Fire up the barbie! It’s so good to feel human again...

FOR me, the hardest thing about lockdown has been being stripped of normal social interaction. I’m perfectly happy in my own company and whatever wild youth I managed (spoiler: not that wild – more a pub quiz girl, than dancing until dawn), was drastically scaled back when I became a politician and then almost snuffed out entirely when I became a mum.

For the past ten weeks my usual flurry of meetings, events, parliamentary receptions, dropping Finn off at the childminder, visiting family or chatting to people at the gym has been traded for Zoom calls, emailed casework and bending the ear of the cashier at the supermarket, just to have someone new to talk to.

Going into parliament for the two days a week it has started sitting has been an event to look forward to – even if my colleagues’ conversation has been as flat as mine as, well, we’ve all been obeying restrictions and unable to do any gallivanting.

So, to have lockdown eased just a little – and to be able to have face-to-face catch-ups with loved ones – has been amazing. As soon as Nicola Sturgeon left the podium on Thursday after explaining exactly what was to be permitted, I was on the phone to my friend David, inviting him over to our house for a BBQ.

David lives a couple of miles from me in Edinburgh, in a first floor flat with no garden. He is a close friend, a regular badminton partner and will be my son Finn’s godfather as soon as Jen and I get round to actually organising a christening.

Despite – or maybe because – I have spoken, texted, video called or WhatsApped David nearly every day of lockdown, I didn’t realise just how much I missed seeing him. Indeed, we have been keeping each other going through the past few weeks mostly by slagging each other off, winding each other up and trying to score points against the other.

Just before lockdown started, David and I decided to start a competition to get ourselves in shape. This, it is fair to say, was an asymmetric proposition as we were not starting from the same base line.

A body-conscious gay man, David was already immensely fit and if he needed to lose anything at all, it was about half an ounce from his left eyelid. I, however, between the unhealthy politicians’ lifestyle and never quite losing Finn’s baby weight (can you still call it baby weight, when the child is no longer a baby but now a fully fledged toddler?) was on the blubbery side of tubby, finding myself a full three stones heavier than when I entered parliament nine years ago.

WHILE we kicked off the comp before lockdown started, the restrictions allowed us to give it a proper focus. We have been pinging each other pictures of super-healthy meals or screen grabs of our food diaries on good days.

Videos of us heaving and sweating after doing a run or YouTube exercise class have been posted to our competition WhatsApp (called ‘Tubby tubby bye-bye’) in an attempt at one-upmanship. Every Monday before work, we’ve religiously stuck to our weigh-in, taking photos of the scales as proof of progress.

So, barring Jen and Finn, David is the person I’ve spoken to most – or at least most regularly – through this period of isolation.

To actually have him come over to the garden, to share food and drink and laugh – in person – was utterly priceless. To unearth the fire pit from the back of the shed and sit chatting into the night as the flames flickered, warmed something in the soul that I wasn’t aware had chilled.

To make plans, and for those plans to suddenly seem achievable once again, made the spirit soar higher than a jumbo jet.

The novelty of the moment made the food taste better than anything I’d eaten for months and (partly because I’d almost completely stopped drinking during lockdown) I felt pleasantly tipsy sipping my first glass.

Mankind is a social animal. We feel and love and laugh through other people. One of the reasons these restrictions have been so hard and stressful and disconcerting (and why we’re so furious when others choose not to make the same sacrifices we’ve made) is because it has stripped from us the very hugs and closeness that support us and give us strength.

Covid has been so cruel to so many. But even those untouched by the disease have felt the effects of the isolation which has accompanied it.

Even the simple act of seeing a friend makes everyone feel a bit more human again.