Lockdown stories

The spring is in the air and I feel great, finally!! Lockdown easing in the UK made me appreciate my life and freedom above all. Being able to roam around London worry free (well, sort of, still), meet my friends, go for food and drinks together and other... just normal stuff. Coming back to living a normal life made me realise how deeply oppressed I actually felt during the lockdown, how badly it impacted me, how winter depression sneaked in slowly, in daily drips, frog boiling method. This made me realise how much community and close people mean to me.

The good: I can make Chicago style deep dish pizza at home in my cast iron pan and it's actually really really good The bad: I don't think I'll be getting the real thing for a long long time. I don't know whether I'm happy and proud that I could do it or whether I'm unhappy because I didn't have a choice...

Cayman Islands Success – Firm but Free At first, I found it difficult to get on board with the Cayman Islands government’s scheme for visitors to be kept in a reluctant house-arrest upon arrival in Cayman. But I had spent the summer in Europe with a mask on my face most of the time, whilst life in Cayman had gone mostly back to normal, perhaps largely because of the tough approach taken there, including jailing a 19-year-old girl with no previous criminal record for a month for breaking the rules. When my husband, our toddler, and I arrived back in Cayman we were not allowed to leave our apartment for 16 days, and we had electronic tags attached to our wrists so that our every move could be monitored by the authorities! On balance, it was probably worth it! We have been free, and happily socialising without masks or other restrictions, for the last three months since completing quarantine. During the same period the news from Europe, the US and around the world, has gone from bad to worse to near catastrophic! It was tricky to reconcile these two totally opposite worlds: inside Cayman where life continues almost Covid-free; and in most other countries where family and friends are not allowed to visit each other, and one by one people we know are suffering this strange illness but, in most cases, surviving. This apocalyptic world seems to be located in alternate universe from my current reality in which my main problem is being too social and having too much communication. The prevailing attitude in Cayman is similar to the Blitz spirit of 1940s London – people feel like, if it's the end of the world, they should party and go out with a bang! Yes, danger is all around us, but it’s somewhere far away while we are insulated from the current plague on our little Caribbean paradise. Every day disastrous and shattering news are reaching us and from this new perspective that Corona virus is here to stay, regardless the vaccines, I don't think we will be going anywhere anytime soon. I would personally struggle if I didn’t leave the island for more than 6 months as I always preferred to being in the centre of what’s happening, rather than being on the fringes. The island is small, the architecture rudimentary, and the cultural scene is limited, but our main strength now is being with people and connecting. In a strange way, I am very grateful to be locked here, outside of the mess of contemporary civilisation and its current struggles.

- After spending a long time in the UK I'm back in my country. It turns out lockdowns in the UK are not as bad as I thought they were, in comparison with entire weekend curfews. I Cant wait to come back to London where there are dozens of amazing parks where i can workout and breathe fresh air, where the healthcare system is not at the brink of collapse forcing governments to come up with extreme restrictions such as making illegal for people to go out of their house according to their ID number . A country where you can go out after 8pm if you want to, or where, in case someone in your family needs a hospital bed, chances are you will get it. Where the economy is strong enough despite the uncertainty to keep the society in place guaranteeing the safety of their citizens. People in the UK don't know how privileged they are. Chances are the UK will be one of the first countries in the world, where everyone will get a vaccine. Meaning it will probably be one of the first European countries to go back to normal. In my country they are talking about 2 years, i really cant see myself living like this for 2 more years.