14 Years Of NUTS4R2

Lockdown Memories

14th Anniversary Blog Post

When this post goes live, it will be exactly 14 years since I started this blog, initially because I was feeling a lack of connection with certain other elements of my life (who or what will remain nameless here but... some things never change). It’s also, however, two days short of being the 4th anniversary of what was, for many people of my generation, a very unusual, seemingly quite unbelievable and surreal event in our lives... the first UK Government lockdown in response to the deadly Coronavirus outbreak which was whittling down various countries populations.

Now I’m not here to argue that Coronavirus wasn’t a terrible thing. So many people died and the worldwide response to the disaster was fairly tragic and badly thought out... destroying or changing people’s lives forever. I know some people take the view that the UK government were having to deal with something they were unprepared for (and that’s a different can of worms to begin with, lots of warnings by scientists for decades and an underwhelmingly slow and ill conceived response to the situation did not help) but, I personally can’t let the government off the hook so easily. For almost the entirety of the first year of lockdown (and I say this as someone who has never before taken an interest in politics), I just assumed the people in power were a sad combination of naivety and stupidity and couldn’t work out what they were doing there. Then, slowly, it dawned that these were all corrupt idiots who were not interested in helping people at all and were just in it to make money. They are criminals, for sure, there’s no getting around that.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I wanted to say a few words about the actual positive aspects of lockdown... because I think they are important and I think our government has not learned anything from the situation or, most likely, just want to ignore the benefits to the majority of people. What a surprise eh?

Now don’t get me wrong. I know a certain amount of the population, presumably those suffering from severe extroverted personalities, found lockdown hard. I know some friends had some problems with their youngsters which intrigued me because, when I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to not have to go to school and certainly not have to socialise with other people. But some people didn’t reap the same benefits of the lockdown lifestyle that others did and I think it’s worth remembering those unexpected perks because I reckon 80% of the UK population could still be better off from them if the UK government wasn’t so greedy and corrupt (and it’s certainly not just the UK government, for sure).

Okay, so for me, lockdown had so many benefits... and for my blog too, it has to be said.

I have elderly parents and that meant that, working from home, I could keep and eye on them and come running if either of them got into trouble. Something I can’t do again now with a two buses or more (depending on traffic) journey home. It goes without saying that I was saving thousands of pounds by not travelling to work, of course. Not to mention clawing back two to three hours a day for myself when I would normally be travelling. And I was getting through roughly a week’s work in a day by not being at the office... so could respond quicker to any emergencies that came up in a quick and efficient manner. Which was handy for people.

And there were the health benefits too. A colleague of mine said that she’d never been fitter than during the lockdown and I have to agree. The extra time saved meant I had time to go out for a 20 minute walk every night, straight after work. I was borderline diabetic when I went into lockdown... within a year I was completely out of it again. Now I’m back in the office my diabetes and other health issues are worse than they’ve ever been. And I get barely a half an hour a night which I can positively call ‘my own time’ on a week day.

But lastly and perhaps more relevantly in regards to this blog, being in lockdown meant I had time to watch movies after work and then write about them. Because there was more money saved, I ordered expensive box sets from Severin in America and the Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection box set (start here with that one) really captured my imagination and reignited my love of film. As a result, I still have well over 200 written reviews backlogged and waiting to be tweaked and published. I got through a lot of movies in that travel time and I felt inspired and uplifted to be exploring cinema again... more than I’d felt in a while.

So those, I think, for the record... were my main takeaways from lockdown. And my conclusion is... everyone who is capable of working from home should be... never mind the stupid government edicts and the businesses who want us all to suffer in an office again. If these entities were truly about looking after the people and treating them right, then many of us would be allowed to work from home and, to boot, the climate crisis may not be hanging around our necks so much either. Remember going out in lockdown for a walk and being confronted with no cars on the roads... just fresher air. The less cars on the road (because people are capable of working from home) means less pollution and other benefits. It’s a win/win but, unfortunately, the members of parliament just want to make the economy work for them, so they can continue lining their own pockets with the benefits of other people’s misery. Or, at least, that’s the way it seems to me.

Anyway, those are my memories and take aways from lockdown and, as always, that just leaves me to say ‘thank you for reading’ my anniversary post. Especially to those who have been with me all 14 years to date.