It’s five years since the first UK lockdown.

Despite that distance, I wonder if there is anything original that can be said about 2020?

Unlikely. Knowing that removes some of the pressure. Instead, I really just want to write something to commemorate the strangest of years¹.

For the most part, personally, 2020 wasn’t a terrible year, just unusual. I’m fortunate in so many ways. I kept my job. I normally work from home anyway, so the challenge when the first lockdown hit was having to work while having two kids running around all day. Not easy, but, equally, churlish to complain when so many others were losing their jobs or having relationship issues.

Like everyone, we managed. Birthday parties were conducted over Zoom. My first ever 10k run was cancelled and participation was “virtual.” We skipped the sourdough craze but there was more baking than usual. Or daily hour of exercise would normally have including a visit to the local playground, but they were closed.

If there’s anything to note about life in 2020, it’s the monotony. Even between lockdowns, life has been remarkably consistent. Every day feels the same. The normal ability to have a change of scenery, whether working from a coffee shop or travelling further afield, has been curtailed. We didn’t really go on holiday. There has been no travel for work. Get up. Breakfast. Exercise. Work and childcare. Dinner. Crash. Bed. Of course, most of the year is like this anyway, but the fact that we can’t travel, that I’ve not even got as far as central London, either for business or pleasure, takes its toll.

It took until 2021 before we left the country again, and that was strange. We visited family in the US, but this was at a time where non-citizens were still not allowed in. I am not a US citizen. There were exceptions for close family members, but the rules were not well known and changed without much notice. At the airport in London we almost got turned away because the names on some documents didn’t match, but in a way that was completely explicable. Someone more senior waved us through eventually.

After landing on the other side, my wife’s passport was locked in a box – since she was effectively vouching for me – and we were whisked away into a security office that I hadn’t known even existed previously. This is clearly where “suspect” people have to plead their case. In fairness, we were dealt with pretty quickly and without issue. It was just a weird experience.

It was interesting to experience the pandemic from another country. Despite what you might see on the news, masking was, if anything, more prevalent in the US than back home.

We managed to avoid getting COVID for a long time. It wasn’t until later in 2021 that I got it. I’ve had it three times in total, and wouldn’t recommend it! Two out of three times I caught it from the kids. The third time, I’m still not completely sure where it came from.

The longstanding effects were harder to predict.

I wouldn’t have predicted that travel for work would almost entirely end, for example. The last time I left London for work was March 2020. At first, work dried up. Clients said they would start “when this is all over.” After a few months, they realised it could be a while and, reluctantly, proceeded virtually.

Now, clients ask for work to be conducted on-site, but change their minds when we say they’re on the hook for expenses.

And despite many advantages, a lot of companies are now retreating from the flexible working that started during the pandemic. I’m a big proponent of working from home, at least as an option. I noticed a backlash as early as the middle of 2020. We had a few years of hybrid workings and now full-time RTO mandates are not uncommon. It’s sad and counter-productive if taken at face value. Naturally there’s the suggestion that some of the motivation is to force people to quit. They call it “natural attrition,” I call it “bad management.”

In the end, the biggest thing that we didn’t predict is that that whole period of time has been forgotten. Pretty successfully it would seem. At the time, it felt bizarre that there is surprisingly little record of the Spanish Flu. With hindsight, it’s clear that after the horrors of the war and a pandemic, people just didn’t want to have to think about it.