Andy Richardson: Harsh times – but people have lived through worse

Post-Covid life will not be the same as the one we knew before. It is the construction project that requires a team of 20 when we were told 10 would do. It is the vacuum cleaner that protrudes into our savings account, sucks up the contingency and leaves only dust. Who knew vacuum cleaners could do that? We thought they were just for giving the dog a comedy Mohican.

History teaches us that we’ll recover. And while the recovery might be slower than we initially imagined, progress will take us to a sunnier place. But at what cost? Businesses that survive will never be able to go back to where they were. So while we all might hope that bosses install five-a-side football pitches or table tennis tables for returning workers, the reality is city slickers who inhabited high rise offices might forever be consigned to cupboard-sized home offices. Shooing the cat away from a video conferencing call will replace the polite request for colleagues to ssshhhh that we once knew and loved.

When Boris talked about levelling up the nation after securing a Parliamentary majority, he probably didn’t imagine that bin men and hospital porters would become more important in our national conversation that Premiership footballers and A-list entertainers. But they are. The mllkman and the nurse, the volunteer and the migrant vegetable picker, the geeky scientist and the engineer building a ventilator, these are the people now making headlines. They are the ones saving life and preserving its quality.

By the time Covid-19 has played itself out, none of us will be untouched by it. All of us will know someone who knows someone who knows someone who had it. And we will have moved to a place where respect for our emergency services and NHS staff must be far more tangible than ever it was before. We ought not to just cheer the NHS from our steps once in a blue moon. Speakers and giant TVs should be installed outside nurses’ homes and timed to applaud every time they finish a shift. Canons of ticker tape should be wired into the NHS shift pattern to explode over our heroes and heroines each day.

What are the parallels to 2020? Those of us too young to have lived through World War II or the 1918 Pandemic can only imagine back to those times – and trust that we are being neither flippant nor crass in making the comparison. And yet they provide no reflection on our present lives. How could they? The Second World War lasted for six years. This will assuredly not. And having to live shoulder to shoulder in a high-rise flat is nothing as compared to being cheek-to-cheek in the trenches. It is inconvenient and awkward, challenging and sometimes harsh. But people have lived through much worse. All around the world, others face greater hardships.

We live in extraordinary times. Words written today will be out of date tomorrow as events create a new reality. Jokes told now will seem inappropriate a few days hence. The pillars on which lives are built are slowly being eroded. The only certainty is uncertainty and the only constant is change. Trying to figure out what will happen and when is like taking a pin, spinning a globe and hoping you’ll hit the Pitcairn Islands. Which is to say; there is no point. It is utterly, utterly pointless.

Covid-19 is a significant event for people of all ages. Emails sent and photographs taken before lockdown now seem to have been written in a different time and place. That time feels carefree and unencumbered by the restrictions that all of us face. Was life really that simple? For once, the idea of rose-tinted shades seems entirely appropriate. Life was easier a month or two ago. Things weren’t as challenging as they are now.

People are showing remarkable courage and heroism. Ordinary folk are making a difference to the lives of strangers – as well as their loved ones. The NHS volunteers are engaged in a national effort and all who decide not to leave their front door are helping to save lives.

And as we head into a prolonged period of lockdown, all of us might ask what we did during Covid-19? Did we break the rules and ignore social distancing because we were too impatient or did we stay home, prevent the disease from spreading and protect our NHS? Did our life succumb to petty trivialities – like pinning angry notes to neighbour’s cars to ask them not to park there – or were we kind, thoughtful and selfless? Covid-19 may be tough, but it also gives us all the opportunity to live a better life, to be our better self.