HOW'S your pandemic going? The reason I ask is that, like many people, I find myself playing the nostalgia game and in ever-so-slightly melancholic, reflective mood as we clock up a steady slew of "this time last year" landmarks.
Let me go first. This time last year I was at a busy craft fair at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow. I perused the packed stalls with a knot of nervousness lodged in my stomach and a very real fear that I still didn't fully understand how Covid-19 was transmitted.
I spent most of the day slathering my hands in alcohol gel, backing away from the folk dishing out free samples and fretting about whether coronavirus could be passed on through handling balls of wool.
READ MORE: Susan Swarbrick’s Week: I won’t be rushing back to the ‘old normal’
I did remark to my mother that it would "probably be our last outing like this for a while". At the time, even with my flair for the dramatic, that seemed a tad hysterical. Yet, less than a month later, the SEC was being transformed into NHS Louisa Jordan like a scene out of an apocalyptic sci-fi film.
In many ways, ignorance was bliss. This time last year none of us had an inkling of the curious behaviours that would emerge during lockdown: the cult of banana bread, drunken Zoom quizzes and choreographed TikTok dance routines (in hindsight: a hellish trifecta).
The one-year anniversary creeps up on you. Even when you acknowledge, deep down, that we are in this for the long haul, there is still the illusion of something temporary and fleeting. I have spent an entire year thinking it is March. Now it is March again. Possibly. I'm no longer certain.
Have I grown as a person? It depends on how you define it. Are we talking waist size? Then yes, definitely. Are we talking about evolving as a human being? Then also, yes, I suppose. But hasn't everyone?
Each of us have changed in myriad ways that may not seem palpable at first. Mostly, I feel like the ageing process has speeded up – a reverse Benjamin Button.
Ageing in a pandemic is a peculiar thing. I can see it in my hands most of all. Before, even as someone in my forties, they could pass for the hands of someone far younger on account of the fact that I have spent decades scuttling for shade at the first hint of sunshine.
A year of rigorous handwashing and alcohol-gel application means they now look gnarled and wrinkly with the perpetual feel of coarse sandpaper, no matter how much I moisturise.
That's vanity, I guess. Something I never knew I possessed until I had hands that looked like lumpen tortoise necks pickled in vinegar.
READ MORE: Susan Swarbrick's Week: The secret joy of bin day
Speaking of ageing, it's the folk with March and April birthdays I feel most sorry for. Another one chalked up in lockdown. Remember last year when we all said that we would make a big fuss this year instead. Erm. Catch you in 2022?
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