One day at a time

"How do you do it said night
How do you wake and shine
I keep it simple said light
One day at a time"

Lines by Lem Sissay saying better than I can how it feels today.

This is my Coronavirus Diaries part 2, 2021. 

A new blog for an old story.

Last year I began writing what I then believed was a unique journey , a travelogue of beginning, middle and end. I had no idea that one year on I would be living in a nightmare with no end in sight.

The 2020 blog entries until September were part of a universal diary collecting individual accounts of the first lockdown. 

Now reading back we seem collectively naive, innocent, trusting and incredibly optimistic.

By the summer the country had been released from lockdown, with social distancing in place admittedly but overall life seemed normal.

Funding for projects ceased. The lockdown was done, in every sense.

Schools, universities, colleges , all returned in the autumn and unleashed a second wave of this deadly virus in all its fury.

By Christmas we were in the mire. I had by then began writing only for myself, drawing my blog away from its collective link as I distrusted the social policy uses involved.

For those who entrusted me with their voices earlier in the year thank you. Those entries are safely in Mass Obs in a project which was ringfenced in August and rests in trusted hands for perpetuity.

As I begin this new year and new blog, the hopes and dreams which sustained us last year are in tatters. 

The new variant of the virus is lethal. Today the UK recorded over 1 000 deaths. 

Vaccines are here but so far barely anyone has had one. There is an endgame but it is so far out we cannot see the finishing line. 

The country is officially in lockdown. Schools, colleges and universities are shut. However,  nurseries are open, as are garden centres, and so many "essential" shops that this is a vastly different lockdown to last year. Traffic is as bad as ever. Buses and trains continue to run. 

Why? Shut everything, surely? But what we learned last year is the cost of this to the economy and to mental health. This Government says it is trying to balance those with the need to keep us safe.

I believe that is a cop out. Stunningly incompetent.

We have been led down blind alleys, turned round so many U turns, and finally tipped into a cess pit. 

No use looking to the Government for help. Failed track and trace app, failed mass testing, failed in every safety net which could have saved people.

I am grateful that I and those I love are well.  To remain well means avoiding everything and everyone we hold dear, family, friends, life as we knew it. 

It feels impossible. One day at a time is the only way forward.