I went out on Thursday evening. My sojourns into town have been getting less and less frequent. Hopping on a bus and going out for a drink is no longer the carefree, joyful experience it once was; yes, even going into the city on a No. 17 bus was, I realise now, joyful - I just didn't know it at the time: no masks, no drivers behind perspex screens, no sanitising stations, no Orwellian safety announcements on the tannoy. And disgorging at the other end, piling into a bar and meeting friends is now a very different proposition; the hoops we now have to jump through just to make any of the above happen have ensured that every last bit of fun has been utterly squeezed out of life.
This isn't living; this is nothing more than existing - we're all, every last one of us, merely going through the motions. And it's gonna get a whole lot worse. When the widely predicted stricter restrictions come into force next week (as they surely must), any last glimmer of hope for a return to even just a modicum of normality will have finally been extinguished.
(I took one last photo. It was dark and miserable. Quite.)
Don't lose hope, John! Things will change again, I have no doubt; as a species we're resilient and social animals and we've got through pandemics before. It's shit now, that's for sure, so in the meantime we're stuck trying to focus on other pleasures in the most surreal environment we've ever known. Easy to say I know; harder to do. Hang on in there.
ReplyDeleteIt's alright, ignore me - I was just having a moan. I live in a city with two universities and the students are dropping like flies. They're generally OK (most of them are asymptomatic) but that doesn't stop them from being super spreaders and generally buggering up our figures.
ReplyDeletePulled in a lovely 5 mile walk today with a great pub Sunday lunch at the other end (and a couple of rather splendid beers), before bussing it back. A great afternoon, so I should really count myself as one of the lucky ones.
I’d like to be as upbeat as C but not feeling it right now. I had a nice summer, started getting out and about again, but it’s going to be a long, cold winter. I see your neck of the woods is going to have stricter rules (we’ve had them for a while in Scotland now) - Take care, and yes, we humans do eventually recalibrate again and appreciate the little things - Like the sound of that walk and pub lunch.
ReplyDeleteSome of us are going to take longer than others to recalibrate.
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