Five years ago, at the start of 2020, I was looking forward to the publication of my book, Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City and eagerly anticipating a long-awaited holiday to Jamaica.
But by February, as reports of a virus called COVID-19 began to mount up, the holiday was cancelled. At that stage, like many of us, I had read reports of this virus from China that was spreading through the rest of the world – but I did not fully take in what the impact of this would be. I watched news stories of Italians singing on balconies and carried on with my daily routine.
