COVID-19, FIVE YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

COVID-19, FIVE YEARS ON.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Was it really five years ago today that our government announced the closure of all schools for two weeks because a virus called COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, had travelled here from China?

It was better to be safe than sorry, we were told, little knowing that the two weeks off school would turn into five and a half months and that those months in lockdown would turn out to be some of the strangest and most surreal and bizarre we’d ever experienced as a country.

 I remember where I was when the school closures were announced. In a record shop, looking at CDs. I was convinced, I suppose, like many other people, that it would be a storm in a teacup and over before we knew it. Boy, was my face red.

The school closure thing turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My son, still coming to terms with an autism diagnosis, wasn’t having an easy time of it in school and the break was a huge relief to both himself and myself.

My daughter wasn’t too happy in her job in retail at the time, and the closure of all but the most essential shops gave her a chance to figure out what she really wanted to do. Now she has a career, as opposed to a job, in radio, and we couldn’t be happier for her.

I myself was one of the lucky/unlucky people scheduled to bring out a debut novel during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A publishing company had purchased my trilogy of books, THIRTEEN STOPS, THIRTEEN STOPS LATER and THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER. They were due to be released every spring from 2020 to 2022.

Of course, the bookshops were closed (since when are bookshops non-essential retail???) so my books, supposed to come out in print versions, ended up as e-books on the publishers’ website. It was disappointing, yes, but I consoled myself with the fact that you could order print versions from Amazon and, I must say, they looked gorgeous.

I bought a bunch of them to give free to friends and family first time round. By the time the second and third books came out, however, the price had gone up a fair bit so very few people got free copies. Now, five years on, I realise it’s better if people pay you for your work rather than you giving free books away willy-nilly, but you live and learn.

The books only did moderately well and didn’t catapult me into the big-time like I might have secretly hoped, but I’m still so, so glad that I experienced what it’s like to be traditionally published, by a publishing firm, as well as doing the whole self-publishing thing, which I genuinely love.

I discovered that there’s not a whole lot of difference between the two methods, in that you now have to do a huge amount of the marketing yourself, practically the bulk of it, but as I said, I’m happier for having the experience of both modes of publishing under my belt.

I also learned to write little opinion pieces of roughly 800-1000 words to publicise my books, and I found it so enjoyable I’ve kept it up since. It’s a great way to sound off and get things off your chest, even if only a handful of people read them. It’s the writing of them that matters. It can be so cathartic, akin to writing a diary.

Anyway, the months of 2020 passed and we got used to wearing masks over our faces and sanitising our hands every chance we got. It’s turned me into a compulsive hand gel user for life, lol. We self-isolated if we felt we had symptoms of the dreaded coronavirus. Kids were home-schooled and exercised every morning to Joe Wickes’s cheery YouTube tutorials and mummies baked banana bread for something to do.

We socially distanced when we met people out and about or in the supermarket, our old people ‘cocooned’ in order to stay safe, the death toll from the coronavirus was on the News every night, and people (like me!) became addicted to watching the gloomy figures. Looking back, that mightn’t have been the best thing for our collective mental health as a nation, but it’s easy to be wise in hindsight.

My daughter and I cherished the time she was allowed to spend at home, not working. We got Netflix for the first time and we’d watch shows, then order the book the show was based on from the Book Depository, which didn’t charge for delivery. Sadly, it’s gone now (I think Amazon ate it), but oh, the joy it gave us!

Having book parcels arrive in the post within a few days gave us something to look forward to. It was my first experience of ordering stuff online and it became addictive very quickly, so maybe it’s not a bad thing the Book Depository shut down and the alternative, paying through the nose when buying stuff from Amazon, was too grim and expensive to contemplate.

It was during this period that we abandoned dongles for proper house Internet, which was so luxurious and relaxing after the soul-destroying stress of monthly top-ups, and we discovered the fun of buying dozens of cheap or even free online courses as well and acquainting ourselves with such enjoyable skills as journaling and self-care, which became super-big during the pandemic.

Also super-big during the pandemic was Donald Trump, who was finishing up the last year of his presidency of the United States in 2020. Well, of course, that wasn’t actually his last year as such as he’s back again, but we didn’t know that that was going to happen back then. He insisted on calling the coronavirus ‘the kung-flu’ because it came from China and then asked his medical staff if drinking some kind of bleach might banish the bug…

We were allowed to mingle again during the Christmas of 2020, with the result that thousands contracted COVID-19 and the whole country shut down again for another five months or so. I think a kind of boredom set in during this second lockdown that hadn’t been present during the first one. The novelty had well and truly worn off by then. Home-schooling mothers took to the wine and longed to get back to their jobs and offices for the break…

Then suddenly we had COVID tests and vaccines, and we could show our little vaccine certificates when we went into cafes and restaurants, and people who refused to get vaccinated and didn’t have the little certificates couldn’t get into the cafes and restaurants and they got very pissed off and said the government was deliberately brainwashing us as a people.

And where are we with it all now? So many Irish people lost loved ones during this horrible time and weren’t even able to be present at the death-beds because of the contagious nature of the virus. It was a period of time we’ll never forget as a nation, and it would make you wonder how ready we’d be for another pandemic. We certainly do live in strange and interesting times.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my readers, and to everyone who lost a loved one to COVID-19. We’ll see them all again one day.