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Lockdown: What Are You Really Missing?
Lockdown: What Are You Really Missing?
So here we are, day 9345 of lockdown (well about 7 weeks but if you have kids it probably feels like about 10 years!). People’s patience and marriages are being tested to the limit with many posting on social media about what they miss. Or what they are most looking forward to once lockdown is lifted.
It got me thinking about what I really miss.
People
I can probably count more people that I don’t miss than those I do miss. Actually, and I’m not being cold-hearted here, but I don’t miss anyone. Well just one person, but I missed them before lockdown anyway and the current situation has just made me think of them more. I miss their conversation and their hugs.
I was talking to my daughter last week about how well she is coping with all this. But, she has spent all her life not seeing one half of her family for sometimes months on end. When we lived in Ireland she wouldn’t see her English family for weeks and months sometimes and now we live here she doesn’t see her Irish family for long periods of time. She doesn’t know any different.
When I left home at 21, I didn’t just leave home, I left the country! So I’ve spent a big chunk of my adult life not seeing my family and friends I had when I left home.
But you do get used to it. You learn to use other means to keep in contact and technology is way better than it was when I was 21. Obviously FaceTime isn’t the same as seeing someone in person, but it teaches you to communicate better. It also teaches you to value those that make the effort to keep in contact with you and identify those that don’t. It can make your circle of people smaller, but a lot more valuable.
Do you think your circle of people will be the same post lockdown?
Things
Have you got a thing that you miss? Loads of people I know are missing the football. Some a little bit obsessively. Don’t get me wrong, I miss it, but I’d rather be alive. I’ve noticed some people getting quite worked up about how the season should restart. Whether the season should be void, played behind closed doors and lots of other hypotheses. Some people have nothing else to fill their lives with. I’m using football as an example, but it can be applied to many things. Drinking, going to the pub, getting shit faced, seems to be another thing. Are those things really worth risking your life for?
Normal life and everyday things will resume when the time is right. And even then, I doubt very many things will go back the way they were. Life for us all will change. You are going to have to change with it. There is absolutely no point in getting yourself all worked up about football being played behind closed doors and not seeing a few games. On the grander scheme of things, does it really matter? Is it life or death? Is it hell as like! Get a grip if you considered answering yes there. Unless you are the decision-maker, like Boris for instance, then it is out of your control. There is nothing you can do. So just crack on with your knitting or read last weeks blog and find something else to do instead.
Food
As I write this, today the KFC on Preston Docks reopened, and the people went bloody batshit! The roads around there became gridlocked and people (idiots) queued for hours to get their chicken fix. Honestly, do these people not know how to cook or know to just buy the fake frozen stuff in Tesco to make do for now? Is fried chicken an essential item? Eventually, the police turned up and closed it down and roads had to be blocked off to stop being driving towards it. Really, is this what we have become?
The same happened at a Costa Coffee in Glasgow at the weekend. It’s coffee for goodness sake! I have a Tassimo, you can’t tell the difference. Honestly, I worry for future generations.
I know the constant cooking is starting to get annoying and endless food shopping. But is fried chicken and expensive frothy coffee the highlight of some people’s lives? I get the escapism factor but have we become that superficial? Are these people so desperate for some kind of hit now the drug dealers aren’t able to deal so easily? Perhaps I’m missing something but I just don’t get it.
I’m more concerned with buying a bag of flour because that stuff is as rare as unicorn shit at the moment. My daughter likes to bake but I can’t get hold of damn flour. I’m more bothered about that than when I’ll get a KFC again. Granted I do love a KFC, but not that much.
Sex
Listen, I have to put sex on the list for clickbait. It was a popular subject on my last blog (you bunch of pervs) and one of my friends admitted learning a new word. Yes, she Googled that word. God love her search history. But that’s what loads of you have clicked here for because you think I’m going to spill a few sex secrets. Are you that bored?!?!?!
Anyway, another thing happened today. A scientist bloke had to resign from the all-important SAGE committee advising the government. The reason got me thinking. He was caught out having afternoon delight with a married woman in his house. Obviously, she wasn’t married to him. He called it an error of misjudgement. No, not the affair, but breaking lockdown for an illicit shag.
How are people who are having affairs managing to balance lockdown with maintaining their other relationships? Are they keeping up with the pretence and their meetups? Have they had to ditch the side chick or tell her she is the side chick and not the leading lady? It poses so many questions and fascinates me (nosey).
If you’d like to tell me how you are conducting your affairs during lockdown then I’m all ears. Like I won’t name and shame you or anything like that. Well not publicly anyway.
Attention
This is natural that it should follow on from sex. Why? Because it’s really obvious that a lot of (married) men are short of attention at the moment and looking for it. My DM’s are living proof of this. I will just add here that I have never, ever invited these. They are unsolicited DM’s and I know full well they are just looking for some attention because they are bored. They have no interest in my or my daughters’ welfare or how my business is doing.
You do realise that looking for attention from a woman that isn’t your wife is a form of micro-cheating? Maintain your respect, no matter how bored you get during a lockdown.
And don’t even get me started on the Facebook attention seekers! I could write a whole blog about them. Please, don’t inbox me, hun.
What Did You Learn
We should all be learning a bit more about ourselves by now. Our ability to cope with the unexpected and what is important to us. You’d hope that the lessons we should be learning now will make us a better society when this is all over. Although seeing the queues for a KFC today, maybe we should be more concerned that society hasn’t learnt anything.
What have you learnt? Will you be making changes post lockdown? Do you think you’ll emerge a better person?
I suppose we are all left now wondering what does the future really hold? And in truth, if we really think about it, what we really miss is our freedom.
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