Things we’d never heard of – or thought we’d never hear again

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

as we approach the end of the most bizarre year in all of our lifetimes, here are some random things and terms that we’d never heard of before Covid visited our shores.

Lockdown, for a start, and a couple of three word phrases that became a daily mantra – test and trace, click and collect, wash your hands, and keep your distance.

Zoom obviously existed, but most of us were blissfully unaware it could take over your life and allow you to dress only from the waist up.

We thought all pubs were wet ones, because we’d have avoided dry ones like the, well, the plague.

Cocoon was a sci-fi movie in which residents of a retirement home rediscover their youth thanks to a mysterious swimming pool and friendly aliens. Now when you mention cocooning and retirement homes in the one sentence, the 1985 movie isn’t what comes instantly to mind.

We existed in social bubbles – and we still do – and we checked our county’s R levels to see if there was any sign we’d be allowed back out.

Half the country was on pandemic payments.

There were other things we had rarely heard of before Covid, although clearly they did exist.

Remote working for a start; who’d have thought the trip to the office could be truncated to a walk straight past the downstairs loo?

Staycations were an ideal, but – truth be told – you wanted to travel sufficiently far from home that you didn’t bump into your postman on his rounds.

And yet you always knew that other people spent thousands to get to the very place where you already live.

Eating outdoors in December – that’s fine if you’re in Greece or Mozambique (or Australia where it’s actually summer) but there’s little to be said for soggy chips that you’re trying to bolt down without catching hypothermia on top of all of the other ailments in the air.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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