How has lockdown changed your routine?

I’ve learned that it is very easy to be lazy and to half enjoy the lack of timetable that lockdown has brought. It is always an effort to get ready for things like choir and orchestras, especially after a busy day or when it has been raining and it’s cold and dark. Having made the effort the result is always worth it and one returns home on a high. The empty diary is now filled with regular routine events -same day each week – and were it not for the chaos of construction, life would have been quite dull. I am used to creating on paper and manuscript, so the opportunity has been there to do both. I also walk to the shops more than before since there is nothing to hurry home for. The garden had been tended more. I miss the theatre and the concerts and am sad that these are out of bounds for the foreseeable future. There is compensation to be gained from the DVD alternatives and BBC i Player but it’s not the same. Getting things like car service, haircuts and dentist sorted has been a nuisance and queuing for the bank wasted an hour last time I was there. Face masks have to be remembered when stepping out. I keep one in a pocket at all times.
Getting used to meetings on line has been interesting, but once set up, the results are always disappointing. It is more difficult to concentrate, especially when things get technical.
Until the house is sorted I will not be looking to travel more than necessary, so the lack of holiday destinations has not been a problem, and won’t be until the new year.
Over all I haven’t found lockdown particularly onerous, but the spontaneity has gone out of life, being replaced with the fear of infection and hospital and worse. There is a bunker mentality which is easy to get used to, but still, an uneasy peace reigns and one can’t help dwelling on the tragedy of it all. I am lucky in so may ways. Many have unexpected hardship to worry them. They can’t switch off from the misery that Covid has brought.

For the first time since lockdown, I dined at a pub yesterday. We had to book, order and pay using the brewery’s mobile app, which was an unwelcome change to our old ways. That said, our food came promtly and was as nice as ever.

From lockdown, I think many of us have been forced into doing things online that we’d rather do by other means.

I suspect it’s the young who are bearing the brunt of all this. Deprived of friends, school, youth clubs, youth activities and being forced into a monastic existence for months can’t have done their socialisation or development any good.

Isolation doesn’t do humans any good, and the young are especially vulnerable.

The lockdown has given a lot of folk here in the UK a bit of a taste of what it’s like for folk like me all the time. They’re having to give up going out and “socialising” and some have even had to give up working for a while too, but at least they can still have their partners and kids etc. some of us can’t have any such thing, but just total isolation all the time, they’re the forgotten disabled who are never mentioned anywhere in any media or in any statistics and are far too widely totally ignored by far too many and there’s near enough no awareness of such people at all, but instead nothing but widespread outrageous contempt, especially from those in power and control. And then there’s them who are organising illegal raves just because they can’t stand having to do without their “entertainment” for a while, well tough luck, some of us have to do without any altogether, and do without any work, or social life, or love life etc. And the police should have assistance from the military for breaking up illegal raves. Disability is NOT all white sticks and wheelchairs as far too many still so blindly think. And folk here in the UK don’t know how lucky they are, they’re only under lockdown, some nations have really brutal military martial law. Far too many take far too much for granted, but it can be taken away at any time for all manner of reasons. One thing I learnt long ago is to never take anything for granted.