2 minute read
Iceni Columnist Mark King
The Diary of a Norfolk Family By Mark King
It’s been inescapable! Literally, if you wanted to fly away somewhere, anywhere that was quiet and away from it all, you couldn’t.
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You couldn’t get away from it on the news, or from your social media sites like Facebook. You couldn’t speak to family, friends or neighbours without all talk turning to the Coronavirus, or its deadlier form of Covid-19. I was determined not to mention the little beastie in my article, but as it has affected every aspect of my family life, I would have been left with just a blank page to send to the editor.
Above: Mark King
went out the window. Then there were the birthday presents we scrambled to try and get. With the shops closed, we spent hours scrolling the internet to find items on online platforms, only to find it would take eight weeks to delivery or were out of stock until further notice.
Although the lockdown has blown a massive hole into our everyday social life from going out to the pub or restaurant, to the cancellation of events we have booked like Lets Rock in Norwich, the Light festival in Lowestoft and a long weekend at the Latitude festival, it also affected us in such unseen ways. Both of the children had birthdays during this world-wide emergency, so all the usual fun that would have been had with family and friends Luckily for me, my family, both immediate and extended, and as far as I know, my many friends too, this whole experience has been a massive inconvenience, but nobody has suffered from any ill effects from Covid-19, and I am truly, truly grateful for this.
With the shops being stripped bare of everyday essentials like toilet paper, milk, bread, flour and pasta and then these items having to be rationed, and with being unable to buy special things like birthday presents, and then you add the genuine fear that everyone felt that death could be a hand away from a germ-infested door handle, or a sneeze away from stranger in those first two weeks of lockdown, I can honestly say that moment in history is the nearest I can imagine what it must have felt like for my parents, and grandparents, as they lived through the years of the Second World War.
