What will we bring with us from 2020?

2020: A Loss of Innocence?

A year like no other. Unprecedented. Sort of monotonous? We’ve heard it all. Never before had we felt like we had so much time to do, well, so little. Or felt as if we were under quite so much pressure to use all that supposed free time to change, to grow, to acquire helpful new skills.

In my case, my new-found skills are ones I don’t care too much for. The ability to scenario-plan all the ways you could potentially infect your nearest and dearest in a bid to manage all the various risks involved in 2020’s small permitted social occasions, of clocking up an unfathomable amount of on-camera time, of acquiring the new-found ability to scrutinise every inch of my face in high-definition and of becoming uncomfortably familiar with every inch of our cosy (read small and built to pass in and out of) city-centre apartment.

Daily signs of the changes brought about to manage Covid have become commonplace (and necessary).

Away from the screen, 2020 brought new unexpected scenes sharply into focus. Instead of discovering new cities or destinations, the familiar transformed before our eyes until we found ourselves walking along empty city-streets in the wake of the first lockdown, as we wondered how long it may last. (The summer, surely, some of us thought then) Or as winter drew in, a more eerie atmosphere…