Neil Oliver did a brilliant piece in the Sunday Times.
Excellent summary of what a lot of us feel.
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Do you ever get the feeling that something, somewhere has gone badly wrong? The kids went back to school last week and I realise now that I was expecting some sort of sense of relief would follow. It wasn’t about wanting them out of the house — far from it — but more the thought that when they took that step towards their own normal, there would be a lessening of the general anxiety. That did not happen, however. Off they trooped to school and yet the feeling of something having gone wrong remained, like a cold, heavy stone in the tripes.
When the virus arrived and we locked down for the good of the nation — to “flatten the curve” and “save the NHS” — there was an undeniable sense of community spirit about it all. The sense of all being in it together was almost — almost — palpable. Clapping on Thursdays. Now, half a year later, the atmosphere is different and the landscape seems altered, and permanently. It is as though the water level has risen, subtly insinuating itself into places where before it was dry.
Everything looks different, feels different, is different. What had been billed as a short-term state of emergency, requiring a burst of the old Blitz spirit, fossilised into something hard, fixed. It’s like an unfinished magic trick: the magician having led the old world by the hand into a cabinet and shut the door. When the door opened, the old world was gone — and he hasn’t brought it back. Now there’s just an absence and unfulfilled expectation.
The shops are open, the restaurants too, but all feel out of kilter. Masks are mandatory and everywhere. Plastic screens, hazard tape, visors on the faces of people behind counters and serving at tills. The official message, still repeated daily, is that all of this is necessary and unavoidable and we do as we are told.
There is no mention of curves any more and we do seem to have saved our NHS, right enough. But the old world, vanished by magic, seems further away than ever. Maybe there will be a vaccine. Lockdowns — local and national — are still floating around out there like so much bad weather over the horizon and possibly coming our way.
We read and hear about all sorts of possibilities. Perhaps the over-50s will have to shield themselves . . . or perhaps the over-40s. Since I’m in both of those camps, the prospect of being sent indoors for some open-ended term of detention is an ever-present thought.
I realised, years ago now, that I am by nature a dissenter. I was a good wee boy at school but in the years since I have found my inner disobedience. I do not like being told. I have begun to wonder about concepts such as social contracts and uncodified constitutions. Maybe we need a review, a serious and honest review, of those ties that bind us to the institutions of the state. Faced with the threat of contagion we, willingly, for the most part, surrendered our liberties.
We weren’t asked. We said farewell to hugs and kisses and holding hands, to gatherings, weddings and festivals and to proper funerals for the dearly loved. We accepted that travel was no longer freely available. We accepted that the cheek-by-jowl, shoulder-to-shoulder closeness of the pub was no more and that the intimate atmosphere of the restaurant was a pleasure of the past.
Our children face altered futures, curtailed horizons. Unknown numbers of people, out of sight and out of mind, are doubtless struggling with the realities of isolation, loneliness and a host of emotional pressures taking invisible tolls. As a society, we have taken all of this on board, riveted on our self-forged shackles, and now here we are, in the new place, the altered reality of our own making.
Now the R-word is out again — not the mysterious “effective reproduction number” related to the virus, but the deepest recession for 100 years. The solution we had no longer feels like a solution. Instead, it is like the sort of bodged repair I affect with gaffer tape and sealant when what I really need is a plumber. The economy and wider society are bleeding to death. The taxes will go up next, as those in charge look for money to pay for more of whatever this is. Is this hollowed-out life worth paying for? Some accounts cannot be settled with cash or credit cards.