Active Vocabulary

Now that we are heading into Lockdown 2.0 my coping mechanisms remain the same: cooking, baking, sewing and walks in the neighbourhood, provided I get to see daylight. Some days it feels the "old normal" never happened (but Google photos or Instagram helpfully remind me what I was doing a year ago or so...), others my mind boggles thinking about the fact that words like "lockdown" or "mouth-nose-cover" are now in everybody's active vocabulary. A year ago, Asian people (in Asia, mostly) were the only people you would see walk around cities wearing surgical masks. "Lockdown" or "curfew" were words you only got to hear war reporters use. My mum accidentally referred to "lockdown" as "lockup" and this is what it often feels like. Locked up for having been naughty, but I want to raise my hand and rectify the situation. "It wasn't ME!". Ah, well...