WHAT WERE YOU DOING ON 20 MAY 2020? I bet you’ve thought about it at some point since the news broke of the Downing Street garden party held then, and attended, notoriously, by the Prime Minister (he says for “just 25 minutes”). Those of us who keep a diary have been able to smugly lick a fingertip and leaf back to find out exactly what we were doing on that date. Which means I can now confidently report that on that fateful evening I was doing … nothing. In fact, my diary entry for that day reads only “Sick of lockdown”.
But there are many more people for whom 20 May 2020 was a far more important date. In the weeks following the revelations about the garden party — and as the public came to learn of many more non-compliant parties held at Downing Street during the same period — media outlets were filled with 20 May recollections.
I typically spend much of my time listening with my nine-month-old to phone-in radio, so I heard a lot of these stories. Most callers described boredom, loneliness, and fear. Others offered acutely painful accounts of the final lonely days of loved ones whose deaths went unwitnessed, or who were forced to speak their last words to family members via Zoom. The news that the Prime Minister was hosting a party as these people suffered was, of course, met with rage by these callers
