Two February half-terms; two different worlds – Jayne Dowle

A few reluctant household chores, or perhaps baking, or re-arranging the pictures and treasures in her room. A walk with the dog in the afternoon. Then scouring Netflix for a suitable film or box-set we haven’t seen already.

Tomorrow and Wednesday evening, she will take part in online dance classes (the studio has been closed now since before Christmas). On Saturdays, she accompanies me shopping for older family members. It’s a one-person-one-trolley rule in the supermarket. Lizzie does one list, I do the other. She’s the champion at packing bags.

We call it life skills. We talk of how prepared she will be when she leaves home to go to university. We both know there is a strong chance this might not happen. As a Year 10 pupil, Lizzie is almost half-way through her GCSEs now but has no idea whether she will sit examinations or even return to the classroom full-time.

Her brother Jack, three years older, leaves college this year. His ambition is to find a modern apprenticeship in sports broadcasting. His optimism is impressive. He’s grown up so much in 12 months.

When I remember February half-term last year, it stands out as a marker in the sand. In my daughter’s life, it marked a proper rite of passage – her first proper pop concert, the American singer/songwriter Melanie Martinez at Brixton Academy in South London.

The ticket was a Christmas present from her grandparents. It was also a temporary pass to a world we took for granted. I remember that my biggest worry of the entire trip was getting a bothersome parking ticket – London parking meters now being fiendishly computerised.

I never imagined that within a few short weeks, it would be technically illegal to drive more than a few miles from my home in South Yorkshire.

Lizzie met up with her older cousin Hannah, who lives in Kent. In the early evening, I had a coffee with a dear old friend, whilst my husband wandered Regent Street looking in the shops. Then we met my sister and brother-in-law for dinner and made our way back to Brixton to pick up the girls. That night we stayed in a hotel in Peckham bustling with tourists from Europe and Asia.

The next day, we took a sightseeing boat from Greenwich, and spent the afternoon strolling around Westminster up Whitehall to Covent Garden.

The capital was busy, thronged with other families on half-term enjoying the early spring sunshine. We’d heard about this mysterious coronavirus coming from China. Just a few days before, on February 10, the Government had declared Covid-19 a “serious and imminent threat to public health”.

However, we thought, back then, that it only affected older people, like the hundreds marooned on cruise ships in the Mediterranean. The only indication it might be dangerous here was the odd person wearing a facemask. The UK threat was overblown, we concluded. Like SARs and swine flu, it would soon pass.

With typical Yorkshire cynicism, we regarded the London mask-wearers as over-cautious Southern types. I mean, we weren’t even wearing our big coats. If only we had known that just over a month later, on March 23, the situation would have escalated so rapidly that the whole country would be locked down with immediate effect by a grave-faced Prime Minister.

No more trips to London. No more pop concerts. No seeing family from far away. No freedom, not for those who follow the rules at least.

We were so entitled only 12 short months ago. We looked forward to holidays at home and abroad and made future plans with confidence.

And now we live in a country where we are reminded that it is illegal to go on holiday and more than 100,000 families have lost a precious member – father, mother, brother, sister, child – to the ravages of this disease.

No wonder we all have our sad days. And we all have those days when we want to rail against the impositions which have been placed upon us. To try and make sense of it all, perhaps we should all have those days when we take a moment to stop and think and consider what went before – and what lies ahead.

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