Pandemic - Two years on

After about 10 months after the onset of the global pandemic, I started to collect my thoughts on the whole thing. It wasn’t really my intention that anyone read it, it was purely for my own sanity. I never really thought that I’d be writing on the two year anniversary, but here we are. 

It’s become hard to imagine life before lockdown. I’d been with Rachel 16 months. We’ve now been together 40 months. 60% of our relationship has been in lockdown. We’ve bought a house(gone from 2 bedrooms to 5 bedrooms), we’ve levelled up in our jobs. Life is generally pretty good. We even managed to make a beautiful lockdown baby:

Our life is very much a “new normal” and it’s become impossible to distinguish between “pre-pandemic” and “pre-parenthood”, but I’ll do my best. In fact, lockdowns, pandemics and restrictions have become so normal that I don’t even have major rambling observations about the craziness of it all. Instead, I’m just trying to use this as a milestone to update myself on the passage of time.

Year 2 of lockdown allowed us to hit the ground running. I think the biggest change is that I’m much better at wasting time.  Reading more. Doing more active watching and active listening. Down time has no longer become a mindless way to catch your breath between social engagements, it’s now become a much more pleasurable experience that compliments my work and creativity.

Social engagements themselves have changed. It’s been over 2 years since I found myself drinking a flat pint in a Wetherspoons because there was “drinks with the boys” that I felt I should attend. As things have gradually opened up again I’ve found I’m very selective about what will get me to go to a pub in the evening and who I will spend time with. It’s mostly gigs. 

Gigs have been fantastic. The first I was at came with a real sense of excitement. We were all like toddlers that hadn’t seen each other for ages, which in many ways we were. Palpable excitement at seeing friends. That’s how it should always be. 

Playing gigs has been great fun too. Once the initial nerves about “can I still do this?” disappeared there was a great atmosphere. Even the sound engineers have cast off their jaded carapaces and are tackling things with enthusiasm. Ticket splits are worse, venue pints are even more expensive, but there’s an enthusiasm and excitement that had been gone from the infrastructure for so long. I’ve been playing to relatively large paying audiences though; my opinion might quickly change once I’m in a basement venue playing to relatives of the band. 

One area that didn’t improve was the wedding work. I gave it up. I won’t poke too many holes in it, cos many people I know still rely on it to make a living, but it became harder and harder to justify the hours and hours sitting in a van and the 5am finishes for relatively poor pay. The moving parts need to be impeccably managed or it infiltrates on the rest of your life. Lockdown taught me that I make a lot more money when the weekends aren’t spent on the A9. I no longer have the optimism of pretending the economics work. It’s a young man’s game. I’ve written down some hilarious stories over the years and maybe once enough water has passed under the bridge it’ll become a tv comedy or I’ll at least make a blog post about it. Maybe David Brent: Life on the road covers those bases.

My work has went from strength to strength. I’m now surrounded by creatives doing interesting work and making the best of what they’ve got. I’ve watched some hard working bands and artists I’ve done stuff with with since March 2020 see their hard graft rewarded and get great opportunities as a result. I’d like to think I had a small part to play in that. Either way it’s heartwarming and fills your creativity glass. I’ve kept my skills on my toes by taking up droning and analogue photography. I can even stumble my way through some Beatles tunes on the piano to entertain Ronni.

The shoddy behaviour of our political leaders continues to seep into the public consciousness. The pandemic really sorted out the men from the boys in terms of who could handle the concept of temporarily losing liberties for the greater good. Selfishness and lies became the weak defences of weak people. 

Your country needs you! Can your entertain yourself with what you have and travel through it without needing a Wetherspoons to placate you?

Seems such a simple task, but the conspiracy theorists and insecure continue to lie to themselves. Entire careers ruined because they are arrogant enough to be convinced that they know something no one else does, when most of their drivel can be disproved by standard grade physics. Arrogance and idiocy may be the real pandemic. The difference between millionaire politicians and bedroom musicians is the former have the funds to survive after everyone has deserted them.

There’s a fork in the road. Should you choose A or B? Well who makes the forks? Why are they making forks? Are we really the forks? Do forks exist? Are the forks really making the forks so that we can make more forks and they won’t notice that we will notice that they can’t? It’s the jews? the aliens? The paedophiles? The Alien jewish paedophiles with forks?

These people aren’t free or doing research. They are ill. Mentally ill. Weed plus arrogance plus YouTube equals lives wasted.

Off the back of Brexit and the pandemic(although the politicians are now blaming the war in Ukraine) we enter an International recession. As if the damage to families done by covid wasn't enough we now need to tighten our belts and appreciate the simple things in life.

International travel continues to be a bit of a gamble. I don’t really understand why you’d try, but I’ve never felt the need for a Spanish holiday in the sun and mini-me makes it even less appealing. The “stick to your own region” advice is a distant memory which I can barely believe happened, so we’ve been all over Scotland on road trips. Round the north coast. Climbing mountains, dipping toes in cold lochs etc. We can now do it all again with the added challenge of car seats and pram wheels. We’ve both lived and worked in other countries which gives us the luxury of focusing on the ‘wide’ part of far and wide for the near future. Similarly I’m glad I gigged everywhere pre-pandemic, pre-brexit and pre-recession. At the time, I swore a lot while I dragged amps on and off buses, trains and trams but it now seems like a long lost liberty.

One cloud in this silver lining is that recessions and downturns in the economy are traditionally times when people create things. From blues in the Great Depression to Creativity in the thatcher years. We just have to batten down the hatches and make do with what we have. All the creatives who managed to overcome their mental health and the lure of Wetherspoons and level up during year 1 of the pandemic have the skills to (hopefully) pay the (elevated) bills.

Conclusion

The pandemic started with us cancelling the holiday of a lifetime amid the fear that our work would dry up and two years on we have a wee baby and a new house. We wake up with views of the sea and the mountains and there’s a 30 minute train to Glasgow. Our work has went from strength to strength and we’ve trimmed a lot of the fat in our lives - currently not literally :) Amid terrible global catastrophes across a multitude of areas we are prepped for what’s coming by being really happy holed up in our little haven. We can work here and we are walking distance from mountain views with opportunities for dolphin spotting. In the present climate I don’t know what more we could ask for.