Birthdays have always been important in my family. We take care to make a fuss of them – if you can’t celebrate a birthday then what can you celebrate? But the upcoming anniversary of lockdown this week is one birthday I don’t feel much like enjoying.

It’s been a difficult year for everyone – a sadly grief-stricken year for some – and reaching the anniversary has brought all of this into higher focus. I found myself explaining this to a friend earlier this week, who said something which gave me pause for thought.

“Isn’t it amazing you’ve got through a year of this?” he asked.

He had a point. If someone had told me, in March 2020, that we would have to collectively live through these conditions for a whole year and then some, I wouldn’t have believed it. I wouldn’t have imagined that I could still be putting one foot in front of the other by the end of it. Take a minute to think about what we’ve all been through in the past year, it’s astounding. March 2020 feels like both yesterday and an entirely different world.

But we are. Who knows how much longer the pandemic will go on for, but there are many reasons to be hopeful. And even if things change and the situation worsens, as my friend pointed out, we have lived through a year of this. Surely now we can live through anything.