FOR the first time in a long while there were more people than birds in Belfast city centre yesterday - although it was a close run thing in some of the still shuttered streets.
Further easing of coronavirus lockdown restrictions welcomed back one of the erstwhile giants of the high street, with yellow sashes adorning the uniform of Debenhams staff positioned outside its Royal Avenue store.
Their beaming smiles were only slightly dimmed by the PPE face shields and - if the crowd control barriers were anything to go by - lack of crowds queuing to get back into the store.
As CastleCourt shopping centre's anchor tenant, its opening yesterday along with O'Neill's on the other side of the front entrance had raised hopes of a consumer revival, with an expectant employee posted outside to take a footfall tally and direct people to its open stores.
Essential services Boots, Halifax, Poundland and Holland & Barrett have been open for some weeks - much to the surprise of many passers-by.
Debenhams, which the month before lockdown fell into administration for the second time in a year, is not the behemoth it was and, on the other side of strategically positioned hand sanitisers, PPE-shielded staff at tills were making few contactless card sales.
The longest queues were outside banks and newly re-opened shops selling and servicing mobile phones - vital communication tools amid restrictions to keep family, friends and communities apart.
O2 has brought in `virtual queuing technology' and redesigned its 17 stores which reopened across Northern Ireland yesterday, with customers receiving a text when an advisor is ready to assist them in a one-to-one appointment and NHS and care workers showing ID badges able to skip queues altogether.
Main thoroughfares were lightly thronged with people, one man meeting a friend by chance exclaiming at losing "one stone since lockdown" and in turn marvelling at the other's "two-and-a-half stone" reduction which was being illustrated by the voluminous dimensions of a formerly form-fitting shirt.
Lines of empty buses and black cabs idled at their various stops around the city centre, passengers still few and far between.
At city hall itself, elegant members of wedding party posed happily for pictures beside the Titanic memorial, the bride and groom among the first to take advantage of permission for outdoor weddings with up to 10 people present.
It was all far from back to normal, but human life in all its incarnations is slowly returning to the streets.
