The diaries of a lockdown generation

At the beginning of March 2020, five years ago, I had no idea that I would be embarking on a new, demanding research project, but then again, could any of us have envisaged what was ahead of us during this time?

As a retired professor, I was just at the point of anticipating the publication (and, as it turned out, cancelled launch event) of my newest book Sixty Somethings. The lives of women who remember the Sixties, when we entered a strange and unprecedented period in our lives. There was talk of a virus sweeping the world, and it was getting closer. By mid-March it was clear that it was coming for Britain. Were we prepared and how would we react? 

For my part, I woke up on Thursday 19 March 2020 knowing, like the rest of us, that the first lockdown was about to be announced and wondering what it would mean . Life was going to be more restricted, but I didn't want to just sit it out. I wanted something to do and something that was constructive. There was a suggestion, which in fact never materialised, that those over 70 years might be treated alongside the particularly vulnerable and told to stay at home while others went about their daily business. I began to wonder whether I could get a group of older men and women together to write diaries and record their thoughts, feelings and experiences as they happened. It would be a great historical record if I could. 

Conducting a diary project was pragmatic. Provided it was possible to recruit participants, diary entries would enable accounts to be written in the here and now rather than sometime later when memories might become distorted. It was also feasible in the context of the pandemic.

This approach also had a particularly personal meaning for me. I am the niece of Charles Madge, one of the founders of Mass Observation, a movement initially set up in the 1930s that, among other things, encouraged members of the public to write diaries to record their thoughts and experiences during the second world war. I was keen to follow in his footsteps, albeit in a more modern way. I have also kept a daily diary since I was nine and a half years old. 

The idea grew on me and I immediately drew up a plan for a project. If I was going to do this, I had to act quickly. The pandemic wasn't going to wait. As I was self-funding, and working alone, I could go at my own pace.  

I felt reasonably confident that I would be able to enlist men and women aged at least 70 to take part. Some of the 69 participants in the Sixty Somethings project would fall within the appropriate age group and might be willing to take part. In turn, they might know others who would like to join in. In addition, I had many other contacts that might wish to become involved or who could send the invitation to participate to others. If I was lucky, there would be a snowball effect. Feeling optimistic, I embarked on a recruitment drive on Saturday 21 March 2020. 

The response was enthusiastic and exceeded my expectations. Just over 70 participants were initially recruited, and 68 were finally included in the project. It was essentially a white and middle-class sample, with more than twice as many women as men. Most, but not all, diarists were fully retired, almost all said their living space was good or excellent, and the majority lived somewhere in England. I was fully aware that the participants were not representative of the age group or the population as a whole, but at the same time I could see that the project afforded an opportunity to study a specific demographic in considerable detail. These older diarists would also no doubt provide their perspectives on family and friends, local communities and the wider society. What the study might lack in breadth, it would make up for in depth.

Time was perhaps an important element enabling the project. The diarists, as I discovered, were an energetic group of older people with activities, projects, families and friends to keep them busy. Nonetheless, and for a while anyway, time took on a new meaning when familiar routines were curtailed. 

Anna: Friday 3 April 2020 

What did I do today? It's getting hard to account for time. 

Humphrey: Saturday 2 May 2020

As for the diary of events, or non-events more like, each day melds seamlessly with the next. Could this be what a prison stretch feels like? We know that the best thing is to take it one day at a time, but this way years could slip by.

It was thus opportune that it was just at this time that they were being asked to write diaries. It was a challenge, and it was an occupation. 

The invitation to participate outlined what would be expected. This was, first, to provide some basic demographic information, a pseudonym by which they would be known, and a retrospective diary entry to record their perceptions and reactions since they had first heard of the coronavirus. After this they would write their diaries as often as they could, but hopefully at least three times a week, for an initially unspecified time (which turned out to be the end of July 2020, four months later). They would also be asked to participate in two subsequent follow-ups (which actually became three!) as restrictions changed. Most diarists contributed to the project throughout although they varied in the extent of their contributions. 

I was in constant touch with the diarists and the project kept me occupied. I received some diary entries most days, which I read, acknowledged and logged. There was also a weekly email that I sent round on Thursdays to maintain the impetus and also suggest aspects of the pandemic that diarists might want to comment on. These were often issues raised by diarists themselves. For example, one diarist had asked whether fewer women than usual were wearing a bra during the pandemic. Another wondered whether anybody else had witnessed pets and other animals affected by the lockdowns. 

There were also challenges that were met with enthusiasm by the diarists. First, I instigated a lockdown recipe challenge. Most diarists sent in their favourite meals, with cooking instructions, which I then collated and sent round to all participants. My own recipe for this challenge was my signature dish of ham stuffed with leeks. Subsequent challenges, with entries again collated and sent round, were for a lockdown poem, and for Desert Island lockdown books, films and TV programmes. The project was not only charting an exceptional period in modern history but was fun. I became friends with the diarists even though I had never met most of them. They were confiding and humorous. I wish there had been a lockdown joke challenge! 

As the months rolled by, I needed to set a date for the end of the main stage of the project. I settled on the end of July. It was a relief in that I had gathered so much material that I didn't feel that I needed any more. But it was also sad, the end of a short era. The diarists too were mixed in their views. 

Araminta: Friday 24 July 2020

Another week gone. Where does the time go? I am glad this duty is coming to an end. At the beginning of lockdown, I felt it was important to keep a diary and I have kept my own private one going, but now, as with your diary, I find I am not making many entries.

Sardomike: Monday 27 July 2020

Here we are, writing the final entry, it's been like the Sword of Damocles hanging over one's head, the thought 'oh yes, I have a diary entry to do' but, once started – no problem, enjoyable to let the words flow.

Taranaki: Friday 31 July 2020

Dear Diary, I shall miss you! Today will be my last entry of this long-haul monologue about my life during the 2020 pandemic of the COVID19 virus. It has really helped me to organise and rationalise my thoughts and feelings during this truly ghastly period.

Will: Sunday 2 August 2020                                                                                               

The last day of the diary. It feels almost like a bereavement, having seen the diary as a part of my life for the last few months and as a way of encapsulating what I feel about the pandemic, the government's lamentable handling of it and about everything else that's going on in this country and more widely.

The end of July was, however, more of a reprieve than a finality. Two main follow-ups were to follow. The first was in September 2020 when most restrictions had been lifted and a vaccine was in sight, and the second was in February 2021 following two more lockdowns, the introduction of bubbles, the turnabout at Christmas 2020, and widespread vaccination. Some diarists wrote further entries following the so-called Freedom Day on 19 July 2021. 

Finally, however, the end arrived. The diarists had written around a million and a half words between them, and I had to make some sense of it all. My first task was to go through all contributions again, cataloguing them by broad theme and indicative content. Summaries were then used to plan the structure of the ensuing report. There was an interest in both commonality and diversity among the participants as well as relevant illustration. The purpose of the project was not to test a specific hypothesis but to provide a grounded account of lockdown life for a group of comfortably-off over seventy-year-olds living predominantly in England. 

The data were rich in interest, poignancy and humour, and I was keen to publish the study for the diarists, for social scientists and historians, and for myself. The next task was accordingly to start writing. I would be able to use only a fraction of the excellent material collected, and I needed to tell a story. As the virus was intangible, and had to be surmised rather than seen, I deemed that a, mainly and light touch, framework of symbolic interactionism and related social psychological perspectives was appropriate. Subjective meanings relating to the pandemic were derived from interactions not only with other people, but with the changed physical environment, and the messages conveyed through the media. Pragmatic adaptation and self-presentation, imbued with personal agency, were also very evident among diarists who reacted according to their own perceptions of the changed circumstances. The findings are also set within the political and legal context as well as alongside contemporary research and comment. 

I was, by the time of assembling and writing up the data, in communication with a publisher that was, in principle, interested in publication, but there were a number of review stages to pass through before the manuscript was accepted. It was a protracted task. The publisher was, however, helpful, and most of my wishes were taken into account. The only disappointment on my part was the high cost of the book which I had not appreciated when I embarked on the process. This was a downside of being self-financing and not having funds to reduce the cover price.

Overall, the project was an amazing personal learning experience. Despite having face-to-face contact with a very limited number of people, I was in daily contact with many people I had never met but who were sharing their daily realities with me. I could witness what I could not see. I had a vicarious insight into the reality of the pandemic for a particular demographic. This was a group who acknowledged that they were among the most fortunate, but also had their worries and anxieties, if not for themselves then for their family and friends. I became intrigued by strategies for sanitising shopping and by the myriad uses Zoom could be put to, and sobered by their thoughts on lockdowns and the management of the pandemic. Whatever else, I was most certainly educated and entertained.  

My overall reflections are that I am glad I carried out the project. It was fun and kept me busy at a time when we were locked down in our homes. But I am aware that I was able to carry it out only because I had not been dependent on getting funding and hence held up by the process. In the case of the pandemic, it was essential to get going quickly if the data collected were to be current. If I had still been a fully employed university professor, I would not have been able to conduct the research. The downside, of course, is that I did not have access to research assistance or administrative support. 

There are usually advantages and disadvantages in life and, in the instance of the diary project, I think that the former outweighed the latter. There was also icing on the cake. Nobody else, as it turned out and as far as I am aware, paid such attention to older men and women in their pandemic studies. I had ensured that they were not a neglected group.

• Nicola Madge (2025) Lockdown Life. The pandemic experience for older diarists, Bristol: Policy Press is available from 20 March 2025.
• The hardback edition of the book, or an eBook, can be purchased at half price until the end of June when bought from Bristol University Press using the code DSC50. 

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