Coronavirus Diaries – Part 8

October 1st to November 31st

Welcome to our Coronavirus Diaries – Part 8. I have to admit, when I first started writing these Diaries I never envisaged that I’d still be writing them by Autumn 2020. We had Disneyland Paris booked for Half term and were convinced that trip would go ahead.

Well, we were wrong!

However, cases were still relatively low, Schools were still open and until the 1st November, we weren’t in lockdown.

October 2020

Rates were considered to be at around 1 in 200 people. This wasn’t as low as it had been at times, and wasn’t as high as it would get but it was signs that the pandemic was under control for now.

In early October the Government announced that they would be introducing tier systems. It had become a bit confusing with various areas of the Country in their own version of locally imposed lockdown. It was hard for the public to know what rules applied where!

The tiers are introduced on the 14th October and are made up of Medium, High and Very high risk groups.

For us life stayed much the same, we were allowed to socialise in groups of up to 6 and the school remained open. Really, for us, the school being open was the important thing – having missed so much of last year we felt it was really important our daughter got some face to face teaching.

We managed to do some really fun things in October, making the most of the reasonable weather before Autumn really hit.

My youngest and I had a lovely day out at Hampton Court where the sun shone like it was summer. It was also a stroke of luck that we could celebrate our daughters 6th birthday with some family. Because of the rule of six we met her two cousins, my sister and my mum – her dad and little sister couldn’t come along. We went to the seaside and played crazy golf.

Towards the end of October there were whisperings that the cases were rising too rapidly. A number of influential people were pushing for a lockdown.

During half term I took our 6 year old to the Tower of London as we could drive and park nearby. I am so pleased we did as, despite it pouring with rain, we had a lovely day out. It also transpired it would be a while before we could do a trip like that again.

That evening there was a Government briefing where it was announced that England would be going into Lockdown again, from the 5th November to the 2nd December. Schools would remain open but everything else would shut, bar essential shops.

November 2020

This lockdown was much much different to the first one, as the schools were still open. We still got out twice a day for the school run, and our daughter had the continuity of school.

Our time was filled with home improvements, turning our youngest bedroom from a nursery into a little bedroom and it did the job of filling our time perfectly! Other than that our time was spent preparing for Christmas.

Aside from that we went on lots of walks and fed the ducks. As we knew that lockdown would end at the beginning of December it felt manageable.

On the 9th November, there was really good news regarding the vaccines when we found out that one of the main vaccines provided up to 90% efficacy. On the 10th of November it was announced that the vaccine programme would be rolled out. This was probably the biggest bit of news since the Pandemic began, and we tentatively could see a way out of it.

Due to the lockdown the rates did go down, but not as much as they did in lockdown one. This was somewhat inevitable as the lockdown wasn’t nearly as strict – in fact, out and about, it seems like normal life is carrying on.

At the end of November, I celebrated my 37th birthday in lockdown. I never ever would have expected that by November we’d be in lockdown. However, I had a really lovely day and discovered, as many other people have, that lockdown birthdays aren’t all that bad.

Final Thoughts

By having the lockdown in November, I think we all thought we would be ok to enjoy Christmas as ‘normal’. However there was to be a slippery slope of cases and the discovery of a new, highly transmissible variant. Things were about to get worse.

Thank you for reading our Coronavirus Dairies – Part 8. For more on our Coronavirus experience in the UK, check out our other diaries here.