Farewell Lockdown...

So, as we re-emerge from (yet another but hopefully our final) lockdown, amid the relief and excitement I realise that there is much to navigate through as I reflect on what I have learnt over the past year or so … and what I’ve forgotten!

1) While it was once considered rude to cross the street when somebody was approaching me, it’s now considered highly offensive if I don’t

2) Who knew that so many people have bookcases (those who hadn’t acquired them pdq!) – and how remarkable that they appear to have become less messy, more cerebral and better colour coordinated as lockdown progressed!

3) Not sure who I’m looking forward to hugging more, my sister or my hairdresser

4) Zoom has confirmed that I am not the girl I once was – the eye bags are the least of my worries now I’ve seen my neck in action. It either needs a good cosmetic surgeon or its own postcode

5) The euphoria of finding an out-of-date jar in the kitchen cupboard so I can balance it on top of the wine bottles in the overflowing recycling box in the hope that the bin men might not consider our household too hedonistic.

However, there are other, more pressing, issues to deal with right now, namely the prospect of leaving the house to socialise with others. Like actually getting dressed and remembering that the ‘coat is king’ and the new ‘must have’ season fashion accessory – let’s be realistic, nobody will be taking them off for a good while yet! Will I remember how to use the tube or will I forget to ‘mind the gap’ and disappear, never to be seen again, below Bank underground station. Will I be able to remember how to use a knife and fork (note to self: work from the outside in …). Will I be able to come to terms with the fact that I see a whole person and not just their face in front of the aforementioned designer bookcase.

Even more horrifying, as the use of Zoom decreases, the realisation that I might have to resort to actually walking past people’s houses just as dusk falls – when the lights go on but the curtains are not yet closed - to get a glimpse of next door’s Farrow and Ball paint colour of choice.

So off I trot (well, not so much a trot as a Dick Emery’s ‘Mandy’ waddle on my heels) into London for the first time in over 4 months – given that I’m usually there twice weekly at least, this is beyond exciting for me.

The good news is that I can remember how to use cutlery but the bad news is that, during lockdown I appear to have lost any sense of social etiquette and decorum.

You know how they say that you should never meet your heroes.

Social media is not really my thing. Naturally I have embraced it as life would be pretty difficult to navigate without it. Plus, I won’t lie, I am innately nosey (earlier reference to stalking houses at dusk refers)!

I have, however, during lockdown grown rather partial to Instagram and I carefully monitor the number of followers I have, which has just gone into double figures!

I rest my case…Kim Kardashian I ain’t!

Instagram – or Insta as I have been commanded to call it by every person in my life under 30 – has guided me when trimming my fringe during lockdown, to clean anything around the house that doesn’t move with lemons and white wine vinegar (who knew?) and help me to understand how the moon’s position on the day I was born has predisposed that I can’t stop at one chocolate Hobnob (other biscuits are available…apparently… but why would you?).

I’m also rather taken with the profiles of many of the stylists, health & wellbeing gurus, anyone who can declutter but particularly the journalists.

By way of background, I really wanted to be a journalist and confidently, albeit rather naively in hindsight, told the school’s Careers Adviser (do these still exists?) that by this I meant that I wanted to write cheeky little articles for Woman’s Own (other titles of magazines are available…thinking about it, not too sure there were circa 1979). She squared up to me in a rather passive aggressive manner and firmly told me that I would need to cut my teeth on a local paper. Be that tenacious reporter who got the scoop ignoring who might be offended along the way. I simply didn’t think I could do that.

Plan B was trying to convince my father that I wanted to be a Bluecoat at the Pontinental resort in Tenerife that I’d just returned from (and still nurturing a huge crush on the drummer!). This did not land well (understatement… huge understatement)!

So on to Plan C and I took up the position I’d been offered working in a London branch of a ‘big 4’ bank, just until I decided what I truly wanted to do. I was there for 37 years. You get the gist… I’m not one of life’s risk-takers!

So, back to current life… imagine my delight when, on this inaugural post-lockdown lunch, I spied the current editor of a well-known Sunday Supplement (who we’ll call Flo), enjoying an al fresco lunch in the same Covent Garden restaurant as my sister, cousins and me.

Sadly, none of my group knew who was making me giddy with excitement and star struck but my cousin’s daughter looked at Flo’s Insta profile and was equally persuaded it was her. As I studied her further, any doubts I might have had faded - she was chatting to other diners who in my mind (by my own admission, it’s usually terribly busy in my mind…and not always in a good way) had clearly recognised her too.

Part of her ‘brand’ is posting outfits with the hashtag #clothesmyhusbandhates, accompanied with a witty remark as to why her husband wasn’t impressed with what she was wearing. So, liberated after a couple of glasses of lunchtime vino (will I ever learn?) and encouraged by the general ‘feel good factor’ of actually being ‘out, out’, I couldn’t resist showing off my celebrity trivia.

As she passed to leave, I said (I like to think assertively, some might say smugly) ‘hey there Flo, bet your husband likes your outfit today’, given that she was looking very stylish and uber sassy.

As I looked at my family audience for the appropriate admiration, I detected a nervous smile as my Insta hero looked at me blankly and politely said ‘oh I don’t think he saw this today….and by the way, I’m not called Flo’.

Whaaaat! Wrong… moi…?

In a last-ditch attempt to save face, I tried to convince her that she really was the editor of a Sunday Supplement – such was my conviction - but she was understandably having none of it.

That said, she was keen to know who her doppelganger was. By the time she had actually left the terrace she had googled my Insta hero and was absolutely thrilled.

After careful and deliberate consideration – well on a whim on the tube home - I actually messaged the real Insta hero to ‘fess up and share my shame and just when I thought I couldn’t like her more - she replied. Said it had made her day, which in turn made mine!

So, not only is it good to meet your heroes, it’s also good to meet their doppelgangers - especially when they both have a great sense of humour oh, and very good natures.