@AcornAutumn
Bog I was thinking of you earlier....you mentioned about friends not seeing you last summer when they had the chance. Have you heard from them since? Do you have any idea where they are with all this now?
They kind of woke up at the end of August when they suddenly realised that their children were going back to school in days. We got some walks in the autumn before the November lockdown, and they did feel OK about 2 families of 4 outdoors. Nov-Dec, I managed to walk 1:1 while the DCs were in school. In Jan that stopped because of homeschool, staying local and high rates (they're in the next county so while not far, it's not on the doorstep either)
We did meet up last weekend, I say we... our families did, I was in bed after my vaccine.
They did find the winter hard and regretted not doing as much as they could over the summer. They have a bubble with an older relative so felt overly cautious about that. I don't think they realised how low rates were from June-Sept, and their fear over low-risk activities like sitting in a beer garden was excessive. It didn't really occur to them that things would get hard over the winter again whereas that seemed quite likely to me (but didn't want to think too hard about how that would look) and I wanted to make the most of what I could July-October.
They were overly cautious, rather than being dementors in a sanctimonious, judgy kind of way.