Fear of missing out is the Covid side-effect I can’t seem to shake off

YOU might have heard of FOMO. It’s an abbreviation for the fear of missing out.

I got it on Monday as I was leafing through the Evening Telegraph.

There, on the centre spread, were pictures of people in full party swing.

They looked like groups of pals at Glastonbury – with bigger smiles and less mud.

But the elated crowds were in Dundee, enjoying the second night of a festival at Slessor Gardens.

Friday night was the Sausage and Cider festival and the images included some very serious faces taking part in a sausage eating contest.

Saturday featured the Ibiza Orchestra Live – a 26-piece orchestra playing classic tunes from the island as part of a sell-out tour across the UK.

To add to my FOMO (there’s an actual definition: anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere) a group of mum pals had been out without me on Friday night too.

I’d been travelling with work and couldn’t make it.

When I asked how it had gone, it sounded like one of those evenings when no one had wanted to go home and it was 3am before anyone had even thought about bed.

Another pal was at the Sausage Fest with work pals and told me: “I can’t remember laughing so much. Everyone – and I mean – everyone, was up for it big time.”

I wrote during lockdown about the innocence and excitement I had seen through the eyes of my kids as the normal experiences – curtailed through restrictions – suddenly became as exciting as a trip to Disneyland.

Kids all over Dundee will have been the same – wide eyed in awe at all the firsts they were finally able to tick off.

My boys couldn’t remember being on a train (I don’t think the younger two ever had) so a trip to Edinburgh was overwhelming.

They couldn’t quite believe the miles were whirring past outside the carriages.

They’re still recovering from a friend’s party at the weekend at Pleasureland in Arbroath. It’s a kids’ dream come true with waltzers, dodgems, trampolines, candy floss and all the other fairground delights they’d only seen on TV while the world was shut down.

And clearly, it’s not just kids who are thrilled to be out and experiencing life as we knew it before we all got a taste of the fear of missing out.

Just look at the Sausage Fest and Ibiza Orchestra revellers in Dundee.

Fun has been a long time coming and the much anticipated pleasure in being ‘out-out’ is written all over our faces.

If last weekend was anything to go by, you won’t have to be in Ibiza to have it large this summer.

You won’t even have to leave Dundee.

Revellers enjoyed the two-day festival at Slessor Gardens last weekend which included an Ibiza Orchestra Live evening.