'Tea In The Pouring Rain': How Ordinary People Spent Their Lockdown Birthdays

If you cast your minds back to 2020 and 2021 you’ll remember that we spent much of the year in lockdowns.

That means many people had their birthdays at a time they could only mix with their own household, meet one friend outside, or without seeing anyone at all.

But, it emerges, even our prime minister didn’t follow those rules. In June of 2020, it’s understood that Boris Johnson, with the help of wife Carrie, had a birthday get together with 30 people, which included cake.

Reports say the party included staff and family friends, who enjoyed M&S picnic food and sang a chorus of happy birthday to the prime minister.

At the time, indoor get togethers were prohibited and there were concerns about singing as it could spread Covid, with chorus groups cancelling rehearsals.

Just nine days after the alleged birthday bash, Johnson said in a press conference: “Continue to show restraint and respect the rules which are designed to keep us all safe”.

And it seems ordinary people did. We spoke to some people who also got a year older in that time, but without the merriment and celebrations of the country’s leader.

“A few days later, my dad died.”

Yasmin*, a 42-year-old media lecturer from Cardiff, Wales, had a starkly contrasting birthday to Johnson.

“I also had a birthday in June 2020,” she tells HuffPost. “The main thing I can remember about it is sitting on a bench in my local park crying. But I was also looking around anxiously because earlier in the lockdown I had seen the police patrolling that park and moving people on if they caught them sitting on benches. They crawled around the park in their vehicle issuing instructions to move with megaphones.

“A few days after that I got the news that my father had died of Covid. I didn’t see him. And I didn’t attend his funeral.”

After seeing the allegations against the prime minister, Yasmin adds: “It feels enraging after what the people of this country have been through under his venal, corruptible, narcissistic and puerile attempts at government. There are many reasons why he should have resigned a dozen times over by now, and many of them far more serious. This is just the latest and least. I view what has happened is this country under his premiership as tantamount to a genocide.”

“It angers me that I sat in the pouring rain just to see friends.”

Lizzie, a reporter from London, also didn’t imagine having such a quiet affair when she turned 26.

“My birthday in June 2020 - which was actually nine days before Boris’s – was incredibly depressing,” she says.

“After months of blissful sunshine it was pouring with rain for two weeks in June 2020. And because no pubs/restaurants/attractions were open yet, I had two friends pop round to have a cup of tea in the garden in the pouring rain (we literally sat under umbrellas on my patio).”

The friends came and went one at a time – rather than in unison – because the rules only permitted meeting one other person outside.

“I then went for an incredibly wet park walk with my mum and sister in the afternoon – who I was living with at the time – because there was literally nothing else we could do with the restrictions at the time,” Lizzie continues.

“It angers me that I literally sat in the pouring rain to see my two friends separately, while Boris had his birthday cake with an entire gathering of people inside his flat just days later.”

Many others can relate to spending the special day alone, isolated, and without their loved ones by them.

People took to social media to express their anger and hurt over the rules set for them, and the ones broken by government.

*Names have been changed.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost UK and has been updated.

Related...

• Partygate: What The Police Investigation Means For Sue Gray's Report

• Booking A Half Term Holiday? Here's Your Guide To The Latest Travel Rules

• So Was The PM's Birthday Party Illegal? That's What This Lawyer Thinks