2020 has been horrible but also the best year of my life | Cheryl Gibbs

Lockdown 2.0. I know things can change in a week, but this is quite mind-blowing.
Cheryl with her husband Matt Kingston and their daughter Harley. Picture: Sarah Standing (260520-3068)Cheryl with her husband Matt Kingston and their daughter Harley. Picture: Sarah Standing (260520-3068)
Cheryl with her husband Matt Kingston and their daughter Harley. Picture: Sarah Standing (260520-3068)

Last week, I explained how positive things are that our brother and sister-in-law are defeating the odds of this pandemic and have opened a new shop (JK Wellness) on Havant Road, Drayton, (which, by the way, will remain open during lockdown).

But a whole week later and our lives have all changed. We’re in a lockdown again and it makes me so sad.

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I know it’s necessary and I know we just have to get on with it, but just when things started to feel just slightly normal again we’re back to the confines of our four walls.

Thankfully lockdown 2.0 isn’t quite as strict as the first lockdown and I’m grateful that Harley and I can still do little things like go for a walk with a friend, or that my mum can still look after her as she often provides childcare. But I’m just devastated for the country that things have got this bad again.

Perhaps selfish also, but I also feel incredibly sad that 2020 will be remembered as one of the worst years of our generation. It was the year Harley was born and it makes me sad that it will forever be known as one of the worst years of our generation.

Children will look back in the history books to study this year and it will be dissected from every possible point, with an overwhelming sense that it was an awful year.

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While it does fill me with great sadness, I have kept a little memory box for Harley of some of the things that will teach her about this year: the letter from Boris Johnson during the first lockdown, the leaflet through the door from the Clanfield Association asking residents if they needed extra help or support during lockdown, I’ve saved a few of my columns for her, a personalised baby grow that my mum had made that said her name and ‘lockdown baby’.

They’re little things that will hopefully be interesting to her when she’s older. 2020 has been mind-blowing but it’s also been the greatest year of my life and I’ll forever be thankful for it. It’s just tragic that so many others won’t be able to say the same. Thinking of you all during this incredibly hard time…

The race between Trump and Biden has been terrifying

2020 will also be known as the year that America finally got rid of President Trump…or will it?

At the time of writing, Joe Biden is tipped to be the next President of the United States. But with riots, polling centres full of protestors and angry pro-Trump supporters, and with Trump launching legal action over what he declares as a ‘rigged voting system’, who knows.

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He’s a clever man but personally, he frightens me to death. I know there are a million arguments one way or the other. I’m not saying he hasn’t done anything right, but when someone has an ego that big and he swings so far one way, how can he be representative of one of the largest and most powerful countries on the planet?

I’m turning 38 and was given the best present this year

It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to. I may just do that given I’m turning the grand old age of 38 on Sunday.

How on earth am I only two years away from 40? It’s a shame, as we had some plans for Sunday – none of which we can do now – but I already have the best birthday present I could have wished for in Harley and I’m so thankful.

I remember celebrating my birthday in the lead up to having Harley and feeling this overwhelming sadness because it was another year that I celebrated turning older without being a mum. I’ll never forget that feeling nor do I ever take it for granted now I am.

The best present I could get on Sunday would be a lie-in past 6am! One can dream…

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