2020: How was it for you?

2020: How was it for you

Not quite sure how to start, I mean, how do you begin to describe the kind of year we have experienced?

Looking back to January when I went on a five-day road trip to Barrow then drove to Warrington and onto Sheffield so I could meet friends to travel to Manchester for the football, that seems to be from a different age. Riding back from Manchester across the Pennines in an overcrowded train, rain hammering down on the roof of the DMU as it rattled its way through the miserable night. All of it made worse by the spanking Man Utd had given us.

Later in January I went with a friend to see City play at the new Spurs stadium. We played better, but still lost. Sigh. But both stadiums were rammed with people shouting and screaming and doing what fans have done in football grounds for generations.

So far, so normal.

Into February, we went to see Mari Wilson on concert, I went to north Wales to do an audit, and I made the first, and as it turned out, only trip to Denmark to meet up with my colleagues and see old friends in Shaggy and Anni & Bo.

So far, so normal.

At the beginning of March, we bought a new car! I mean, we had done that before, but not an Audi, and was able to do it without blinking as we had paid off the old one and Mum’s estate was looking like being settled. We bought a car discounted in the showroom, all seemed perfect. We collected it the week after, and Jools drove it home it all looking wonderful in the late winter sunshine.

So far, so not normal.

It would be the summer before the car did a thousand miles.

That’s not normal.

I went back to North Wales to be there when the certification audit took place, but already the world was changing quickly. As I was there, Ireland closed down, Germany closed down, then in the evening of the 12th, footballers were reported as being infected and the games for the weekend were postponed.

It seemed like the end of the world, and yet on Sunday we went on a visit to HMS Kent which was in port, and lined up with others, all without masks, to tour the ship. It seemed wrong at the time, but looking back now, it seems crazy. Adults, children, grandparents all mixing, without a care in the world.

On the 17th, I even went on a churchcrawl, meeting an old friend at a Victorian church in Ramsgate, though the church in Margate cancelled. We wore masks, which seemed strange back then, but we laughed and swapped stories, while keeping our distance. It was the new normal.

The next weekend we even went orchiding, visiting our favourite reserve to see if there were any early spikes open; they weren’t. The sun shone on the valley as we sat in the meadow, it was warm and spring was nearly here, it all seemed so, well, normal.

But it seemed only a matter of time until the Government imposed a lockdown, and they did on the 23rd.

Panic and fear gripped the country, and people went shopping for pasta and toilet rolls. We never ran out of those or other items, and things got back to normal in shops, other than they only allowed a certain number in the shop at a time, and we had to queue up outside to be let in.

Life went on, we slept, ate, worked. Rinse and repeat.

Jools carried on working, as they were making parts for the doomed ventilator project, it was deemed essential. I worked from home, every day we had a virtual water cooler meeting, we supported each other and were stronger, happier for it.

Jools would go shopping each Friday, meaning I saw little of the madness in shops, the empty shelves and the scramble for scarce items. I did go myself the day before Easter, waiting in line for half an hour in the warm spring sunshine, waiting for my turn to enter the shop and go round to get what we needed. I went back home and made a batch of saffron buns, as I do every Easter.

The garden became more important, I would search the lawn and beds several times each day looking for something new, we had tadpoles in our pond. I would go for walks each day, just the usual places around the house and estate, again looking for flowers and insects.

Like most of the country, we tried to make sourdough starter. We tried, and failed, three times. I can’t be good at everything, I guess.

At the end of March, my Flickr account registered it’s 100 millionth view. Quite the landmark, and amazing for sure.

Jools tried to work from home, and for two days our dining room table was packed with laptops and screens, and although the bandwidth was fine and I saw no issues, the VPN her company used failed hourly and dropped out, she had to ask permission to return to the office, which she did.

At weekends, we went out for walks, hunted for plants and butterflies, came home for coffee and cake. We, like everyone else, existed.

After two weeks we went to see Jen, sat in her back garden, 2m apart as we chatted. So normal and yet not.

Some days, I would get Jools to drop me off at the NT place overlooking the docks, and I would stare down at the deserted lanes, with just a handful of trucks, and no car, waiting to board. These were some of the strangest days.

East came, we ate lamb, as the butcher was open, we could phone an order in and go to collect. Which we did. We snacked on saffron buns.

But we kept locked down, we were tempted to dive into the country for a sneaky walk, but didn’t. It wasn’t until April 19th that on another walk back from the NT place I finally saw the first orchid of the season, a single Early Spider showed well on the narrow path down the cliff to the old railway.

It wasn’t until the May Day weekend that we ventured further afield to look for orchids in our favourite spots. Yockletts for Fly and Early Purples, though no Green Hairstreaks were seen, and the next day to Bonsai to check on Lady Orchids and Duke of Burgundys. I saw a Common Lizard basking, as well as Dukes and Ladys aplenty.

Restrictions were being lifted and infection rates dropped, so more travel was possible, though we did not leave Kent. In fact I did not leave the county until August.

Our lawnmeadow had its best year, and in May it looked like a meadow with buttercups, daisies and other wild flowers making it an insect magnet. Clouds of black flies or small wasps were seen for a couple of weeks, flying just above the ground.

I added pizza to my culinary skills, with mixed results. But we ate at home every day, as we had no choice. We began to forget what it was like to eat out or even go to a pub.

Mum’s estate was settled, and we began the process of selling her house, which just coincided with the reopening of the housing market. The house went up for sale on the Monday and the sale agreed on Wednesday, there hadn’t been time to put up a “for sale” sign. We just had to wait.

Work continued, the final three audits of the plan were completed via MS Teams, and went as well as could be expected, and no on was put in harm’s way.

By the end of May, we were traveling to the orchid sites I wanted, seeing the species as they appeared, though were still careful about getting too close to people. It felt normal, the weather was glorious, our garden was full of wild flowers and insects, and I found an online retailer who could supply me with all the Belgian beer I wanted.

June had nothing planned. The calendar was empty. Hairdressers and specialist shops were still closed, as were pubs and restaurants.

On the 19th, Jools and I had our first food out since February, when returning from yet another orchid hunt, we called in at a chippy in Hythe for battered sausage and chips, apart from the social distancing markings and the requirements for masks, it did feel normal. Never did over-processed pork product deep fried in beef render taste to bloody good.

Football restarted, but without fans, I had bought a ticket for City’s away game at Arsenal which was due to be played on the 4th April, it took place on July 1st. We lost. Like we did every game of the restart, scoring just one goal in nine games.

Sigh.

On July 14th, I got my first haircut since the beginning of March. I felt like a king sitting in the chair as the guy shorn me of my locks. Inbetween Jools and I had cut each other’s hair, with mixed results, she did a good job, me less so. Pubs also opened, with Johnson imporing us to do our patriotic duty and drink beer, over summer I visited pubs on just three occasions, each time when it was quiet, taking my pint to sit outside in the beer garden or on a village green.

Still felt normal.

Even though it wasn’t.

At the beginning of August, we got kittens. Well, not kittens we found out, but they were small and underfed. SO we spent the next six weeks, and beyond, making them part of our feline family. There were good days, and bad days. They are a source of joy, of course, and delighted as they ventured from the spare room to the rest of the house, then outside.

In the middle of August, conditions allowed a business trip to take place, with me meeting a colleague in Southampton for two day’s auditing. We stayed in a nice hotel, but in plague times, there was no room service, no making of beds, no meals served, but we survived. But this was in the middle of the Government’s “eat out, to help out” scheme, with the city overflowing with people every night, making it hard to find a table to eat at. It was so crowded, it felt dangerous, so normal, when the virus was still around.

Turns out I was right to be worried.

We were due to go back there in September for more audits, but the week before as infection rates climbed, it felt unsafe, and as being the senior auditor, I cancelled the trip for all of us, to be safe. Turns out I was even cleverer than I thought, as the Government’s own scientific advisors recommended a short, sharp lockdown. Johnson refused, of course.

For the first time ever we did not go out to eat for my birthday, but did two days later when the sale of Mum’s house had come through, and it seemed right to go out. By then Jools was furloughed, due to lack of work at the factory. We went to Lydden and had a three course meal with beer, sitting down at two so the pub was half empty and felt safer.

In September, I got new speakers. Huge KEFs, they sound boss, as our neighbours would testify to, I’m sure.

Heritage Weekend and Ride n Stride did take place, but I only found 50% of the churches visited open, which was a bit disappointing, but I ticked off six more churches.

September saw the highlight, my first ever Queen of Spain Fritillary, seen ten minutes from the house on the edge of a field. Less than 400 of these have ever been seen in the country, and I think my sighting was the only one of 2020 in the UK.

October saw the descent into a second wave of infections and ever increasingly harder lockdowns. Although we feared the worse, it was to get worse than that.

Sigh.

Jools joined the RHS, so we drove into Surrey to visit Wisley, which was open, though with reduced numbers. It was good to do something which felt normal, here I am using that word again, well it did, even if restaurants and coffee huts were closed, or had reduced items on offer. With the place filling up, we left at midday and drove back.

The final strands of Mum’s (and Dad’s) life were tied up by the end of the year. Not only did her estate mean we could pay off our mortgage, but we had some left over for savings, and sending out sums to charities and businesses to support those not in such a position as us. In November, we went back to Suffolk to see the stone which had been updated on my parent’s last resting place. We also went to see friends and my Godparents when we were there, but turned round after meeting Mum’s cleaner for lunch, and giving her a cheque to show my gratitude for the help she gave Mum over the years.

Also in October, Jen’s Mother passed away. She didn’t quite make it to 101, like Nan. She faded away and one night went to sleep and didn’t wake up. We attended her funeral in October, and listened to her life story, found she was something of a firecracker in her youth, but then most of us were, I suppose?

One day of adventure was when Jen and I took her friend, Sylv, back to Manchester, and in a crazy day drove from Dover to Manchester and back, leaving at five in the morning and getting back just as it was getting back at just gone five, we would have been back earlier were it not for two crashes near Cambridge.

The clocks went back, days got shorter and shorter, autumn turned frosty, and in the outside world, infection rates increased and more of us were locked down, until at the beginning of November all of England was locked down for 27 days. It did not help.

When the lockdown ended, Kent went from level 2 to level 4, as a new strain of COVID had been found in Kent, and even with the lockdown, infections and hospitalisations soared. We formed a family bubble with Jen, so she could come round on Jools’ birthday to have steak and chips with us. That bubble has lasted up to this week, and will go on into the new year.

And so into December, with Jools back at work four days a week, and the shocking news that my employer has been taken over by our old parent company. Still unclear what it means for me, what my new role will be, even if there is one. It is a period of uncertainty, and one which no one really enjoys, and the certainty of having a job until retirement is now out of the window. We should know by the end of January what the answer is, so until then, who knows?

We put up a tree this year, and Jen came to stay for two nights, so I cooked Christmas Dinner here. And it was good, we watched no TV, but listened to CDs and the radio while we played games.

And so the most memorable year draws to an end. Memorable for the wrong reasons, of course, and we hope we will never see its like again. But 2021 is shaping up to be worse, if only for the first few months. We have stayed under lockdown pretty much since March 13th, we have met few people, eaten out once, visited a pub three times, we have each other, we are just about dent free, and we have options. Whatever happens.

There is uncertainty, but I will cover that in a separate blog relating the year in Brexit and COVID.

I bought one LP this year, which I have yet to play.

We went to see no films at the cinema.

Watched little on TV.

We attended one concert.