Jenny Bathurst: lockdown when "we had to appreciate the simple things"

For the foreseeable future, ‘March’ will always evoke the memory of one thing. The Covid-19 pandemic. I know, we’ve all had enough of hearing about it, and three years later we just want to put it past us, but how easy really is it to forget probably one of the most momentous seasons of my life? If you can call ‘momentous’ sitting in the garden with a book for hours on end everyday for months. Now I know that Covid-19 was very much present before March 2020, but it seemed to be the month where in the blink of an eye so much changed and turned upside down with no warning. All of a sudden I would no longer be seeing my friends, sitting my A Levels, or really even leaving the house for nobody knew how long. How can a time feel so long ago but also like yesterday?

Often chronic illness can make me feel like I’m still in lockdown with the limited freedom I have been dealt, but there really is very little that is comparable to ‘March 2020’. If I am honest, part of me had forgotten just how bizarre it was until I started writing this article. I never, ever predicted it would happen and I have somehow convinced myself it will never happen again, although who knows. As humans we are so wonderful at adapting to the strangest of situations, and just as good at adapting back to ‘normal’. And I think we have done very well at just this.

But is that the best thing, or even a good thing? We no longer stop to cheer on our NHS. We let life sweep us away into busyness, only stopping once in a while to comment how tired we are before continuing on at high speed. We view ‘rest’ as a curse word, only for the weak. We work and work and work, feeling more accomplished when we have completed a laborious list of tasks than when we took the time to just do nothing and recharge.

It is for these reasons that I miss March 2020. Not because of the sickness, or the heartbreak, or the isolation that so many faced, not at all. But because we had to rest. We had to appreciate the simple things, and we had to look at those who kept us going and applaud them. Literally, every Tuesday night. Three years on, let’s remember the beauty in that season. But not the Zoom calls - please not the Zoom calls!