Just Another Saturday Afternoon?

It was just another Saturday afternoon in a pub in Scotland – Montrose to be exact. I sat there exhausted. I had just completed part of the Coast to Castles bike route. This was the seventh time I had been out to do a section of it. The route ran from Newcastle to Aberdeen and I was doing it in stages as and when I had the time.

I had got the train that morning from Waverley to Arbroath and then cycled to Montrose and then on to Inverbervie. From Inverbervie I had to cycle to Laurencekirk so that I could get the train back to Montrose and the onward journey back home to Waverley. I had cycled around 43 miles. The last section to Laurencekirk had been the hardest by far. I knew I was struggling for time to catch the train so the hills and headwind had been most unwelcome. Though as I sat there in the warmth of the pub that afternoon, I did allow myself a smile thinking about the wind howling around the wind farm as I cycled through it. Looking back, the trials and tribulations of the day had made it all worthwhile. There had also been that brief moment of sunshine through the clouds. The light brightened the greyness of the landscape and glanced off the Forth. Yes, that had been well worth the journey despite the challenges.

Just one stage left to do I thought as I sipped my pint, Inverbervie to Aberdeen. I had a look at the guidebook and the route, some hilly parts again but it should be possible to finish in a day. I would be able to get it done in the next few months, by the end of the year at the latest.

So, it was just another Saturday afternoon as I sat there listening to people chatting and glancing up at the TV every now and again.

Except it wasn’t. At this time of day on a Saturday the football results should have been filling the screen, fuelling the pub banter. But the football had been cancelled and the ticker tape headline at the bottom of the screen announced gatherings of more than 500 people had been banned.

The words from the snatches of conversation above the pub hubbub that I could hear were things like, "worried", "who knows?", "surely can't happen here" and "it's just a hoax”.

So on that Saturday afternoon, in that pub it wasn’t just another Saturday: it was the Saturday before lockdown and what was yet to be.