We can’t plan for the future and I can’t stand it

MPerhaps naively, I think I hoped the return to normal life to feel more like a cause for celebration

Y calendar is filling up. Basically everything that was in my diary before coronavirus has suddenly come back into play. It is the day I longed for in the middle of that winter lockdown. If you’re trying to get me for dinner

I think I might have an opening somewhere around May 2022.

Despite months of warnings that we would have to learn to live with coronavirus for years to come, I did not anticipate the level of anxiety around making plans for the future.

It makes sense though. We are living through a highly confusing time where we can barely see four weeks in front of us. The past 18 months has been a confusing journey from queuing outside Tesco to grab the last roll of toilet paper to the reintroduction of music festivals.

Yet, despite a return to the most normal anything has been for a long time, we are still living in a time where we cannot see four weeks in front of us.

I have tickets for a concert next week, which is enough to make me weep with joy. But it does not look like I will be seeing friends in the US any time soon. Even if I could, I feel iffy about straying too far from home in case I come into contact with Covid and end up confined to a hotel room for 10 days. That anxiety isn’t going away any time soon.

Perhaps naively, I think I hoped the return to normal life to feel more like a cause for celebration.

That the new ground we were breaking wouldn’t feel so shaky. I underestimated its ability to mess with our collective mental health because, surely, nothing could be worse than being forced to stay at home and see no one.

It seems counter-intuitive to embrace this return to normality at the same time as we are confronted with case numbers at an all-time high. The number of people in hospital because of Covid, 585, is the highest since early March. Waiting times at A&E are a disaster and surgery waiting lists keep getting longer, a couple of not-so-subtle hints that the NHS is buckling under the strain.

The vaccine has changed the game but it is hard to see the current climate as a cause for celebration.

Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed reports the Scottish Government was considering the introduction a circuit-breaker. Returning to lockdown, she said, was a last resort. Her denial came after Scotland recorded more than 6,000 new cases last week, an all-time high. The next day, more than 7,000 cases were recorded.

The Government’s messaging over the past few days has shifted, hinting at the reintroduction of some restrictions. Professor Jason Leitch warned that turning off “some bits of society” might be necessary as the numbers grow.

It doesn’t take a scientific adviser to work out what that might entail. Hospitality and live events, the last aspects of normal life to return, will surely be first to be scaled back.

My poor diary can’t handle the uncertainty. My anxiety-addled brain can’t either.