50 Days In Lockdown: The long road back ...

The view from high up in Holyrood Park across the Forth

Today marked our 50th day in lockdown – a world we could not have imagined barely two months ago.

From birth to death, every single aspect of our lives has been thrown into turmoil.

Shops and schools have closed, offices have decanted to kitchen tables and spare rooms, sport has stopped, theatre lights have dimmed, and the circle of life and death painfully disturbed.

People are dying without the comfort of loved ones at their bedsides.

Children are being born with partners afforded the briefest of glimpses.

Care homes may never recover from the grievous, devastating loss of life.

Funerals go ahead with just a handful of mourners; everyone else denied the right to pay their last respects. Moments like that cannot be re-wound.

Over 30,000 people have died in the UK - many fear the official figure is much, much higher.

The long road back has yet to begin.

Furlough and social distancing - words we’d probably never heard off before March - will remain part of our daily lives for some time to come. We’re still watching the ‘R’ with only the vaguest idea what it actually means.

All we know is those numbers, and the curve they create on a graph, hold the key to a return to normality or the ‘new normal.’ Who knows which will be there to greet us?

Over the past 50 days, walks through the silent streets of Edinburgh have been surreal.

There’s a calmness about a place which normal wails with noise and activity.

Nothing stirs in the Cowgate, the Royal Mile or all the way to the Meadows.

Hastily printed signs in windows confirming shop closures are starting to peel away, replaced by the growing number of rainbows and thank you messages to the NHS, which bring colour and a sense of hope.

Buses run with barely a handful of passengers, trams are empty, and there’s barely a black cab to be seen. Even Waverley - the arrival point for thousands of people every hour of every day - sits benign.

Up on Regent Road, you can hear the tannoy announcements to platforms which are all but empty. It’s as if a model railway enthusiast  forgot to switch off the train set at bed time.

Fifty days in, lockdown remains disconcerting, weird and, for many, incredibly difficult.

Support systems - be they family, friends, live gigs, gym sessions, work, weekends on the road - have been removed, and precious little put in their place.

We’ve all had to figure it out as we go along, and I fear the full impact on our wellbeing won't be fully known for some time yet.

Pressing the re-start button may be even more difficult.

We’ve adapted to the ‘new normal’ because there was no alternative.

When those choices return and once again  include nights out, big events, shopping and so on, will we revert to diaries filled with plans, or will we embrace a simpler, quieter life?

Fifty days gone, who knows how many more before that happens?