I’m disappointed that nobody has come up with a snappy new word for this current phase.
Lockdown made sense: there were clear rules that everyone (except Dominic Cummings and the MP who climbed a ladder to kiss his girlfriend) understood. People tried out words like Quarantine, which didn’t completely work because no one was ill and self isolation, which also didn’t work because people were staying in their homes together. Eventually, people settled on lockdown.
This new phase can’t be described as lockdown, but also it’s not a release. Government and that woman you know who thinks she knows everything have tried to pretend ‘it’s perfectly clear.’ It’s a gradual easing of restrictions. Why and how they are eased isn’t totally obvious or logical and people are breaking the rules, that are only actually guidance, all over the place.
Some people won’t have fully understood what the rules are, others won’t care. Some will break them accidentally and others will bend them only with a great deal of logical thought and care about why the rules are there in the first place. Not everyone watches every briefing, so second hand information always gets corrupted and even for those of us that do there is still confusion.
As a people watcher and with the aid of social media, I have absolutely loved observing behaviour during this phase. It’s the disconnect between a person’s actions and what they expect from others that I find most interesting. I have seen people in parks all dipping their hands into the same bag of crisps and not quite keeping two meters away from the other five people in their group tutting at another group of eight people who are all sitting apart and have brought their own food.
We are much more likely to forgive our own transgressions and those of the people we love. Actually, it’s more than that. We don’t even notice our own failures.
The people who post about not being able to hug their mum and then put a picture of a ‘socially distanced’ BBQ that has ended up in the house with the men on the X-box and the women with their arms around each other drunkenly singing to Robbie Williams are still likely to be really cross about the person who goes to the supermarket without a mask.
It’s really interesting to try and work out what people who are breaking/bending the rules are thinking. The other day I walked through the park at the end of the day, as people were packing up to go home. Some people hugged. One or two broke away immediately, looking horrified and so for them the intention to stick to the rules had been clear. The hug was an accidental human response.
Yesterday, on a field next to a little wood there was a large wild party of about twenty families. They were having a great time. The kids were running around playing ball games and doing handstands. The adults were drinking, chatting loudly and singing to music playing from Bluetooth speakers. As I walked passed I was confused. In normal times, they would have had that party at home. They would have gone to someone’s house, where they could be in the garden and use all the facilities of the house. Somehow, they must have thought that by being on a public field they were doing the right thing.
The government and the advisors to SAGE must have realised that behaviour would be on a spectrum ranging from people who are overly cautious to those who, (in the words of Van Tam) rip the pants out of it. Luckily the deaths are still going down, so maybe it doesn’t matter and we could all be a little less judgmental.
As I was walking and trying to come up with a new word for the new phase a man wandered out of the little wood back to the party. He was chuckling.
“I’d give it a while, if I were you,” he said loudly and proudly to his friends and, accidentally, to me.
You see, if you are not going to have your party at home then you don’t have all the facilities you require and you have to improvise.
Maybe we should call this phase ‘Hidden Release.’
*Note* I would like to make it very clear that I do not condone shitting in the woods. Whilst I’m happy not to judge people if they hug their parents accidentally, or sleep with their girlfriend that they don’t live with, or have a party with more than 6 people in the garden, defecating in public spaces is not okay. It is a public health issue, let’s not replace Coronavirus with typhoid.
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