Whatever Johnson may say, the end to this pandemic feels further than ever

As a new national lockdown begins, Will Gore finds it hard to remain optimistic

The PM announces the third national lockdown (AP)

We knew it was coming didn’t we? Infection rates still rising; hospitals filling up; people dying in numbers not seen for months. But the prime minister didn’t want to let go of a long-held hope, that 2021 would be different – better – than the ghastly year before. We all wished it too.

So, there he was last Sunday, insisting that schools were safe and that pupils should return, almost as if optimism could alter hard facts. It reminded me of occasions when my children have insisted on having some sickly-looking food that I know they won’t like, then chewed determinedly on after the initial rush of enthusiasm has worn off in a desperate bid to prove its deliciousness.

And just as my kids always admit in the end that “actually I don’t really like it”, so the PM had to confront reality just a day later – not so much following the science as backtracking to the point at which he left it.

The prospect of another national lockdown is bleak indeed, not least for those living alone, or stuck in toxic relationships. For many working parents, the thought once again of trying to juggle jobs with home-schooling is grim: at least last time, in our blithe, Joe Wicks-backed naivety, we had no prior knowledge of how hellish it would be. There is no innocence now.

Still, it is hard not to let our own stresses show. We hold our children tight and tell them that all will be well in the end

An hour after Boris Johnson ended his address to the nation on Monday evening, I ventured out for some air – largely because I hadn’t left the house all day, but also because it felt like the customary way to greet another lockdown.

I turned left out of garden, automatically taking the same short route that had become my habitual evening walk last March, when the land was muted by lockdown number one. It had been cold then too, but at least in those weeks the chill felt like the last throw of winter’s dice. Now, at the start of a long, dark January, Jack Frost might all too easily get on a roll.

In homes along the road that runs up the hill behind our house, some people still had Christmas lights up: a message of hope amidst the gloom, or perhaps an attempt to hang on to some festive cheer. Will they be taken down on twelfth night? I rather hope not. Through one window, I spied a Christmas tree robed in tinsel and baubles, its tip hitting the ceiling, where it bent gently against the plaster. I knew how it felt.

Someone near the top of the hill had evidently hung some wind chimes in their garden, which tinkled softly in the icy breeze. I’m not a fan generally; there always seemed to be someone in Midsomer Murders who had a penchant for them, and they usually came to a sticky end. But it felt good to recognise something new on a walk I have done a million times. Maybe life actually does move on.

When I got home, my daughter wanted to know whether she would, despite Johnson’s announcement, have to go to school anyway, now that her mother’s nursing job is purely clinical, rather than focused on education as it had been last spring. The affirmative answer disappointed her – she took to lockdown better than most.

My son, who took to it like a duck to a frozen pond, was reassured to discover that a couple of his friends also have keyworker parents and will therefore be in class alongside him – although even if it was just him and a cardboard cut-out of the headteacher, it would be better for everyone than having him learning remotely from home. We are, very obviously, among the lucky ones.

Still, it is hard not to let our own stresses show. We hold our children tight and tell them that all will be well in the end; but the end somehow feels less tangible now that at any other moment in this crisis.

If by Easter, or by the summer, or by next year, the virus has been sufficiently suppressed that life can return to something like it once was, then we will rejoice. But we will also surely wonder whether the underlying dread that so many people have been feeling for so long might not leave an extended, traumatic tail reaching into the year after next, or onwards five years, or into a new decade. And we will keep the tally open on the pandemic’s ghastly cost.