Lockdown II is so much easier now we can see open road to festivities
SO, WE are approaching the final stages of our second lockdown. As readers might remember, I live alone and I certainly am in what you’d call the “vulnerable age” category.
So how does this lockdown compare with the previous one? I have been thinking about that and marshalling my thoughts.
I find myself more cheerful this time. I find in particular my mind is more ready to absorb the strictures and to keep them and I definitely feel more positive.
Why is that? I think in the previous lockdown, yes, we had the beautiful weather whereas now we have quite the opposite, but somehow I greatly resented the last lockdown. My main cause of resentment was the fact I could not go out of my front door. That had a huge effect on me.
The last time I wrote about it, I regarded my car as the Chariot of Liberty – and so it was, particularly as we were not allowed outside our front doors. I found that a huge deprivation – not to be able to go to the front door, open it, go down the path and get into my car and drive into town.
This lockdown, we were allowed the five kilometres quite immediately. I find that the most amazing feel-good factor. I find myself getting into the car, driving to the small newsagents or driving into town, driving around the town, or driving within the 5km limit out to the Hodson Bay Hotel.
I park at the water, look out and read my paper and feel somehow contented and happier.
Yes, I can’t see the children, I can’t hug them and that of course is very serious. Aengus, my son, is my caregiver because I live alone and he sometimes brings the two younger children. They laugh and blow kisses and jump around the back garden whilst I talk with their dad.
But somehow again I am more relaxed about it. I feel I am doing the right thing.
However, my general good feeling is more than overlaid by the idea that Christmas is coming.
Somehow, I strongly believe that when December comes, while we may not be fully free of the pandemic, our figures will have gone down to allow the bright horizon to open up.
For me, the bright horizon is Christmas with Aengus and Lisa and their four children. I am also hopeful the lockdown will have eased so Feargal in Dublin with Maeve and their children can come down for a visit.
However, I am certainly easier in my mind.
Perhaps it is age really catching up with me and a decision in my mind that I am not going to be left feeling bereft or lonely or with nothing to do.
I have also adopted a telephone regime. There are several people I have not heard from or who have not heard from me, and who for some time were my regular go-to people.
Every day I get up, I make a list – who am I going to telephone today? – numbering three or four, and then I systematically get about calling them and having long conversations.
If they’re not there I leave a message and they come back to me. I have found so many friendships resurrected and thriving again, due to the strong decision I took that I would do this. It has made such a change in my life.
Of course, I am also reading more. Yes, I did read during the last lockdown but not to the same extent. I now find I am building up my quota of books so that I will always have something to go to.
Since we entered this lockdown, I have read Tale of a Great Sham, which is a marvellous book by Anna Parnell. Imagine, it was written back in 1907 and it is as readable now as it was when she wrote it.
I have just finished a memoir of Kevin Barry by his grand-niece Síofra O’Donovan. I know the
Irish Independent did two wonderful pages on it recently. I am about to begin Shane Ross’ book In Bed with the Blueshirts. I know it will be a good piquant, racy read and I will revel in it, knowing as I do the wit and the writing ability of Shane.
So I am reading more, I’m planning the books that I want to get and to read, I am telephoning more, and having spirited conversations with long-ago friends, now newly revisited with all of their news and I with mine. That’s all so positive.
But most of all, I think my mindset has improved. On the last occasion, in my mind I was fighting against the whole idea of lockdown – ‘Why me, why me?’ – and of course the constant use then of that stupid, totally irrelevant word “cocooning”, which I am so glad has not been brought into the vocabulary at all for this lockdown.
But taking it all into account and turning it over in my mind, it is the freedom I have this time – the freedom of going out my own front door, the freedom of getting into my own car, the freedom of driving down the town, the freedom of going to my local newsagent, the freedom of being able to drive the 5km to look at the Hodson Bay and the lovely water – all of that has meant that I have not allowed any grudging, horrible thoughts to permeate my mind.
But of course, the big beacon of light that shines before me each day when I wake up is the fact Christmas is coming, the lockdown will be gone, and I will be able to see my family and enjoy my Christmas. Let’s hope I don’t have to eat my words.