*GENERATION LOCKDOWN*: PART ONE

Five years on from the start of the pandemic I have been re-visiting my own archives. Throughout March I’ll be posting that story...

March 22, 2020 Hastings’ Country Park L-R: my late son Jackson (then 17), his friend ‘David’ (aka my ‘Lockdown Son’, also 17) and my younger son, Rider, then 13

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In 2020 I was a restaurant critic at The Telegraph. Having written about food and restaurants regularly for the previous 20+ years, it was a fun gig—even without a contract. When the first Lockdown was announced — and restaurants shut — the paper suggested I write some other pieces.

In my first *Generation Lockdown* post, I’m kicking-off with an article published on March 26, 2020, followed by one published on December 14, 2021, 21 months later.

With millions of words in print I am not in the habit of revisiting my old articles, however this felt like a good time to do so. Collectively, I think they tell a compelling — even important — story; I remain grateful to my editors at the Telegraph for letting me tell it.

It is, of course, also particularly tough for me to revisit this period since the death of my eldest son in 2023, aged 21. Jackson is included in these posts because the overriding narrative for me — even at the start of the Pandemic — was the potential impact of Lockdown on our young people. And then, later, how much damage those Lockdowns might have done. (For the record, I was relieved of my restaurant column in 2021 and last wrote for The Telegraph in 2022).

I still stand by every word I wrote. Indeed, from the vantage point of 2025 I feel entirely vindicated in my stance which, during that period, mostly went against the grain. I was eventually accused (offensively) of ‘granny-killing’, of (absurdly) being a ‘Covid-denier’ and (boringly but inevitably) ‘right-wing’ — and I lost some so-called friends as a result.

Fine by me. Water off the proverbial duck’s back. My father had only recently died (in 2019, blessedly pre-Covid) and my mother then died in the middle of it all (though not of it), in Australia (where the borders were shut), in the autumn of 2020. We had said our ‘goodbyes’ on the phone.

As March 2025 also marks the 18 month anniversary of Jackson’s death, I’m dedicating this series of posts not only to the memory of my eldest son — who handled his Lockdowns brilliantly (even though, as his life ended up being far too short, I resent the fact he was forced to go through them at all) — but also to his younger brother, Rider, and all their fine friends.

With the ‘adults’ in-charge offering a scaremongering response to a pandemic that was, overwhelmingly, lethal only to the elderly and physically vulnerable, I will say unequivocally that my generation collectively failed theirs. However — and contrary to the popular narrative — many of the younger members of *Generation Lockdown* ™ are now doing brilliantly.

As I know Jackson would have done, too. Because what doesn’t kill you really does — OK, make that really should — make you stronger.

A text from my 17 year-old son, from school (where he’s a boarder), just before 5pm last Wednesday, March 18:

—School’s shutting on Friday. I’m freaking out. X

I call immediately but he doesn’t pick up. On social media there are pictures of delighted-looking kids and comments such as ‘YAY! NO EXAMS!’ I expect this is what my younger son, 13, will be feeling (he’s a day pupil at a different school). And, frankly, a premature end to Year 9 is no big deal; I expect him to skateboard his way through the corona crisis. For my elder son, however — Year 13 and weeks away from A-levels — it’s a different story.

When we do finally speak, he’s in a big group of confused kids, all on the phone to their equally confused parents. My son’s circle of friends/housemates includes teens from Italy, Hong Kong, Nigeria and the Middle East, and emotions are running high. While nobody is exactly heartbroken about not sitting exams in May/June, they are all upset about precisely what being denied the exams may, in turn, deny them.

Will they be judged on their mocks (a strategy favouring girls, who tend to take a less just-in-time approach to exams)? Or (for those who, like my son, were relying on their final grades before applying to Uni) will teachers predict grades? And, if so, is that a fail-safe approach? At this stage, nobody has a clue.

Out of a boarding community of around 200, spread over six houses, by Thursday evening parents and guardians have swooped and there are only around 30 kids left—all boys. I receive another text from my son: a friend who lives in the UAE is stranded now their borders are closed—can I put him up?

‘Of course!’ I reply instinctively, without thinking.

‘You do realise he could be here for months?’ says my partner, with a shrug. An email from the young man’s parents (we’ll call David) drives the point home:

Thank you so much for offering to put David up for as long as the borders this end are closed. Please feel free to treat him as you would your son and make sure he pulls his weight helping around the house! We will be in touch over the next few days...

I collect my son on Friday afternoon (David joins us the following day) and the atmosphere is extremely sad. There are cross-generational hugs and tears between the few remaining students and staff, and I shed a few myself, because children leaving school for the last time is a rite-of-passage for parents, too.

The journey home is only 30 minutes. When we arrive my son’s sadness is already bubbling over into anger that the entire 2020 Year 13 cohort — about 250,000 nationwide — has been stripped of their entire raison d’etre, of being the Boss Class, the Kings-and-Queens of their school. When you have been so busy preparing to fly and have your wings prematurely clipped, it hurts.

The psychologist Philippa Perry — mother of adult daughter Flo, wife of Grayson and author of the recent best-selling ‘The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did)’ — empathises: ‘It’s a terrible shame and these teenagers must be feeling awful: geared up for the rites of passage and now so frustrated. You can’t fix this for your son—however you can be on his side, and alongside him as he goes through this disappointment. I hope this generation can plan a new rites-of-passage when this is all over’.

In the meantime, attempting to adjust to the new parameters, there is both domestic confusion and inevitable friction. On the one hand, Mothers’ Day passes successfully; me, my boys, plus my extra honorary son walk our whippet on the Fire Hills, near our home in Hastings. As a ‘family group’, we’re together, at a distance from other walkers. The sun shines, the views across the Channel are glorious and there’s plenty of room for everybody.

However, despite clear advice to keep younger and older generations apart we see plenty of inter-generational groups of grandparents, parents and young children together. Back at home I make lasagne and we all watch ‘Le Mans 66’ on Amazon Prime. For two-and-half-rip-roaring hours on the sofa we forget about all the chaos. Oddly, it’s one of the nicest Mothers’ Days I can recall.

By the next morning, however, my eldest son is chafing at the metaphorical bit:

‘Dom’s coming round and we’re going out’

‘And you’ll all be two metres apart while he drives his stretch limo, will you? So that you can see your asthmatic dad sooner rather than later?’

Mild sarcasm is one approach. After he leaves the house, we try another — texting:

— Which bit of ‘social-distancing’ do you not get?

— Don’t patronise me

— I’m not the one making the rules. If people carry on socialising the way they have been, we’ll be in lockdown!

— I know, Mum. We all know. X

Philippa Perry is unsurprised: ‘What is weird for teenagers — and indeed for all of us — is that although our reasoning dictates that we should be locked-down, our bodies haven’t caught up with that reasoning. Every fibre of a teenagers’ being is looking for contact with his tribe—however teenagers are more likely to hear you if, instead of threats, you can really listen to how angry they are and validate their feelings, with no ‘buts’.

When they eventually run out of all the different reasons why they are so angry, reiterate those boundaries. Make clear it’s not your decision — it’s just how this virus spreads. He’s not risking his life — but he is endangering others.’

It’s a lot for any teenager — and, indeed, parents and carers of teenagers — to take on board. In the old pre-Covid-19 world, parental instinct included understanding and indulging an older teenager’s almost compulsive need to stretch the metaphorical umbilical cord to breaking point; behaviour endorsed by precisely all the Year 13 school-leaver rites-of-passage — the proms, festivals, trips to Ayia Napa and, in August, the traditional newspaper-cliché pictures of happy teenage girls with their 4 A* A-levels. Everything, indeed, that has just been snatched away.

Teenagers grapple with this while parents and carers struggle to keep their boundaries firm, in a febrile environment in which everybody’s boundaries are changing virtually daily. Or as one friend, also the parent of an emotionally pin-balling Year 13, put it to me this morning: ‘One minute my heart is breaking for her broken dreams, the next I’m shouting that if she doesn’t get her act together I’m going to lock her in her bedroom until August! Somewhere in-between is where we both need to be, clearly’.

I keep having to remind myself to lay an extra place at the dinner table for my lovely unexpected ‘extra son’, whom I sure would rather be at home with his own family. With their wings clipped this ‘Corona Generation’ are already discovering that their flights will be tough, long-haul and sometimes spent in the brace-position; we watched the PMs announcement about ‘lockdown’ restrictions ‘en-famille’ on Monday evening and at the end the teenagers finally understood where we all are, for a while.

Yet, even as we adjust to the new normal they need to believe they’ll get to their eventual destinations and also that, collectively, we are right here for them, helping them find their way. Fingers crossed.

By the end of 2021, however, it was a very different story...

Last Wednesday, as Messrs Johnson, Vallance and Whitty addressed the nation wearing their doom-faces and calling yet again for “the slides”, Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, was tweeting upbeat messages: “Measures [announced tonight] will… help keep children and young people in childcare, school, college and uni, with their friends and teachers.”

Meanwhile, my youngest son (15, in his GCSEs year) was staying late after school – a small, oversubscribed, non-selective independent outside London – for a pizza and ping-pong evening, celebrating, in the words of the parental email, “how hard Year 11 have worked this term”. On Friday afternoon, however, there came another communication: “Dear parents/guardians. Please see attached a user guide for learning at home and how to use Microsoft Teams…”

Warning bells rang, so I called the school. “Please tell me you’re not planning to shut?” “Not at all!” I was reassured, “This is just a round-robin email to cover those children who are off.” Fair enough.

Within two hours there was yet another email. This one, ominously, from the head: “Following the Government’s announcements… a spike in cases… parents questioning whether events should go ahead… decided to avoid mass gatherings that could pose a risk to our community… Art trip to London postponed, tomorrow’s sixth form dinner cancelled, Year 11 Saturday maths revision sessions are virtual… term ends early next Wednesday.”

Verily, a seasonal (ding-dong very un-merrily) blizzard of cobbled-together decisions spurred by a “spike in cases”. So what? Was anybody actually unwell? Clearly, this snap decision echoed the equally nonsensical omicron-related guidance: work from home – but go to the pub.

It struck me that, by ending the term early (but not right away), the school was virtue signalling to appease those snow-flakey parents “beginning to question whether our big events should be going ahead”. But why hadn’t it canvassed all the parents for their opinions? Haven’t these children already lost enough of their all-important education?

It was bad enough that my son’s excellent, in-person Saturday morning maths GCSE revision sessions were now going online (the iGCSE maths exam is in early January and his class is halfway through the two mock papers that will presumably dictate grades should the exam be cancelled). Even aside from its academic remit, the school’s Christmassy extra-curricular events are its beating emotional heart. On a Year 11 parents’ WhatsApp group, one mother admitted that her child (who joined the school in Year 9 but had been unwell in the last week of their first Christmas term) had now missed two school Christmases and could in fact leave the school without having attended any of them.

At which point something snapped; I’d already been through the chaos of my elder son’s cancelled A-levels (at another school) in 2020, so I fired off a furious email to the head, copying in anyone else on staff whose email address came to hand. No reply. The following morning (having watched my son fail to access the remote revision class on his laptop, reverting to using his phone) I fired off another. No reply.

On Sunday afternoon I stood watching my son playing football alongside another mother who works closely with the excellent, lockdown-resistant parental pressure group Us For Them (mission: “that children must be placed front and centre in all decisions impacting them and the wellbeing of children should be a guiding principle of public policy making”).

Touchline mum told me her son’s school had already closed and that a parental WhatsApp group was now seeing a great deal more active engagement from, specifically, angry MPs who have had enough. “They are as angry as we are that the tragic death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes came about partly because school closures ensured he was not seen by people who could have helped him. They are as angry as we are that roughly 100,000 children have gone missing from school rolls since lockdown. If schools close in January, well…”

Well, it certainly won’t help the children whom Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector of schools, last week said had fallen behind in their language skills, struggled to interact with their peers, and “lost physical dexterity and confidence through a lack of practice while confined to their homes” in the first lockdown.

If schools really close in January as a result of omicron compromising the blessed NHS, then they are quite literally putting some children at risk. Less than a week on from his cavalier tweets about keeping children in school/uni, Zahawi is now hedging his bets, saying that he cannot “guarantee” all schools will be open next term but will do “everything in my power” to keep children in class. How reassuring.

Late Sunday afternoon I finally received a reply from the head. He agreed with many of my points, apparently… however, sadly, his hands were tied. Hmm.

How, I responded, can his school abdicate its contractual responsibilities towards the children in its care, to be seen virtue signalling to a cohort of parents who, in truth, could be entirely uninformed? I also made a broader point: he had mentioned “Christmas with grandparents” as a motivation to cancel the school’s own Christmas for its kids – which is clearly a kind of madness. At this stage in the pandemic’s proceedings nearly everyone who wants to be vaccinated/boosted is vaccinated/boosted – or about to be – and it is therefore not the responsibility of anybody’s child to “protect” someone else’s elderly relative from catching any disease, ever.

The school’s stance felt to me like a kind of culture war mission-creep. There is a sense now that feelings outweigh facts, that being seen to enact socially sanctioned versions of “doing the right thing” (whether that’s saving “our” NHS or having a lovely Christmas with already triple-vaccinated Grandma) is somehow more important than actually doing the right thing.

Which, of course, would be to ignore irrational emotional pressure from scared parents and keep your school open for the children.

My son usually catches the train to school; however, on Monday morning I dropped him off, still limping slightly from a minor footballing injury, and was hailed in the car park by a staff member privy to my email storm.

“Between you and me,” they said, “I agree with every word you wrote. Frankly, if schools shut in January, I shall probably go on a march for the first time.”

Even if the Cabinet is made up mostly of fathers (who leave most of the hands-on parenting to their wives), I still fail to understand why children’s emotional and physical welfare isn’t ever a motivating factor in deciding governmental policy. However, maybe between nappy changes, our Prime Minister – the fortunate recipient of the very best education that money can buy, after all – would like to hear what (with nearly two years of educational disruption under his belt) a 15-year-old had to say when I told him school was closing early.

“Everyone is being vaccinated and boosted, so, if school shuts in January just because there’s a bad cold going around, and they cancel our GCSEs again this year, what exactly is the point of school?”

And, as he wandered away, crest clearly fallen, from his textbooks towards his Xbox, resigned to yet another winter spent “saving the NHS”, I really couldn’t think of an answer.

GENERATION LOCKDOWN: PART TWO — COMING SOON…

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Jackson Peacock: July 28, 2002—September 20, 2023