Edinburgh 2020 #lastnormalvideo

With UK Lockdown still (mostly) in effect and Covid_19 still being a force throughout the world, the BBC recently encouraged it’s readers and viewers to send them their last normal photo. A #lastnormalphoto hashtag was born and a trend was soon in full effect, with plenty of people contributing their own memories.

In March earlier this year my fiancée (!) and I were in Edinburgh a week before things realy started happening in the UK, and there was no real sense of impending change whatsoever. It was still a problem countries away, or so our government treated it. Our trip away was travelling on public transport, having brunch out, seeing alt-rock band ‘Trail of Dead live in very crowded venue, and visiting museums and galleries. Pretty fun, normal stuff, and a great means of celebrating our newly engagement.

I recorded lots of the trip while we were away, more for recollection than anything else, but ive made a big video of it all and uploaded it over on my YouTube channel. It’s only two months ago, but with all the recent changes it now feels so much longer. It’s happy memories, but it’s sad too, with everything that’s happened since. Most of all, it’s baffling seeing big spaces and groups of people together that we presumably wont see again for a while. Strange times indeed.

Lockdown 2020

Im not really the best at updating or writing here. In 2020 so far ive proposed to my partner, seen my favourite band for the first time in 15 years, and now most recently, possibly sprained my ankle. Nonetheless the big life event for everyone at the moment is the Covid_19 situation- social distancing, isolation, and mass political lies in a hellscape straight out of your favourite sci-fi novel.

The UK entered lockdown on the 23rd of March 2020- (for better or worse) quite a while after the rest of Europe. You read about it elsewhere and how they’ve coped but when the quarantine hit everything just felt weird. One walk a day. No visiting friends or family. No loitering without reason. Only shopping once a week. No going to work. Its a sudden abundance of free time but its very demoralising, empty, strange time as well. Lots of reading, online video calls, boardgames and well, house stuff.

So here’s the first month of Lockdown just passed: A mood-board/scrapbook effort of stuff ive captured or saved during “Strange Times” these last few weeks. Its mostly quite (forgive me) random stuff, but given the circumstances it feels like something that should be marked or remembered as well- that month in 2020 where everyone had to stay at home to avoid catching a life threatening virus. Just like your favourite dystopian sci-fi thriller, like I said.

1 Second Everyday : 2019

2019 was pretty great. I listed some of the good and bad things about the year, and throughout the last 12 months I continued my 1 Second Everyday.

Using the app is now something that’s pretty much autonomous in my life- filming/recording each day is just a given. For as much enjoyment as I get out of making the video however, the greater delight is watching it afterwards, and seeing everything that’s happened.

The same is true here, where there is no way i’d have remembered nearly as much of the year as I would’ve without documenting it like this. The app and project have been a great way of identifying the smaller moments, scenes, and events of my life, and piecing them together like the patchwork of smaller moments -that life in itself is- has been incredibly rewarding. Equally fulfilling has been friends and family saying they look forward to seeing each completed month on Instagram- sometimes i’m invariably looking too closely at these seconds so its great to hear things like that.

As with last time i’ve uploaded the full video over on YouTube- any likes, comments or subscribes would be greatly appreciated!