I cannot face another lockdown – but what if plan B isn’t enough?

I am not a religious woman and instead I have placed my faith in our vaccines – may they grant us smooth sailing until spring, writes Marie Le Conte

‘It is tough not to feel jittery’ (EPA)

There is a morning I have been thinking about a lot recently. It was winter and unusually mild; I had some errands to run near Piccadilly and, on the way back, decided to walk through St James’s Park to look at the pelicans.

It sounds like a happy memory but it isn’t; that oddly sunny day was 24 December 2020, and the first Christmas I’d ever spent away from my family. A week after that, the weather had got cold again, and I turned 29 without my friends, for the first time in my adult life.

I keep thinking about these memories because they now feel like warnings from history: first, the cases rose in October, then the government remained stubbornly relaxed, then we got locked down by the end of the year. We are now in October, the cases have been rising steadily, the government remains stubbornly relaxed, then…? Well, only time will tell.