3 years ago today the word lockdown came into our vocabulary. Until then, it was rarely used, certainly not by us.

This is t the best graph but is shows the dates mentioned above.

Lockdown. What does it mean to you?

For me, it was terrifying to start off with, as I had just been made redundant on 28th February due to my anxiety and depression. Sorry, of course, the official line is that my position was made redundant due to a restructuring of the department. I’ve always been very bitter about this, but let’s be fair…. I’d been off sick for 10 weeks from Sep-Dec 2018 and then again from June 2019 to the February of 2020 so I shouldn’t have expected it to be waiting for me with open arms.

I felt a deep shame at being made redundant.

I had completely failed at my job. I wasn’t hard enough. Wasn’t strong enough. Wasn’t good enough.

Other people could manage, just not me.

I was a daft wee lassie in a hard man’s world.

I had tried so hard to please everyone. Came in as early as I could and left later than everyone , just to be seen. I tried to keep the peace in a political business. I had to pull my big girl pants up for almost EVERY confrontation…. And there were A LOT.

My big girl pants weren’t big enough.

Anyway, I digress, as usual. You get the picture. I’m feeling really fragile, without my high flyer job that, to me, completely defined who I was.

Boom. Lockdown. Everything is closed. You can’t even begin to start looking for another job.

I’m another way I really quite liked it. It was the excuse I used to allow me more time to recover. Truth be told, I wasn’t ready to look for another job let alone sell myself to anyone.

Suddenly the rest of the world joined my new “stay at home” life. Craig was there every day. We didn’t need to worry too much about money as I had my redundancy.

We had no idea what to expect. We weren’t allowed to mix with anyone outwith our own household. I remember back thinking we followed most, if not all of the rules to the letter. I’m not sure I remember much of those first few months other than the lovely sunshine we had.

We got loads done in the garden and the house. We made a point of doing somethin every day and got up and got on with the task at hand.

We’ll never have that kind of time again in our lives I don’t think. I doubt people would adhere to a lockdown as much if it happened again.

3 years ago eh? How time flies. In such a short space of time we do now wonder why someone might be wearing a mask now that it’s no longer required in most places.

We painted all the sheds.

We had zoom campfires with members of Overland Bound.

We also had zoom meetings with our family and friends… my poor mum had a zoom 70th birthday.

I took a lot of photos of the dogs!! Nothing new there then…. 😆

We planted things, we baked, we got creative. I crocheted hearts for our local Funeral Directors. I crocheted a lot.

We worked on Craig’s Jeep transforming the back of it into a camping vehicle.

We washed and painted the house.

Our hair grew out of control, at least Craig’s did…. And most of all we relaxed and enjoyed each others company.

It seems like such a distant memory yet so many people are still catching Covid now. And the glorious sun kept shining!

Of course the lockdown was the reason I started my blog. Our local Beith Trust asked people to keep a diary during lockdown and it grew from there. I think I started on the 8th day of lockdown… so that’s almost 3 years of my daily blog…. Minus a few on the really bad days. I never thought I’d still be writing!

Also a year ago today I finally caught Covid-19 for the first time. Couldn’t believe it was on the 2 year anniversary. I had no idea how I caught it.

So this year, I started the day with another run with the dogs. Bhruic joined our morning jog today.

It was lovely and calm after the strong winds of yesterday…. And no rain.

It was like the sky was on fire.

It’s been a really busy day at work but I’ve finished up Tartan for a few days, back on Wednesday. Looking forward to a wee mini break.

A lot of memories stirred up today. I’ve enjoyed the wee trip down memory lane.

Stay safe everyone ♥️♥️♥️