Here at Woods Towers, battle lines are being drawn. I’m crying freedom and loading the trebuchet to smash the last strictures of Plan B in England. Hurrah! Huzza!
No need for NHS Covid passes. We can cast off the fuzzy shackles of elasticated loungewear and return to our offices for water cooler chit-chat and proper lunchtimes in real shoes.
Above all, we are no longer required to cover our faces with that tatty health hazard stuffed into our pocket and repeatedly hauled out for high risk emergencies like paying for petrol through a Perspex screen.
But my joy is far from unalloyed because my husband is refusing to relinquish his stockpile of masks. Not now. Not ever.
He’s got enough to survive another Chernobyl. A great many are squirrelled away in the basedump (it’s what the children call the downstairs utility room and to be honest, it’s a lot more descriptive) along with the dreary bags of of dried pulses, black market yeast and his other pandemic comestibles
“Are you going to wear a mask forever, darling?” I enquire, sweet as I can muster.
“I don’t know,” comes the deeply suspicious response. “Maybe.”
“Even if people stare at you and feel offended?” I persist.
“I don’t see why anyone would be offended by my private concern for public safety.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you though?”
Spoiler alert: at this point, dear reader, the exchange takes a turn for the testy.
“I’m not going to be told what to do,” he mutters.
“But you did! For years! We all followed the rules to a T. Apart from the people who made the rules because that’s not how rules work any more. Henceforth rules, like opinion polls, shall only ever go down; I believe it’s being branded Isaac Newton’s gravitational theory of government.
“I don’t believe it’s safe just because they say it’s safe.”
“But you believed it was unsafe when they said it was unsafe.”
“This conversation is fatuous.”
“What am I going to tell our friends when they come round to kill us all in our beds and you answer the door in a mask?”
I didn’t actually say “to kill us all in our beds”; I did say “for my ritzy glitzy birthday party” but the effect was similar.
“Which ‘friends’? How many? In full PPE? Look, do you really need a party?”
No adult “needs’’ a party. Apart from our overgrown schoolboy Prime Minister obviously. But seeing as he turned 56 with a transgressive little shindig I see no reason why I can’t also turn 56 with a massive shinbig.
Now at this point I should like to confirm I can hear all you ladyfolk yelling “who cares what your husband thinks?” and I’m sure if I were Beyoncé in her Lemonade days I would agree. But as I actually really like him and also need him to do the catering, that’s not going to work, is it?
Besides, my birthday bash crisis is a symptom of a deeper chasm between those who relish getting back to the old normal and those firmly wedded to the new normal, which as of Thursday is now the old new normal. Do keep up.
It’s easy, if wrong, to mock strangers wearing masks as scaredy-cats. Far harder – impossibly cruel – to dismiss family and friends made so anxious by events and the Government response to events that they can’t shake off their terrible fear of Covid.
Their extreme caution may be illogical (and, yes, exasperating) to us, but truthfully that doesn’t mean we are upholders of liberty and they are shameful cowards. These are the people we love, reduced to a miserable state of uncertainty.
To add another layer of confusion, some shops such as Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Tesco, Waitrose and John Lewis are continuing to request customers wear masks. On London transport, masks remain a “condition of carriage”; refusing to wear one can lead an individual to be refused entry to a station or service but no fine will be incurred.
Masks are segueing from mandatory must-wear to conspicuous, it’s-only-polite virtue signalling. And as nobody (or at least nobody I know) wants to appear rude, I have a feeling I’ll end up buckling to peer pressure and reluctantly keep the mask on when I don’t have to.
Then there will be individuals keen to stay covered up who will be pressured – bullied – into removing their mask in order to abide by their community’s post-pandemic mores.
Even now the worst has passed, we still aren’t in this together. There seems to be an unofficial consensus that the elderly will understandably stay masked. Nobody minds grandparents taking extra care; but I can unfortunately foresee scenarios in which masks become a source of friction.
Without the clarity of everyone masked or nobody masked, we’ll all end up making our own rules – and woe betide anyone who fails to conform.
Plan B may be over in England and drawing to a close elsewhere in the home nations but that tatty, token mask will be staying in my handbag for some time to come. Just in case.
And as for Woods Towers, we are still locked in birthday negotiations about pre-arrival lateral flow tests shared by WhatsApp, versus a bouncer on the door wielding an infrared thermometer. And as for the incendiary issue of face coverings, I’m elegantly sidestepping it with a dress code on the invitation that clearly says “masque ball”. I await the interpretations with interest…
