Was it when we stepped through into the previously forbidden hallowed grounds of the Royal Wimbledon Golf Club course, to have the sweeping views of mature trees, heather and gorse and bluebell carpets revealed to us, with me trying hard to resist the temptation to throw myself in a sand bunker to replace the more usual bucket and spade summer holiday experience?  Or when we imagined ourselves on the Continent cycling along the smooth, wide, scenic two-way cycle path from Raynes Park to New Malden, with the wind in our hair, full of excitement and adventure at the prospect of another discovery? Perhaps it was when I tried my first sunrise yoga on Rushmere Pond with my friend; or snapped the park bench near the Rangers’ offices on the Common, first with its legs submerged in the most water I’ve ever seen on the Common, then entombed in ice as the whole lot froze, and dogs and their owners alike tried another “lockdown first” – a cheeky, tentative slide across the large frozen puddle, knowing that everyone was going to be taking that tale home and recounting it on their next zoom call; a new ‘Covid’ experience.

 

Either way, all of these moments combined to make me appreciate the hidden gems I had either taken for granted or not yet discovered in my neighbourhood, and which are just a few examples of how misfortune can yield new discoveries, new joys, new encounters, new sensations – and why I see my locality through new eyes, with all it has to offer, and am grateful for every tree planted, every brick laid, every pond dug. 

 

Sites of my early childhood, long forgotten, re-discovered, now seen through a different lens, looking so small when before they had loomed so big – such as Wimbledon Chase Primary School, the site of so many Merton Cluster football and tag rugby games where I recalled our triumphant singing after another match won; no longer some vague, hazy memory – I even know how to get there now.  Confidence built from finding my way around Merton’s streets and parks, thanks also to my new volunteering activity for my Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award – litter-picking on Wimbledon Common.  I had to swap the visits I made for my Bronze Award to Abbeyfield’s Lee House for collecting sacks of rubbish left from the previous night’s “outdoors is the new indoors” revelry; I have enjoyed swapping my week-end tennis racquet or hockey stick for my litter-picker.  If you’d asked me 13 months ago though… So what have been your “lockdown firsts”?  Which of them will you keep?  What have you learned, about yourself, about life, about your neighbourhood?  I ask my Mum, Susanna King-Christopher: “I realise that no matter how bad things get, they will always get better; that given the chance to spend more time doing home workouts by myself, I will still find a reason not to do them and will always prefer to go for a walk or cycle ride with a friend or daughter; and that no matter how many times I walk on Wimbledon Common, or through Wimbledon’s back streets, I will always find something new to delight in”.  “What will be your main Covid takeaway?”, I ask her.  “My pasta maker”, she says.  It wasn’t the answer I was expecting…