What did you do when the world stood still?

A list of human actions

Pennington Flash- our favourite picturesque lockdown car par locations

Morning folks

Later than intended with this Sundays offering, but it’s just been one of those weeks again. More children off, more juggling all the balls and dropping more than one. All compounded by the December what-the-hell-am-I-suppose-to-be-crossing-off-my-list-right-now marginally uneasy feeling.

Anyway, here we are, heading to deep mid-winter. I find my body craving some extended time outdoors at the moment. I’m managing to squeeze in quick 20 minute walks around the block amidst work and general life chaos, but it’s nowhere near enough.

I often think about lockdowns at this time of year, whether I want to or not. The short winter days, the endless round of bugs and viruses that circulate through the house, meaning there is often at least one child on a couch watching shit TV and drinking lucozade often have that strange hazy feeling of deja vu and endlessness that it felt like back then.

At the end of lockdowns and as the world started to open back up, I asked people online what they did during the pandemic to keep them going and collected up all the answers for a future date. This feels as good a time as any to share some of these answers; perhaps it will remind us that we are strange and resilient creatures who will often find a way to adapt to how things are and find ways to make them better.

Here are some of them…

• Scrabble

• Walking my dog. Spending at least one hour outside reading

• Sewing- making new stuff out of scraps

  Running. Cold water therapy. Journalling. Growing veg.

• Hall Coppice Olympics- we devised new things for the kids each day- the neighbours thought we were bonkers.

• Painting- just colours and shapes. No phone- no news.

• Breakfast/a brew outside first thing- like a mini-holiday.

• Walks for me. I discovered loads of local routes. And sunrises.

• Played board games. Designed board games.

• Clocked up 2500 hours pretending to be a cowboy in Red Dead online. Interacted with people from most of Europe, Scandinavia, Russia and the Middle East. Made some reasonable good friends, we talked about countries, cultures, histories etc.

• I made the family ‘get ready’ at the weekend. We made cocktails and listened to gigs and live DJ streams but couldn’t be in pyjamas. Friends started a zoom quiz night.

• We made a bridge over a ditch down the woods behind my home.

• Hannah Wilson dance classes, walking to the park, seeing the ducks, family quizzes.

• Crap films in bed with takeaway.

• I've spent over 2000 hours playing Animal Crossing. It was released in the first week of lockdown and we bought it 'for the kids'. Within a week I had become obsessed and had found a thread on Mumsnet of other players to trade items and joined a WhatsApp group with them which settled into 26 players, we visited each others islands every day, helped each other with things we needed, we celebrated birthdays and special occasions in game and in real life.

  Without doubt the game got me through the hardest times, it was total escapism in every way. Whether it was healthy or not I don't know, but it was a virtual ideal island life that I couldn't have when I was longing to go to the beach in real life and the four walls of real life were closing in. My mumsnet friends were constantly in my phone, day and night, there was always someone to talk to and that has carried on to this day.

  Getting through isolation was one thing, getting through cancer in isolation was entirely another and I don't think the horror of that could have been done without some extreme escapism so I took it where I could.

• I re-kindled my love of fishing...got outdoors and into some rural settings. ..interacted with wild life...had plenty of sightings of rare and less seen birds. ..caught plenty of fish and upped my record weight for carp. ..had a good time with myself.

This is obviously a tiny snapshot; lockdowns were long and solutions were many! Some of the favourite things I did (and I write these to remind myself as much as anything) were:

watching all the taskmaster // meeting friends on picturesque car parks for an outdoor brew // learning to ID the very immediate moss and weeds outside my front door // zoom calls with friends when they were still novel and fun // discovering poetry.

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Your invitation to write/play is a simple one this week…

Can you add to this “Things we did when the world stood still” list? I’ve got half an idea of turning it into something in future- I would love your contributions. The more it build up, the more complete the picture of how things looked for different people. You can add them to our chat over on our brand new chat space…

… or add them to the comments. Or, if you prefer- write your very own list. It’s a great reminder that we do creative things to get us through hard times.

Are there any things on your list you could sneak back into your weeks? Did you go for a walk every evening for your government mandated exercise? Could you do this again this week?

Or if you like, take the prompt differently and write a poem/journal entry/piece of prose about that particular time.

In fact- here’s one of the first poems that I wrote. My friend had a birthday in the woods and we sat and ate Carrs pasties around a fire.

I’ve said before, but I genuinely don’t actually mean to write about lockdown and illness when I start writing, so apologies for the repetition. But something about this time of year really brings it to the forefront and I’ve never known how to write about anything other than what’s on my mind. Don’t worry, I’ve got a Christmas moan post brewing as well to keep things festive.

That’s all for now- thanks for reading and thanks for your lovely replies and pieces of writing that you send my way. I absolutely love reading them.

Much love

Em x