LEE PAYNE

Tag: covid

  • 10 of my favourite photos that I’ve got on my phone

    10 of my favourite photos that I’ve got on my phone

    Most of us have had a camera phone for quite a while now, with hundreds if not thousands of photos taken over the years. I’ve scrolled through mine and picked out ten that have a story behind them.

    1st November 2010 – Dad

    I have told the story about my dad more than once, but in short, he died in 2014 at the age of 69 having been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease six years previously. It’s nice to have this photo on my phone. Dad is in his sheltered housing flat here, on the sofa where we drank bucketloads of tea and watched countless football matches. His cheeky grin is showing off the false tooth he wore. The story goes that it was knocked out by a cricket ball during a match on the playing fields of what is now the Hewett School when he was a young lad.

    1st June 2020 – seeing family for the first time since lockdown

    I think for many of us it was a bit of a shock to go into total lockdown in March 2020. Never before had we faced so many restrictions on our lives, but then it had been a hundred years since the last pandemic of Covid’s scale. It wasn’t until June that the restrictions had been eased enough for me to go and see my mum and her other half Dave (aka Stephen to me). It was strictly outdoors only though – thankfully the weather was lovely. This was also Dave’s birthday and the day my mum presented him with the papers showing that she’d legally changed her surname to his.

    20th July 2021 – sunset at Old Trafford, Manchester

    This was taken at Old Trafford cricket ground as the sun set on a red hot July day in Manchester. The match between England and Pakistan turned out to be the first sporting event to be played in front of a capacity crowd since the pandemic began. England won.

    28th November 2021 – my last day at Sainsbury’s Queens Road

    My first, and so far only, job was at Sainsbury’s and for eleven years Queens Road was all I knew. Then an opportunity came up to move to the Pound Lane store and, despite the terrifying prospect of having to meet a load of new people, I took it. I was blown away by the send-off my friends and colleagues gave me. This was taken on the Sunday, my last day at Queens, before I started at Pound Lane two days later.

    21st January 2022 – Oscar

    My friend Katie’s dog and without a doubt the best boy in the world. On this particular walk on the old railway line near Aylsham I managed to capture the moment he looked at the camera and I’m rather fond of it.

    28th February 2022 – the end of self-isolating with Covid

    Having avoided Covid throughout the lockdowns it finally caught up with me early last year. At the time I was living in a house where my bedroom had an en suite bathroom so I remained in that room for the entirity of my self-isolation, with food being left outside the door. Being stuck within those four walls for over a week was really tough. I took this photo just as I was about to leave the room for the first time. I can remember the feeling of excitement and relief.

    23rd April 2022 – before a Norwich match at Carrow Road

    With mum and Dave before Norwich’s match against Newcastle last year. Our pre-match ritual tends to involve buying pasties from Morrisons and sitting on that wall before going into the ground. Norwich were thrashed 3-0.

    9th June 2022 – The Killers gig at Carrow Road

    The tickets to see The Killers at Carrow Road were actually given to me as a Christmas present in 2019, with the gig due to take place in June 2020. For obvious reasons it was postponed twice before we finally got to see them in June last year. It is rare to have a band as big as The Killers performing in Norwich and they put on a fantastic show, with one of my favourite bands Blossoms as the support act. In June this year a dream will come true when my all time heroes Arctic Monkeys will play at Carrow Road. I can’t wait!

    25th August 2022 – my 30th birthday

    There was something about turning 30 that freaked me out. On the day, plans to go on the heritage railway between Dereham and Wymondham were scuppered by thunderstorms. Then all my friends turned up on the doorstep and we had a barbecue. I didn’t think people cared about me enough to do such a thing! It was a lovely evening and, as it turns out, being 30 is a lot like being 29.

    15th March 2023 – sunrise from my hotel room window in Cromer

    A recent one, but I must have enjoyed my one night stay in Cromer because I’m feeling nostalgic about something that happened only two weeks ago. I had long wanted to stay at the Cliftonville Hotel, as I thought the building was interesting and I was keen to see what the promise of sea views from every room looked like. I scratched that itch during a week’s holiday from work and had a great time relaxing and getting my head together. This was taken from my hotel room window quite early in the morning, with a stunning sunrise over the town and its famous pier.

    There we have it then, a small selection of photos on my phone that bring a smile to my face. Thanks for reading!

  • I went to a sporting event for the first time since the pandemic began

    Me, mum and Dave at the cricket

    I don’t mind big crowds. They afford a certain anonymity, and I like that. I would prefer to be in a crowd than in a room with one other person. I’m used to them, too – I’ve had a season ticket at Norwich City for 13 years, I’ve seen the England cricket team a few times, I’ve been to a play-off final at Wembley.

    On 4th March 2020 I went to see Norwich play Spurs at their magnificent new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. There were 58,000 people there to see City win on penalties and progress to the FA Cup quarter finals. Covid-19 was most definitely around at that point – it had been over a month since the first confirmed case in the UK and businesses were starting to ask their employees how they would feel about working from home. But it would be another nineteen days before the country went into full lockdown.

    There was no indication that it would be a full 503 days until I would be watching sport in the flesh again. On Tuesday 20th July, a day after almost all legal restrictions related to coronavirus had been lifted in England, I was at a packed Old Trafford cricket ground to see England play Pakistan in a T20 match.

    I was unsure of how I’d feel about being back in a capacity crowd, but I was surprised how normal it felt. Getting into the ground, having walked from the hotel, was quick and easy. The only sign that there was a pandemic at all was the ground staff wearing masks. I wore mine when I was moving around the ground, having only had one vaccine dose so far it seemed a reasonable precaution. With mask wearing now a personal choice rather than a legal requirement, however, I was among a minority who donned a face covering. We were almost always outside and it was a scorching hot afternoon but it jarred a little, it must be said.

    My mum, her partner and I had seats right on the back row of the top tier of the stand next to the pavilion so we didn’t have people breathing on the back of our necks for four hours, thankfully. The PA announcer gave semi-regular reminders to wash your hands, try to keep a safe distance from other people and respect their choices regarding face coverings but, again, without those you wouldn’t have even known what had been going on for the last eighteen months.

    Old Trafford was full

    There is a large population of British Asians in the north west and Old Trafford had a lot of Pakistan fans in attendance, proudly showing off their green shirts, waving the Pakistani flag and blowing horns at deafening volume. There can’t have been much difference in numbers between England and Pakistan supporters, and the Pakistan fans were certainly louder than their English counterparts. It made for a fantastic atmosphere and it got the intriguing game of cricket it deserved.

    This game was the last in a series of three T20 matches between the two countries. The first, at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, was a very high scoring affair with England falling 31 runs short of chasing Pakistan’s mammoth 232-6. Liam Livingstone smashed 103 off just 43 balls, the fastest century for England in T20 Internationals, but it wasn’t quite enough. Headingley in Leeds was the venue for the second match, with England 200 all out with one ball remaining in their innings and defending it comfortably thanks to their spinners to win by 45 runs. That meant the Old Trafford match was a decider and a chance to see where both sides were at ahead of the World Cup that starts in October.

    In case you didn’t know…

    When you think of Old Trafford, you probably think of the home of Manchester United, but the football ground and cricket ground are different places. They are a short distance from each other, but the cricket ground was actually there first.

    My mum was hoping to see sixes flying all over the place, but the pitch was slow and difficult to bat on. Pakistan won the toss and batted first, posting a total of 154-6. Wicketkeeper and opening batsman Mohammad Rizwan top scored with an unbeaten 76 but that took a relatively sedate 57 balls and it quickly became apparent that there was nothing in the pitch for the seamers. Most of the bowling was done by the spinners, with England’s Adil Rashid taking 4-35 from his four overs.

    This sort of slow, dry, spinning pitch is just the sort of thing that England might have to play on in the World Cup, which is being held in the United Arab Emirates and Oman, so it is possible that such conditions were deliberately concocted to give them some experience of how to deal with them.

    England’s opening batsman Jason Roy found it easier than most to find the boundary, scoring 64 from 36 balls with 12 fours and 1 six, an innings which proved decisive in the match and enough to earn Roy the player of the match award. Star man Jos Buttler couldn’t really get going – much to my mother’s chagrin – and whenever anyone tried to go big they were usually caught in the deep.

    A wonderful sunset as a hot day came to an end

    A regular fall of wickets left England behind the required run rate and needing 33 from 19 balls and 12 from 8 when the fifth wicket went down. Liam Livingstone, player of the series and Lancashire favourite, strode out and promptly whacked his first ball for six to put England back in the driving seat. He was caught next ball (also trying to hit it into next week) and the captain Eoin Morgan was still to go but the home team scrambled a two to seal victory with two balls to spare. Not a high scoring match, but a last over thriller satisfied the crowd.

    Getting out of the ground was no problem as we stayed to watch the trophy presentation while most of the deflated Pakistan supporters were leaving. And that was that – my first sporting event attended in person since the pandemic began. It shouldn’t – and I really hope it isn’t – another 503 days before the next one.

    England collect the trophy after winning the series 2-1

    All photos in this post were taken by me.