Emily Wyatt takes a look back at her last trip with her boyfriend before lockdowns begun
I never thought a trip to Bristol would be taken for granted, yet here we are 11 months later reminiscing on better times when covid wasn’t on everyone’s minds.
I was completely unaware that the weekend of February 13th 2020 would be one of the last relatively normal weekends before covid struck. My boyfriend and I got on the train maskless and unsanitised and travelled down to Bristol for our valentines weekend away. Looking back it seems like a dream, it doesn’t seem real that we could go out and about without a care in the world, but yet there was a point when this covid life wasn’t normal, as long ago as that seems.
It was the perfect weekend away when we didn’t have restrictions to stop us, we went shopping, had a lovely meal and to top it all off we even went to the aquarium. We walked round Bristol aquarium happily and even the fish seemed to smile back at us in such a normal time, everyone was at peace with the world and it felt like time stopped as we watched the turtle cleaning himself, laughing and joking the whole time as we’ve never been happier. We hoped that moment would last forever and looking back now I really wish it did.
We walked through Bristol without a care in the world, we had no idea what was round the corner, we didn’t know how lonely we were about to be, how long we were going to stay awake at night just to talk for that little longer, how much I would long for a hug or a kiss, we were completely unaware of how much we would miss one another. It was the best weekend and one of the last few moments of pre covid life.
I would give anything to have that life back, to have weekends away without a mask, to walk too close to a stranger, to go to the pub and have a few too many and most of all to have a hug from a loved one.
