Dr Kristopher Lovell

Sunday 2nd February 2020 – Tour de London

Long before the threat of lockdown, when Covid-19 was just another topic of a news article I’d ignore, one of my friends and I had planned a spontaneous trip to visit our friend in london. We stayed at his place for the weekend and had a bunch of stuff planned but what stays with me the most was the final night.
‘Tour de London’ my friends coined it. We’d always joked about doing it but Saturday night we saw ourselves actually become tourists in a city all three of us had grew up in at some point in our lives. It was about 11 pm, we’d just hired our Boris bikes and we’d started cycling from landmark to landmark on a route we’d planned that morning… we should’ve planned for the weather too. At 2am a light drizzle became torrential by 3, but none of us cared, we were too far gone. Not a worry in the world with the people that meant the most to us cycling on empty roads; just us and the moment.

I’d say I came to terms with the lockdown that came the following month rather terribly. Unlike most people I’d see on social media who took the changes in their stride, I struggled to adjust and still am. The empty roads I see now are a stark contrast to the empty roads that night. They’re empty by necessity not choice. I think the reason I find it so difficult to accept the changes are because of all the memories, like that rainy night, that I’m just so impatient to get back to. I’ve always been scared of change but I’m much more willing to adapt to it of my own accord than when I’m expected to have to. Maybe thats why I look more forward to the day roads aren’t empty because they have to be but because everyone is asleep. Maybe I’ll be more accepting of the lockdown when it too is just another memory.