Everywhere is noticeably noisier. Everyone seems to be getting closer and closer to you as you amble down the street (still wearing your mask, if you're like me and can't quite believe that those folk who cough, splutter and sneeze as they pass you are STILL behaving that way). Life is back on track, but not a damned thing has really changed has it?
The worst evidence of the return to normal was the behaviour of my wife's employer. She kindly volunteered to go into work for a day (purely because sorting out desks and offices for new starters isn't really something you can do effectively remotely) and instantly one of her superiors said "This is for good" without any sense of sarcasm or irony. Meanwhile at work, our employers have quietly (silently) not bothered to mention anything about their 'return to on site working' strategy, or the mythical new working patterns that we were promised, where working from home for a few days a week would be the new norm. What a complete surprise.
People suck. Those who have been extremely lucky to have ignored all the health and government advice throughout COVID probably feel like a million dollars, with an air of smugness about them that comes from being one of those wide-boy (or girl) folk who don't give a shit about A) anyone else or B) any rules imposed on them ("A violation of my human rights!| they squeal, as tired staff in stores and other venues have to ask them to put their damned masks on when going inside, like naughty toddlers being told not to lick the bloody stair rail or eat chewing gum they've picked up off the floor).
Those who lost people, or were directly affected by COVID don't share that feeling and probably never will. In fact they harbour an entirely different feeling, one of resentment. "Why us, not them? Why does the devil look after his own?" (a phrase my Nan would often say, though of course you'd have to have some sort of faith to believe in all that bollocks). Those of us who have managed to avoid COVID by doing what we were advised to do definitely empathise with these folks more than the rule flouters.
During lockdown there was a lot of talk about how things would change because of COVID. The way we live, the way we work, the way we travel and even the way we shop. As you see the restrictions easing (and you also see the press clinging on to the last vestiges of newsworthyness for COVID as they try to develop an alarmist and openly racist view on the 'foreign variants' of COVID that are more vicious and transmissable, completely and purposely avoiding the headline they should be printing about the efficacy of the vaccine against even these - or simply laying into the Oxford-developed AstraZeneca vaccine at every opportunity because of the miniscule percentage of blood clots caused by it) you begin to notice all the things that irritated you about people are back for good too. It was inevitable, as inevitable as the arrival of an unloved season (I love that phrase) and as the weather starts to improve, it'll only get worse.
I sound like a bitter moany old git but this has just reinforced my view that, we humans, even in the face of a cataclysmic pandemic, are so set in our ways that we will never break free of our patterns of behaviour right up until the point where we're forced to (walk past any line of traffic and see how many folk are staring lovingly into their laps at their mobiles, well we'd hope they're staring at those instead of their genitals). People really cannot help themselves, can they?
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