Covid is still around two years after we all started wearing masks and social distancing and undergoing lockdowns. A lot of people have died. A lot of people have been seriously financially impacted. But Virginia and I have not caught Covid ourselves (yet), nor have we suffered like others. I can only write about our experience of the Covid years.

2020 was my last working year. I was expecting to have my work colleagues gather round my desk on the last day. There would be a few speeches, there would be a few gifts to unwrap (and I would be surprised by how generous everyone was). I would make a difficult speech about farewell and please keep in touch. Instead we all started working remotely, and coming into the office required management approval (an inconvenience as I had asked for packages to be delivered there!) I also used the office as a place for offsite backups, I’ve now switched to the cloud. There had been times in the office I wished I could work from home - but actually doing so was lonely. Even if they were just work colleagues I missed being with them. They did the best they could with Microsoft Teams for when I retired, but my career finished not with a bang but a whimper.

Virginia carried going into work as she worked at Addenbrookes Hospital. This was one plus for the Covid years - she could park onsite again and for free. Telephone and video appointments replaced patients coming in for consultations. The Covid years accelerated this trend, a healthy trend as some patients had long journeys to and from Addenbrookes. Her work has become a lot more stressful when patients started turning up again, trying to persuade them to follow social distancing and having only patients in the waiting room.

Another trend accelerated by the Covid years is the move to having stuff delivered rather than buying in the High Street. I do miss browsing in bookshops I admit, but on a more serious note this trend has led to well established chains of stores closing with job losses. Some delivery drivers check you’re in when they deliver, others just dump packages on front door steps in the rain. For Amazon at least one can track one’s parcel down to the street the delivery driver is in which is a big step forward. At the start of Covid getting slots for food deliveries was nigh impossible - I wrote a program to check for free slots at one stage at different times of the night.

We couldn’t eat out once a week as was our habit. Doing so is important as it guarantees a solid period of time we would be sitting down together and talking. So we started dining in which may not have had waiter or waitress service but was still a treat. Not dining out helped save money I have to admit. Another way Covid helped us save money was by preventing us going on holiday. I was lucky I squeezed in a halfway round the world trip just before the restrictions came, and Virginia also squeezed in a trip to Cornwall with a friend Sandra.

We had been booked to go on a cruise to Denmark in July 2020. We had made arrangements to see Lego House which we were really looking forward to. Naively I had thought back in March things might have settled down in a month or two! The Denmark cruise got cancelled and replaced by a cruise to Spain for November. This too got cancelled fairly quickly. It felt like a small miracle when we did finally go on a cruise to the Canary Islands in November 2021! During the Covid restrictions people weren’t supposed to travel far so they used their front gardens in lieu of beaches at the seaside.

The Covid years put the NHS in the UK under intense strain. People expressed their support for (or reliance on) the NHS by pictures of rainbows in windows, or drawn in chalk on driveways. For some time people would stand in their doorways on Thursdays at 8pm and clap their hands to applaud what the overstretched doctors and nurses were doing. Unfortunately gratitude to the doctors and nurses also didn’t extend to MPs thinking they deserved more than a token pay rise. It also didn’t extend to people not panic buying which hurt those less able to shop. Toilet paper and other essentials became in short supply. There was a lot of pilfering of masks and toilet paper from the hospital at least.

The Covid years affected people in different ways. There were good neighbours here and there looking after the less able and elderly. In Histon there were co-ordinators for different streets to try to organise support. Soft toys appeared in many windows to amuse children passing by. Some people were blase about the risks - not wearing masks in Tesco including the security guard tasked with asking people to do so. Others were perhaps overly enthusiastic in their cautiousness. Putting post away in a garage and not opening it for two weeks. Crossing over the road to avoid any contact. Getting angry if you got within 10 metres of them rather than the mandated 2 metres. For a time you had to queue outside foodshops with 2 metre gaps painted on the ground, and one-way systems for the handful of people allowed in.

The Covid years introduced a lot of us to Zoom which became a vital means of staying in touch with one’s nearest and dearest relatives, as well as those farthest and dearest. Indeed holding regular Zoom sessions meant more contact than before with my relatives. A Powerpoint quiz in one Zoom meet up with Virginia’s folks inspired me to try my hand at quizzes myself, and I’ve done quite a number by now. It has been a learning exercise, originally I started with 10 rounds of 10 questions each, but cut that down to 7 rounds. I feel now multiple choice works best rather than my original scheme of matching up ten names to ten pictures say.

The Covid years also meant vaccinations and PCR tests and lateral flow tests. Virginia is regularly tested at the hospital, I didn’t get tested until our first cruise after lockdowns began. A lot of doctors and nurses have gone the extra mile, and deserve more recognition than what tax avoiding MPs have given them.