If you ask someone what they did during lockdown, you’ll often get a vague response mostly to do with drinking too much or learning a hobby. It’s all the same and quite dull. What I think we should be asking each other is… How strange did you get during lockdown?
I’ll go first.
I lived with my mum and her boyfriend (Rich) for the entirety of the time. Rich was vulnerable, so we did not leave the home for a very long time.
The only human connection we had was a view of a train track, so there was a lot of pressure on GWR (Great Western Rail) to provide entertainment. When the night train came past at 23:06, it would trigger us all to start yelling, ‘Night train! Night train! Night train!” I don’t know how this started, but we did it every night throughout lockdown.
The only other human contact came from delivery men and window cleaners. I found this on my phone the other day, which sums up the excitement of these encounters, and also what inspired me to write this blog.
Other strange things include: Having a funeral for a field bunny after it got attacked by a cat.
And ordering a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Gordon Ramsay for reasons I forget now.
I mean it could be worse. There were people who decided to get a giant dog, and now, two years on, they want to go on holiday, but nobody wants to look after their monster of a pet. (At least I was able to throw Gordon Ramsay in the bin).
The internet had a lot to answer for.
You can always rely on YouTube to go down rabbit holes, and these rabbit holes get deeper and deeper the more time you have. You may start off casually searching for yoga videos, but somehow, you convince yourself you’re the kind of woman who throws tyres around for exercise.
(You are not.)
Social media became our only way of getting attention. Selfies were shamelessly posted, and you watched as the likes came in like a voting poll of, ‘Is my face okay to look at anymore?’ Some took it too far. You still haven’t been able to look your friend in the eye after she posted a story of herself in her knickers.
The peak of strangeness came with love and relationships. I had just come out of a very long-term one, so was quite happy that it was the law for every man (potential rebound) to stay in their home, away from me.
For some people though, the thought of living out a dry and lonely existence was too much to bear, and so they had a ‘lockdown love.’ A lockdown love is when someone lowers their bar so low for the sake of companionship during lockdown. They perhaps went on three dates with the person before Boris told us to stay indoors, and so they thought, hell, why don’t we live together?
So a 2-year contract was signed
… And now they have to explain to their new partner why there is a weirdo in the living room with a humongous Great Dane.
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