This is part of a series of posts about "normal", day-to-day life in the pandemic.

Part One- 23rd March 2020, about wiping clean the blackboard with our weekly schedule on the first day the kids' school was closed in Lockdown.
Part Two- 27th August 2020, about the return to school at the start of the school year meaning the return to some sort of structure to our daily/weekly routines for the first time in 5 months.
Part Three - 14th May 2021, in which I talked about my first day back in the office in over a year... (mainly through the lens of my coffee drinking rituals.)
Part Four - 24th September 2021, in which I talked about being back in a routine of being in the office (2 days a week).
Part Five - 14th March 2022, where I wonder how "hybrid working" is going to actually work, when all of our meetings (ie. the thing we go to the office for) seem either to be virtual or physical - not "hybrid".

The question that I left hanging at the end of my fourth "back to normal" post was about exactly how hybrid meetings should work when some people are in a room and others are in the Zoom¹ remains unanswered.

The one thing I had planned to do with the next post (ie. the last one- part 5) was to talk about that, and after six months, I've stuck to the plan… kind of. What I missed though was the stuff that this series of posts was supposed to be about - a kind of reflection on the day-to-day stuff that I never thought was worth writing about pre-pandemic, because 'normal' was too… well, normal.

I finished writing 'part 5' in a hotel room in Bristol, on a weekend away with my wife - my Christmas present to her as a short break (from everything except me - more about that later) and a chance to see the Grayson's Art Club exhibition, which was something we both enjoyed watching when it was on during lockdown. I can't remember the last time we had more than a couple of hours to ourselves- let alone the time to wander round a gallery or museum, or shops, or sit in a bar at our own pace, without some sort of appointment to worry about.

(I should probably mention that I was writing while she was having an afternoon nap- I didn't take her away for a weekend to watch me sit in front of a laptop...)

Its been nice.

But I started writing this chapter... I can't actually remember how long ago now, but I do know that it was with the expectation that I'd be posting it when the government advice changed, the office opened up and after about two months of being stuck at home (not in "real" lockdown– but not feeling very different to me, as I was in the 'bed to desk to sofa to bed again' cycle.)

Instead, literally as I was packing my bag on the Sunday evening to be ready to head back to the office on the Monday morning, I got the dreaded double-lines... Followed by two weeks of self-isolation (yes, its only seven days if you get two negative tests after day 5- but I was still getting double lines right up until day 10), followed by a week off work to cover half term (annoyingly, the school my kids go to and the school my wife works at don't have holidays that align at the moment). So- I keep adding bits and pieces, thinking it would soon be finished - and a combination of my own bad writing habits (draft, edit, redraft, lose a bunch of stuff because Squarespace is so reliant on its own web-based editing platform that crashes if I half-write something then have to put my laptop to sleep) - which has turned this into the kind of overly-long and incoherent blog post that I managed to break the habit of writing a few years ago.

(Mostly, anyway…)

But... not being able to plan properly and not really knowing whats coming around the corner feels very much like "what normal is like now", so I'm simply saying that its in fitting with the theme of what has become an irregular series of posts. So- this is what was going to be a short introduction to the last post about "hybrid meetings", which has spiralled into something far too long to be any kind of introduction to anything.

So - as restrictions lift and routines return, is this 'the one'; the final closing of the parenthesis, and the beginning of the not-tongue-in-cheek 'back to normal'? (Or perhaps more accurately, a 'new normal'?) I mean, sooner or later, one of these posts is going to be the last "before we have normal again" updates... isn't it?

I still doubt that this is 'the one' - other than wishful thinking, there's no reason that I can see not to expect another variant to appear, and I've heard of quite a few people now who have tested positive after vaccinations and previous infections. (I don't even want to think about what my own experience of covid would have been like if I wasn't double-jabbed & boosted and in generally good health... It wasn't by any means life-threatening, but it still sucked.) Going back to the Canvas8 framework I referenced last time, perhaps its just that I was wrong to think that we were out of the "adjustment" phase and moving into "re-evaluation". (In fairness, it was hard to anticipate that the UK's peak of infection numbers was still three months away at the time...) Given that even the most basic measure for dealing with the coronavirus - the availability of free testing - is ending soon, I find it hard to imagine things working out all that well. I think "expect the best and prepare for the worst" is generally a pretty good attitude to take, but it does still feel like planning a summer getaway might be too much like wishful thinking…

Also of note- I've had two short trips to other countries over the last few months; a family trip to see family in Ireland and a personal weekend with friends in Naples (the break my wife got from me that I mentioned earlier), and it seems very clear that we're not taking things nearly as seriously as either of those countries, where masks were generally seen everywhere (Italy actually seems to care about what sort of masks too - masks that actually filter your breath, as opposed to the basic 'cough-catcher' face coverings that everyone here is wearing), and either proof of vaccination status or evidence of a recent negative covid test are something you're expected to have with you if you want to go into an enclosed indoor space like a restaurant. Seeing those kinds of approaches, then coming back to what seems more like a "lets all pretend its 2019 again" frame of mind is something I'm still finding a little jarring, to be honest.

Like I wrote in the August 2020 "back to normal" post - normal is weird now, and weird is normal.

But for now, I'm enjoying being able to be back in the office and seeing other people on a semi-regular basis again. Which means that my thinking about "back to normal" is turning back to office life, and how I think I should be dealing with "work". Part of that is about how I want to design my own working patterns/routines, but while everything still feels up in the air, I'm thinking about what the broader working patterns/routines that I'm going to be fitting my own routines around might look like.

Its worth noting that it has now been two years since the pandemic officially began - so I'm remembering the conversations about lockdown probably lining up with the easter holiday, maybe lasting another week or two, but a general confidence that it would all be over by the summer and "back to normal" by the Autumn 2020 school term. I'm also remembering that the start of the Autumn 2021 school term marked a new "back-to-the-office routine" for me, but ended with a return to the policy that "no one should go to the office unless it's critical for your job or your wellbeing." Meanwhile, the run up to Christmas was a combination of hoping we wouldn't get another last-minute locked-down Christmas, wondering whether actually another lockdown would be a good idea - given the new Omicron variant that had appeared, and worrying that every lateral flow test the me, my wife or my children were doing could be the one that put us into self-isolation and made the whole lockdown issue - as far as my Christmas was concerned - irrelevant.

But, as of a couple of weeks ago, my office is open again and I'm going back in for two days a week... although, I've not yet actually had a week where I've been in for two days (let alone the same two days). I think I'm going to be doing that this week - so in a couple of weeks time, when I've done it twice, maybe I'll be able to say that I'm back to the same routine again. Which is kind of the same as saying a return to some sort of "normal"…

We'll see...

Some Random Nerd