A new dawn begins
Yesterday after lunch, on the eve of the first major step out of “lockdown”, I went for a two hour walk in south-west London, first alongside the River Thames and later into Richmond Park.
To be frank, as I compose this post I’m personally still somewhat hazy as to what today’s new Covid-10 rules now permit (or still restrict) and am hoping to gain some enlightenment from this morning’s newspapers and/or breakfast television shows.
However, on the evidence of my outing yesterday it would seem that the great British public had somewhat jumped the gun.
The Thames tow-path was filled with a noisy throng of people of all ages enjoying the bracing spring fresh air – dog-walkers, family groups, lovers, oldies, tourists, joggers, riders of those adult electric scooter-thingies that irritate me so much and – of course – cyclists two or three abreast.
Largely indistinguishable from any weekend crowd in similar weather conditions at any time over the past pre-pandemic thirty years, I should have thought.
Yes, some were wearing face masks and/or making half-hearted nods to notions of social-distancing but the overwhelming and inescapable general impression was that, irrespective of whatever caution and advice the Government and/or their scientific advisers were still counselling, ‘life had returned to normal’.
Will things actually have changed much?
I don’t care a fig what the hospitality and airline industries want and/or are demanding, my gut tells me that it’s going to be a long time before I bother to enter a crowded pub or go on a foreign holiday again whatever safety precautions and restrictions anyone puts in place.
For good or ill, I’ve become used to living under lockdown – or at least my version of what passed for it – and why should anyone take the risk?
You can only control what you can control – and, if you should e.g. decide to “test the water” by going to a theatre show, there’s no saying what ludicrous risks anyone any other loose cannon might have taken during the previous four days and/or indeed is taking as they sit within a sudden involuntary sneeze’s distance of you in the auditorium.
The irony yesterday was that, when I reached the open spaces of Richmond Park, there were far fewer people taking the air and it really did seem that normality had returned at last.
I counted four airliners overhead making their measured approaches to Heathrow. Is this the end – or the start – of something?
