When the coronavirus lockdown ends Brits will have to embrace a very different way of life
SIX weeks ago, if you’d told me most Brits would view a summer locked in their homes as a realistic prospect I would have brushed off the idea as insanity.
But the people who dart across the other side of the street to avoid me on my daily walk are not ready to countenance sitting inside a busy pub or restaurant.
I’m longing to go to a concert or watch a football match in a buzzing ground, but at this point even the most hardy fans of mass gatherings view that prospect as silly talk.
Something has changed during the coronavirus.
The British people have united behind our great Prime Minister to embrace the idea of locking down, staying at home in perpetuity while baking and juicing and home exercising.
However — whisper it — in a matter of weeks the Government is going to be asking us to do something very different, despite the extended lockdown announced yesterday.
The NHS has not been overrun and while the daily death toll is devastating, the curve is flattening.
Most of us are going to have to start going out again. And that’s OK.
WE HAVE BEHAVED
In fact, it’s more than OK. It means freedom and travelling and seeing people.
The messaging has been so strong because the Government, in the early days of this pandemic, predicted the British public would be very bad at following such draconian rules.
After all, we’re a country of liberty-loving, anti-authority types who want control over our own lives.
Government forecasts predicted 30 per cent of folk would still go to work and 20 per cent of kids would still show up at school.
It’s been nowhere near that. We have behaved.
And our collective obedience when it came to lockdown — not easy for so many folk cooped up in small flats — was only hardened when we saw the man we have entrusted with our health over this period knocked down himself.
If big, bouncy, bold Boris could end up in intensive care, so too could our dad or brother or best friend — or even us.
That’s why it’s concerning that many political insiders suggest the Government is waiting for public opinion to lead us out of lockdown.
SENSIBLE AND BRAVE
Trust me, that’s not going to happen. We are waiting on our leaders to talk us through where we go from here. We will listen with the right degree of scepticism and change our behaviour accordingly.
That’s how we went from a nation of pub-frequenting, sport and concert obsessives to 65million people who happily down pint after pint on the couch while quizzing our friends on Zoom.
We’re going to have to be sensible and brave in the coming weeks.
And there will be many aspects to this new way of living that we should all try to embrace.
Respect the need for folk to have more personal space; no acceptance of filthy habits such as spitting on the streets or coughing into others’ faces on the bus; an acknowledgement that people who are ill must recuperate at home and spend their recovery working from home in many jobs.
The best-case scenario: Post-corona society in 2020 will herald a new era to live more healthily and respectfully.
Major's a winner
SOME irony that ITV’s best show in years is Quiz – a drama going behind the scenes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, the series that propelled the broadcaster into the Noughties with gusto and reinvigorated the entire UK telly industry.
I came away believing that hapless and likeable Major Charles Ingram, played by Matthew Macfadyen was clearly wrongly convicted.
He deserves to be handed his £1million. With inflation!
What an amazing second series that would allow ITV to make.
Wootton's week
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