Today is the first day in seven months I rode the mighty steel wagons our ancestors called 'omnibus'. Strange to see many of these great beasts of alloy and tread proudly striding the lonely highways of our benighted land. Not so benighted, the traffic is actually, now, worse than it's ever been, but perhaps that's the fever speaking. The fever of freedom!
Kinda strange going to a place you know well but haven't seen in such a long time. The familiarity is such that it's almost alien. Aside from the obvious changes, social distancing signs, most people wearing masks (I include those that don't understand a mask is meant to cover the nose as well as not wearing masks), it's the same. I walked through the streets and the shops, which were marginally less busy than I expected, especially bearing in mind it's Saturday morning. I kept expecting to be hit with something: a cough or a sneeze. As if I was walking through humid air where you can feel it. Of course that didn't happen. Everything was disarmingly normal, more or less.
And so this may well be the new normal, depending on how the second wave (and perhaps others to follow) plays out. Maybe it'll work out, but it hasn't for Argos. I never expected to see them struggle, but their store in town is boarded up. The big warehouse at the edge of town likewise is turning into an industrial skeleton. Perhaps they have shifted their focus online. Perhaps their Bible of Dreams, the laminated encyclopedia of wishes wasn't covid proof. I don't know. Kinda sad really. What does this mean for other shops? Can they survive? Will the cost of providing hand sanitiser be the undoing of western capitalist civilisation - perhaps Argos should get into the soap business. I bet the manufacturers of portable hand cleaning products never thought they'd see such a terrible golden age!
(Apparently Argos is temporarily closed, but there was a 'for let' sign on the door so that seems pretty permanent!)
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