I’ve now spent over 100 days in “lockdown”, practicing social distancing. That is over 3 months; 3 months that have looked different to any other time in my life or anything that I could have imagined. I could not have imagined a time when I worked at home everyday, or the children did their schooling at home, or we could not meet friends or family.
Lockdown restrictions are starting to be relaxed in the UK, and we can now meet people and go to more places. So I thought it would be interesting to look back on our 100 days of lockdown.
The schools closed on Friday 20th March and I started sharing at least one photograph a day of our lockdown life from the following day. I used the hashtag #socialdistancingpositivity to remind myself to look for something positive.
It has turned out to be a great pandemic journal. However, I’m aware that it has only captured one side of social distancing. It hasn’t caught the less positive side such as the children being lonely and missing out on the Year 6 residential. So I’m also planning on writing responses to pandemic journal prompts.
I’m sharing some highlights below. If you want to see all the photographs follow me on Instagram.
Food during lockdown
I’ve shared more food related photographs during the 100 days than any other theme. Particular highlights include
- the children learning to cook and bake
- having a restaurant takeaway
- getting a food delivery
Children’s Activities
I want to acknowledge the huge effort the teachers and leaders put in to keep the children occupied during lockdown. Between them they did at least 7 dance classes, Guides, Cubs and a piano lesson each week. All of those gave us a sense of normality (without the travel logistics).
Board games
I love playing board games, particularly with friends. We’ve adapted to playing online using a variety of methods and have ended up playing more often.
Appreciating nature
I love where we live, particularly when we haven’t been able to travel away from home. We have space, flowers, trees and beautiful sunsets. I don’t need much more.
Other lockdown highlights
- I’m making progress on my marketing course
- The children are learning to edit videos for their own YouTube channels
- B went back to school for her last few weeks in primary school
- we’ve started series of films and always end up with us all snuggled up on one sofa
- tried dying B’s hair with crepe paper
- we’ve moved into our new study so they children now have a den (or classroom as it quickly became)
- met our neighabours new puppy
- I’ve quickly learnt to work in new ways running virtual events instead of in person events.
100 days of sharing photographs on Instagram
Being completely honest I’m not very good at sharing pictures on Instagram, so sharing a picture every day has not been easy. To put it into context, I shared 36 pictures during the whole of 2019. There are days when I’ve struggled to remember to take a picture, think of something to share, or take a good picture.
I’m not sure I want that extra pressure every day. So I’m going to think about whether I continue, particularly as restrictions are being lifted in the UK. If I continue, how long do I go for; until the kids are back at school, until I’m back in the office, until we’re back to “normal”? I’ve kept going for now as I enjoy having the memories to look back on, but I’ll see how it goes. Will I reach 200 days?
100 days of pandemic highlights
Here are the nine most liked pictures from Instagram, followed by the nine that I think do a good job of summarising our lockdown experience.
How have you found social distancing? What are your favourite moments? How have you recorded?
Wow, your kids extra curricular teachees did a great job with all those classes. I know people who’s children haven’t had any dance lesson since March and still aren’t having them now. So sad for them (older non technologically.minded teachers).
Yes the dance school did a great job. They started trialling the technology when people started self isolating so they could watch the classes still happening in the studio. Then when the studio had to close they were ready to move completely online. I’m hoping both of them will be able to go back to the studio over the summer.