CHEERIO, SECOND LOCKDOWN... HELLO, CHRISTMAS! BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

CHEERIO, SECOND LOCKDOWN... HELLO, CHRISTMAS!

SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I'm guessing I wasn't the only Dublin person who woke up yesterday on the first of December and felt a huge sense of relief, as if a great weight was being lifted off me and chucked away. It was the day we Irish folks exited our second national lockdown, six weeks of doom and gloom unalleviated by even a flicker of hope and beset by worries over the approaching festive season.

It was a strange creature, that Second Lockdown. While I'm not suggesting for a second that the first COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year was fun or enjoyable, there were aspects of it that were. Spending extra time with loved ones, getting to properly re-watch your DVD collection or re-reading your best-loved books, your kids not getting in trouble at school because there was no school, that type of thing.

This Second Lockdown, as I've suggested, was a horse of a different colour altogether. The kids still had to go to school, the adults still had to go to work, but all your favourite shops and restaurants were shut. So were the libraries and museums, the art galleries and churches, the cinemas and theatres. The fun and flavour had basically gone out of life for the duration, and there was nothing to distract you from the misery. Even Mrs. Doyle surely wouldn't like this much misery.

A rampant new-fangled 'fantastic beast' known as 'Click and Collect' stalked the country throughout this Second Lockdown, but I ignored him as best I could and nimbly side-stepped him when it looked like he was looming too close, his fiery dragon breath rudely singe-ing my person.

I don't know about you guys, but (unless it's some kind of emergency) I like to choose my purchases in person by lifting them down from a shelf. In an actual physical space known as a shop. Remember those? Square structures, doors and windows, nice friendly chap or chapess behind a counter trying to flog you stuff? Sometimes you'd build up a rapport with them and you'd really look forward to chatting with them? Those places are called shops. They'll be as obsolete as ration cards and gas-masks if these bloomin' lockdowns continue.

And, with regard to the ravenous monster known as Click and Collect, let's not forget that some Irish people may not be computer-literate or have access to the Internet. Libraries were shut during the Second Lockdown as well as the first, so you couldn't go in and book a computer to check your emails as usual or order stuff online the way you may have been used to. 'Click and Collect' can therefore go and get shagged, if you'll pardon my French.

My daughter drove us all mad during these six weeks by ordering loads of stuff online, then swanning off to work leaving me to take the deliveries in. Which would have been okay, had not every single delivery driver decided to mis-read our address and give my daughter's various parcels to the neighbours.

You won't know how aggravating that is until you have to knock sheepishly at your next-door neighbour's front door in your slippers (when they're just in from work and are trying to cook a dinner, mind you) and ask them if they've by any chance seen anything of an errant box of one hundred multi-coloured Christmas tealights...

Anyway, yesterday on my road was just lovely. It was like waking up from a really boring six-week-long dream or something. I'm sorry but Second Lockdown was so boring. I know everything's what you make of it, but it didn't seem like there was much anyone could do to liven it up. A woman on the News likened it to being 'locked up in Mountjoy Prison,' and that's probably what it was like for some people. But yesterday was great.

I took my teenage son for a haircut (locally, of course) and watched with pleasure as he chatted away to his favourite barber about football. Then we walked up the road a bit and saw that the flower-stall lady was back in her usual spot (apparently even outdoor retail was disallowed), and, better still, she'd set out her Christmas trees, a sure sign that the festive season was at hand. The road smelled like pine trees. Lovely jubbly.

Then we went to what I call our local bits-and-pieces shop, where you can buy everything from bootlaces to cigarette lighters to a condolences card, and stocked up on teabags and kitchen paper. We'd got in a big supply of each before Second Lockdown, but now supplies were running perilously low. Talk about timing! Second Lockdown ended just as things were starting to get serious.

The best thing about yesterday was the fact that everyone was smiling and looking happy as Larry to be greeting customers and shopkeepers again, depending what side of the counter you stood. 

The feelings of relief, goodwill and plain old glad-to-be-back were nearly tangible. I ingested them like a welcome breath of fresh air after weeks of what felt like sedentary staleness. Enjoy it while you can, one shopkeeper urged me with a smile. I know what you mean, I smiled back. I'll never take all this for granted again.

Let's hope that, if we have to go into any level of lockdown again after Christmas (and no doubt there'll be a price to pay for all this wonderful freedom!), our government in its infinite wisdom will permit local shops to stay open and trading. Never underestimate the power of community to lift peoples' spirits. My spirits were royally lifted yesterday just by the sight of my local street, back in business. Long may it continue. 

    AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women's fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64