15. The Pandemic 2020-2021...and the world goes on
March 23, 2025: Marking the fifth anniversary of the announcement of the first Lockdown, March 23, 2020.
There was a kind of inevitable march of Covid towards the U.K. The first confirmed cases here in January. The first death in the U.K. on March 5th. Overtaken by numbers, Public Health England threw up its hands on March 12th and abandoned contact tracing. Cafés, pubs and restaurants were closed to all but take-away food on March 21st. And then finally, on March 23rd, 2020, the first National Lockdown was announced. Litter-picking stopped.
"Stay at Home"
From March 26th we were permitted outside for "one form of exercise a day" or to get basics; for medical care; to travel to work when absolutely necessary. Litter-picking is essential, but not "absolutely necessary". In all the uncertainty, and no real idea about the view the police might take, much less our own social conscience and the ethics of making up a category of litter-picking as "excercise", it was suspended. Fortunately, the roads went virtually silent, and litter whispered. It was almost two months later, on May 13th, before the government relaxed restrictions on exercise and recreation - and travel.
And so we resumed
On May 16th, in beautiful weather. Our diary entry:
Litter picking again today, for first time since lockdown. A lot of cigarette ends. Volume of litter not high, but surface litter makes significant impact. A lot of bicycle traffic - nothing like it before. Vehicle traffic also fairly heavy - normal? or more than usual for a Saturday?
20 May 2020. Beautiful weather.
We did two of the four Wormington roads that first day.
A new class of litter
So much returned to normal, and then some. But - at a time before the vaccines arrived, when we still didn't know definitively how COVID-19 was transmitted, and all the surfaces and unfinished contents of litter were presumed a bio-hazard - there was an all-new class of throw-aways. These were all about BIO-HAZARD: About protecting the wearers, who were throwing these things away, against the droplets and aerosols and splatters that came from handling or being in the presence or potential presence of people and things carrying the virus: well, carrying the possibility of death. Thrown out, presumably without thinking (or perhaps rejecting the immanence of death, losing them into the green and growing absorption of the life-recycling countryside. In a pandemic, when the danger is everywhere and Nowhere, when and where and how is it safe to dispose of one's fears?).
|
|
 |
|
12 April 2020
|
7 October 2020
|
 |
 |
|
1 May 2021
|
7 October 2020
|
 |
|
|
26 February 2021 |
|
There were masses, in variety and abundance.
In the return of the normal, and then some...
There was a rise for a time in expressing the freedom from restraint in an exceptional volume of litter. A pick on one road would take hours, and fill multiple bags with heavy waste - glass bottles of all kinds, and cans, plastics and papers. Litterpicking really is exercise at the best of times, and for these times, for a while, it became labour.
Five years on it has changed. Picking has become again, for the most part, an adventure, a discovery, a learning about the times we live in, and a way to serve the present and contribute to the future.
27 March 2021: A return, of sorts, to the normal
Published March 23rd, 2025
WORMINGTON IN THE PANDEMIC SPECIAL PAGES:
St. Katharine's in the Pandemic
Made in Wormington: Sewing for neighbours and the nation
Pandemic and Food: The PCC-WVS Takeaways
Coming out of the Pandemic: The Vaccine Thermometer