The day before the Easter holidays, my husband and I had a row over whether he really needed to go to the supermarket at 7.30am the next day to ‘beat the rush’ and ‘do a big shop’. The source of his anxiety? We had people coming over for a barbecue (it was three people, we were doing burgers, just to set the scene). But this was the first time we’d entertained anyone in almost six months – and he wasn’t sure how much prep he had to do, or how he’d fit it in. Eighteen months ago, we’d have taken a weekend of socialising in our stride, but now? It felt like the equivalent of hosting a huge house party, or our entire family for Christmas.
I’m no better; I’d been frantically flitting between WhatsApp groups, trying to coordinate diary dates, book up as many heated, covered outdoor spaces as I could, while hunting for fun ‘new’ things I could now do with those friends who don’t feel comfortable heading to the pub garden just yet. The previous evening had been dedicated to getting my son on the waiting list for as many baby groups, swimming lessons and classes as I could find on the one day a week he’s not in childcare.
I’m not the only one panicking about making social plans, as we face a frenzy of organising that’s been dubbed the ‘plandemic’. Some venues with outdoor space have no tables free at weekends for nine weeks.
I was six months into maternity leave with my son when coronavirus hit the UK, so I feel like I’ve been in some variation of lockdown for 18 months now, which means I’m trying to fit a year-and-a-half of unmade plans into one summer. And it’s so nice to be busy in a frantic, only-one-weekend-free-all-summer kind of a way (as opposed to the January sort of busy, which was manic stints of work while I had childcare, punctuated by freezing trips to the park to fill the endless weekends where nothing changed).
But there are so many things I’d forgotten about pre-lockdown life. The pressure to get a reservation, the one WhatsApp straggler who never replies in time to make concrete plans, the Doodle polls that reveal there isn’t a single date in all of 2021 we can all do. And the new ones: who the hell do we get to babysit if we want to go out at the same time? Who has to give up their plans to stay with the baby? We’ve never discussed it before, because it’s never come up. I feel like I’ve been cocooned in one (monotonous, kind of depressing) world for so long that I’ve got to re-learn how to be an adult, and a parent, in a new one.
A few months ago, I’d wake in the night trying to work out how low infection cases in our area had to get before I could reasonably ask my parents to form a childcare bubble. Now I wake trying to remember if I requested a high chair for that Sunday lunch booking in eight weeks’ time, or run through my friendship groups, trying to recall if there’s anyone I haven’t suggested a meet-up with yet. My husband and I set up a joint calendar the other day, and I downloaded a new calendar app so I could sync work, fun and family stuff all in one place. It feels like a shiny new toy, and I keep looking at in wonder as the dates fill up with the promise of fun to come.
The other day, I realised that I’ve double-booked myself for a weekend in June, and felt that familiar old stab of anxiety and guilt as I tried to work out who would care less if I rescheduled, and when I could see them. For a brief moment, I felt a rush of nostalgia for January and February, when time was an ever-expanding, stretchy void that felt impossible to fill, rather than a precious commodity, to be parcelled into tiny slots and handed out with care.
But it was only a brief moment. Then I went back to hunting for restaurants with outdoor spaces that are still taking bookings for September 2022.