In The Beginning

I've been absent and my intention is to backtrack and backfill the story of life for me in this very strange year.

Before nationwide lockdown began, on the weekend when all bars and restaurants were shutdown by the Government, I had to go over and drop some supplies off with the man child in Manchester.  After doing a socially distanced drop off, I wandered around abandoned Manchester for half an hour with my camera.

I remember the sense of abandonment and anticipation of what was to come - it felt like we were on the edge of something bordering on apocalyptic.  At the time, I dismissed my thoughts as ridiculous.  

A week later we were in a national bun fight for toilet rolls, pasta, flour and yeast. I still don't quite understand why panic buying was the default position for so many.  Maybe I was the one who wasn't thinking straight and was actually just carrying on with life, just from a narrower perspective?  Not much was going to change for me, aside from completely losing my income streams and finding I was ineligible for any support, in spite of my 30 years of paying tax and national insurance.  That's a whole other rant.

As I write this, 5 months later, it seems like so long ago that this pre-lockdown phase happened and so much has changed in the meantime.  In some respects, there's been lots of positive forward steps, in others, I feel like I've gone backwards.  I think that is a perspective thing though and not so much the reality.

So, if you are picking up the thread here, what follows is my perspectives through lockdown and my reflections on the state of my life, a little over a year since my life changed radically and unexpectedly.