It’s been three weeks since Boris unshackled most of the UK from a year and a half of Covid incarceration. We are now ‘free’, whatever that means, because it feels anything but.  What was I expecting­? Street parties, jubilant crowds running the streets, mask-burnings, a national celebration with Gary Barlow freedom anthem live from Hyde Park? I’m not sure. But certainly not this. I’ve emerged into a strange new world I must navigate with unremitting caution, one eye trained sniper-like on a microbial menace muscling in on my every move. I can go out and do things but must be ‘sensible’; I can meet friends, but even when we’re off the isolation hook, will spend days waiting for ‘the ping’; and while I’m no longer obliged to mask-up, only piggishly selfish and inconsiderate bottom-holes parade supermarket aisles shamelessly flaunting unguarded, disease-spewing cavities. (pic: Matt Seymour. C/o Unsplash) We’re trapped in a not-really-post-apocalyptic limbo. Everything we do comes wit...

In my mid-40s, with my journalism career gently coasting, I became a student again. The subject was unimportant. My brain was due a workout to match the body poundings that since my early 20s have been a daily routine. After years of tread-milling, weightlifting and squat-thrusting towards ever-elusive physical perfection, it struck me that decades of mental autopilot had rendered the muscle above my shoulders a saggy, 'don’t bother me till noon', spare-tyre of its former self. So, I started an Open University law degree. Being a middle-aged student is vastly different from how I remember it first time round. There’s no drinking, no drugs, no staggering home at 3am and sleepwalking into midday lectures. But more notably, and something that would have horrified teenage me, I enjoy it. No enticement is needed to get me into bed at a reasonable hour; I’m there at 10pm, hitting the books by 7am the following  day. This must have been what the high achievers­–weirdos who put finals ...