To a New Dawn: Letters of Solidarity Anthology

MILLIE BONFIELD, 16 Dear Future Self, Well, what a year 2020 was!

From celebrating the New Year in London, watching the vivid fireworks with no worries, to three months later, when a war had begun with Covid-19. Can you remember the last time you could see your friends and grandparents for months? 21st March. Two days later we were all in prison.

Can you remember playing monotonous board games with your family while waiting in the kitchen for the next announcement from Boris Johnson telling us how many lives coronavirus had taken that week? That was when it started to hit that Covid-19 really had dented the world.

Can you remember having BBQs constantly because there was nothing else to do on the balmy summer days? Can you remember dying your hair and buying endless amounts of clothes just because of boredom? These months were the strangest ones of everyone’s lives.

Remember the last day of school and our last waves of goodbye. It was all just one big rush. We had a day’s notice that our goodbyes to everyone – for what seemed like forever – were only a few hours away. Taking parting photos and actually being able to touch our friends for one last time for months. Remember being sat in the 75