was warm and full of breadcrumbs, but at least I was ahead of the kid with purple ointment on his scabby lips.

The discussion moved on to the least discrete person we had ever known. I nominated the Derbyshire Football Association official – long since dead – who would repeat the most outrageous gossip about someone, adding: “I can’t tell you his name. But he lives at Horsley Woodhouse, has red hair, and rides a zebra.” Well, not quite that, but you’ll get the idea.

All these little distractions are valuable in times of lockdown. Laughter may not literally be the best medicine, but it sure helps to make you feel better when you’re down. As my favourite comedian, Al Reid, used to sing in his signature tune: “When Mr Gloom comes round, don’t let him in.”

Keep talking, call friends, especially the ones who might be on their own. Emails are fine, but rarely do they make your ribs ache with laughter in the way that a proper conversation does.

I don’t expect miracles from the vaccines. Whatever roadmap Boris has unveiled, I doubt that, in a few months’ time, the majority of the population will have returned to crowding into pubs without a care for social distancing. But if I can sit in the garden with a couple of trusted mates – as I did late last summer – then that will be a huge step towards whatever “normal” we will have to accept for some time.

And, when it is finally safe, we will have learned some valuable lessons. I’m never again going anywhere without a bottle of hand sanitiser.

The fact is that you can lead only the life that you’re handed. It’s not the fault of today’s younger generation that they never knew cold lino.