We have been privileged and proud to provide coverage that we hope has been informative and challenging all through the pandemic, says Prime Time's Louise Byrne of a momentous, challenging year
It's New Years Eve. The band Joseph are ringing in 2020 on Jools' Annual Hootenanny. "Look who it is!" We had seen the group a few weeks earlier in the Workman’s Club in Dublin. Back when joining a crowd of people to sing/shout your heads off wasn’t a potential viral bomb.
It was a brilliant gig, which is a slice of luck, because it was the last one I got to before the curtain of Covid came down. One of Joseph’s songs is called New Year's Eve, which is helpful when you’re on television on December 31st.
"I don't really feel a whole year older now. I'm still shaking but I'm bolder now," the chorus goes.
The trio from Portland, Oregon seemed to have a sense of what lay ahead. "I know we'll make it another year. Though I don't know how."
Nine months into a global pandemic, I do feel a whole year older now, thanks Joseph. Prime Time has been on air throughout the Covid crisis. There have been longer programmes and extended working weeks. The usual summer break was, correctly, shelved, and we have been privileged and proud to provide coverage that we hope has been informative and challenging all through the pandemic.
While Miriam (O'Callaghan) and David (McCullagh) took a break in August, myself and reporters Mark Coughlan and Richard Downes stood in as presenters. When David departed to the Six One (we still haven’t forgiven him) the stand-in presenting was extended. A significant career curveball bang in the middle of the biggest news story I will likely ever cover.
"I’m still shaking but I’m bolder now."
Saying yes to presenting was only possible because my partner, Charlotte, also said 'yes, do it.' We have four year-old twins, who left playschool abruptly on March 12 and never returned. Both sets of brilliant grandparents are cocooning, so for large parts of the year, like hundreds of thousands of others, we were keeping a lot of plates in the air. But between us, no crockery fell and as our world shrunk under lockdown, imaginations expanded.
Unremarkable local walks took on a different complexion. Our own version of the Deep Dark Wood, inspired by children’s author Julia Donaldson, provided hours of distraction. It didn’t matter that the wood was neither deep nor dark and it is arguable whether the small gathering of trees constituted a wood at all, but the Gruffalo lived there and we had to find him.
As the weeks went on it became clear that our wedding in May could not go ahead. The invitations had been printed so they’ll go into a box of Covid ephemera. Maybe we’ll make a virtue of the cancellation and get the Tippex out to recycle them for next time. Our lovely venue was brilliant and while we’ve no idea when we’ll get the chance to reschedule, the non-wedding wedding day was really quite nice. There were flowers and bubbles and messages and calls which helped to make it, in the grand scheme of pandemic days, a pretty good one.
It’s tempting to dwell on the things that happened before Covid - the last proper night out, the last play, the last gig in a packed venue with soothsayer musicians, but 2020 has also been full of 'firsts'.
The biggest in our house was Tuesday September 1st, the first day of school. In the weeks beforehand there were emails from the school, lengthy Covid protocols, arrival maps and Zoom meetings. A ferocious amount of work was done by staff, so that on a sunny autumn morning the new junior infants joined their líne and were marshalled by masked teachers and SNAs off towards the school.
One boy wobbled and the trajectory of the líne looked in doubt, but he was encouraged along and off they went. Everyone worked so hard to make it feel normal but there’s no getting away from the fact that it was also deeply abnormal.
There were the 'firsts' working from home. Buying a proper desk, because it turns out an upturned base of a spare bed is not, in fact, a long term solution. The pang of guilt explaining to four year-olds that a game of what can only be described as screaming ninja battle fun times cannot be played when mama is recording interviews. And the realisation that being at home at lunchtime is infinitely better when your partner happens to make the best sandwiches in Dublin.
I count myself extremely lucky that my job required both home-working and being in studio, or filming, and that as a family we were able to juggle that during the first lockdown. I’m not sure how I would have coped with full-time remote working. I’m also very conscious of how fortunate I am to have a job that I love while so many others are losing theirs.
In March the newsroom needed extra staff because of the impact of Covid quarantines, so I temporarily moved back to work with my former colleagues on Morning Ireland. Radio reporting affords opportunities to get very close to a story and I felt we needed to look at grief in the time of Covid.
It was a real privilege to quietly follow the Grealish family as they buried their dad PJ. It should have been a big funeral in Tuam, County Galway. Instead, the huge cathedral, the surrounding streets and the nearby graveyard were all silent. The family grieved in eerie isolation.
Much of our coverage early in the pandemic was frightening and upsetting. I interviewed one devastated nursing home owner who had just found out that almost all her residents had been infected by Covid-19. Later in the same week a nurse in a different facility sobbed as she explained how two residents had died of Covid within twenty minutes of each other. These radio interviews were recorded and edited remotely in my spare room using a laptop. It’s flexible, but also unavoidably impersonal. Some distances you feel more than others.
I was then back to Prime Time a few weeks later which had been split into two teams of reporters, presenters and producers, to help keep the show on the road. If one group was quarantined we would still get a programme to air.
The fact that we continued to broadcast uninterrupted throughout the last year is a credit to my talented colleagues. The VT editors who have developed UN-levels of communication and diplomacy to edit our films at a distance. The producers at the centre of logistical typhoons every other day. The programme editors grappling with endless, difficult decisions while also trying to keep everyone safe.
But it’s also down to the support of our families. The partners who say 'yes, do it, would you like a sandwich?' And the gorgeous, joyful children who take their ninja games downstairs when mama says this is a really important call. "I know we'll make it another year." Joseph had it right all along.
