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 with a caveat: fly my pretties, but remember, one false move and you might die. We’re trapped in a not-really-post-apocalyptic limbo. Everything we do comes with a caveat: fly my pretties, but remember, one false move and you might die.
I recall passing my driving test many years back, still not entirely confident or competent behind the wheel. My dad handed me keys to an old banger: ‘Off you go. Just be sensible and try not to kill anyone.’ I peered unblinkingly over white knuckles the entire half-mile crawl round the block. Freedom never felt so terrifying.
This is similar. We are as close to normal as we can hope for now, but this fear-freighted unfettering tastes more bitter than sweet. An unspoken pressure to start behaving ‘normally’ comes with daily reminders–lateral flows thrust at me in the chemist, Covid warning banners adorning railings, daily updates on deaths–of the peril inherent in routine activities; every day is like driving on black ice.
The vaccine will protect us, we’re assured, as horror stories mount of double-jabbed Covid victims suffering horrific symptoms. (Although I suspect some drama embellishes these tales.) And we can finally enjoy holidays; never mind our destination might at any moment flick to amber, and instead of returning home nicely buzzed on free airline G and T’s, we’ll skulk back unclean into quarantine like missionaries returning from a leper colony. Chatting in Sainsbury’s to a visored-up check-out assistant from behind a plastic screen still feels like visiting a US federal prison inmate and try as I might to feel ‘normal’ on the train, I’m powerless against the compulsion to continually splash myself with isopropyl alcohol like it’s Chanel No 5.
The vaccine will protect us, we’re assured, as horror stories mount of double-jabbed Covid victims suffering horrific symptoms. (Although I suspect some drama embellishes these tales.) And we can finally enjoy holidays; never mind our destination might at any moment flick to amber, and instead of returning home nicely buzzed on free airline G and T’s, we’ll skulk back unclean into quarantine like missionaries returning from a leper colony. Chatting in Sainsbury’s to a visored-up check-out assistant from behind a plastic screen still feels like visiting a US federal prison inmate and try as I might to feel ‘normal’ on the train, I’m powerless against the compulsion to continually splash myself with isopropyl alcohol like it’s Chanel No 5.
Waiting for a haircut the other day, I was one in a line of customers nervously hooking and unhooking mask-straps. Do we keep them on or take them off? I kept mine on and asked for a number three and tidy up. ‘You’re not required to wear a mask,’ the hairdresser said gleefully. ‘But keep it on if you like. Would you like me to wear one?’
I’m not usually stuck for answers, but the array of choices flummoxed me. ‘I’m not sure, should I? What would you do? It’s only this once, what’s the harm. Who can I check with? Where’s “JVT” when you need him?’ I nervously flopped my mask on the counter. How tantalisingly daring and reckless–a wanton act of unprotected, risky haircutting; it’s ok, I can get tested later.
We all know Covid is very much still out there. Numbers continue to fluctuate, and scientists have broadly concluded it’s going nowhere; it will most likely bed down as an endemic disease we tackle much like flu.
The virus is also at the start of its career. We are at loggerheads with an entirely new pathogen unleashed on an entirely new host. It wants to flex its muscles and show us who’s boss with fresh waves of increasingly jab-wily variants. Scientists continue to grit their teeth as they monitor vaccine effectiveness against virus virility under the persisting threat of so-called escape variants. Covid is having a blast–nature’s equivalent to a sex-starved sailor let loose in a brothel.
An argument exists for accepting nothing remains but simply get on with it and take the collateral damage as we head into autumn and winter, however great that might be. All species, humans included, must at times during their evolution do battle with pathological threats. That’s nature, and perhaps the only propitious way to fight this enemy is to engage head on. No more hiding.
The astonishing success of the vaccine programme, something last year I refused to believe could be just around the corner, has given us a leg-up. Millions of Brits are now double-jabbed and should avoid serious illness. But it’s a leg-up not a silver bullet, and we may only be part-way through a long race between jabs, natural immunity and variants.
For some, freedom’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and a return to normality presents an altogether different set of challenges. I’m one of those weirdos who’s cheerfully spent a year and a half missing nothing and no one, comfortably cocooned in my own impenetrable world of books, boxsets and Netflix. I’ve been spared social events I usually dread weeks ahead, and without needing to drum up any last-minute ‘family emergencies’. Even during the brief periods of unlock, I conjured up no elaborate excuses to get out of unsolicited meet up requests; ‘sorry, seeing my elderly mother tomorrow’ did the trick each time, with no offence caused. It won’t be long, though, before the invites come thick and fast. My inner misanthropist grows increasingly unsettled at the prospect of Christmas a few months away.
It’s not all bad. Visiting family without nervously peering through the curtains in case the police have received a tip-off to one too many people inside is much nicer, and unrestricted mid-morning coffees with friends are a joy. Nor do I miss constantly gauging the space between me and other human beings while under my breath scowling ‘that’s not two metres’ to careless passers-by.
Freedom Day, real Freedom Day, will be a long-time coming, and when it finally arrives, it will undoubtedly be a case not of ‘normal, but of ‘what are we prepared to accept as normal.
At the start of the pandemic, I comforted myself with the promise that one day it will be over, and I would join the world in heaving a humungous sigh of relief. But now I expect no VE day. No street parties lined with bunting, no final victory speech, no Gary Barlow anthems. I see a slow slog towards something we’ll gradually and without noticing grow to accept; something future generations will simply consider normal. But for people like me, it might, for a considerable time to come, feel anything but.
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