When my boss asked me to keep a diary of the lockdown in March 2020, neither of us really expected it would be featured for more than 3 months but here we are at the 6 month stage, the clocks are about to fall back and Winter is definitely coming. Boo hoo! But Christmas is on the way too so that will be a great big YAY! all round.

In the early days of this column, I had so much to say and the diary almost wrote itself with, to my mind, lots of mildly amusing jibber jabber freely flowing daily out of my head and onto the page. As time went on, my ability to write started to slow down and it became harder and harder to think of anything new to say, even for a weekly article.

There was only so much talk of what I would be doing in a 2020-parallel universe I could stomach. Instead, I found myself in this grey version continuing to hone the arse shaped groove in the sofa next to Dave’s pre-existing groove. Everything was so incredibly dull – a real life metaphor for the lockdown itself.

Well, it wasn’t all that bad, relentless or brutal was it? No, of course it wasn’t as there are positives in everything if we look hard enough. My biggest achievement is that I’ve lost about a stone. I say “about” as it is like a yo-yo even now but at least it is going in the right direction and I will be at my target weight this time next year if I keep going at this rate. It definitely lends itself to our general mantra of, “Rest if you must but don’t you quit” as it’s been a very slow burn.

Along the way, we’ve had drunken internet shopping fueled by rhubarb vodka; the DMZ for all the parcels; my parents in & out of hospital; a cheeky week in Devon and a couple of days in Wales; Zoom quizzes galore in the early days that just reverted to drunken Zoom chats after week 6; inadvertently breaking the rules and then actively breaking them a couple of times for the sake of my mental heath; I’ve belly laughed at Modern Family and sobbed at Ricky Gervais’ After Life; and my business has gone pop but I have a new fixed term contract that may turn into a permanent job. WOW!

OK, so my wings have been well and truly clipped but all my family and friends are safe and have survived. Sadly, not all in my wide circle are fortunate enough to be able to say that.

I didn’t need telling, but I have been reminded that I have a wonderful husband and we have just as much of a lovely time watching the TV in our lounge as we do sitting on a beach in the sun. Just for the record, he’s not perfect – I made that mistake of telling him that once several years ago in writing via a birthday card and it took another 2 years to get him to agree to the retraction.

But what I’ve really missed with all my heart is sitting in my mum & dad’s lounge chatting away, howling with laugher, eating picnic food and drinking fizz or coffee. Hopefully, we will be back to these amazing times really soon.

Well, I’m off to sort out the big box of stuff that needs filing since I got rid of the stair basket in 2016 and see if the plumber I binned off on day 1 can come to fix the leak any time soon.

I hope you and yours all stay safe and sane. Thank you for joining me on this crazy roller coaster ride of my lockdown diary. Nighty night.

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