Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Roll on something like a normal life

Shoppers in Belfast following the easing of lockdown restrictions. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Wire.
Shoppers in Belfast following the easing of lockdown restrictions. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Wire. Shoppers in Belfast following the easing of lockdown restrictions. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Wire.

In the smallest of outdoor spaces, at rickety tables and on bare, hard seats, there sit happy people.

The smallest towns have had queues. It rains, it freezes, or at least the temperature has wandered. The widespread determination to get out there is a boost in itself. Wanting to meet someone you haven’t been locked in with is a powerful motivator.

We took to the café habit late but with a will, though it might well gall those scratching each day’s living, and makes no sense to those who have never got around to cafés or indeed coffee. Pay to drink something you barely like? ‘Have you no kettle at home?’ Even some who shiver as they count the cost are out there for the hell of it, shivering on a footpath.

A rush of cheer and glints of sun last week kept at least some minds away from politics, welcome if brief relief. Boris Johnson disgracing himself by not apologising fast and in public to the Ballymurphy relatives, the ransomware attack that savaged appointments in the Republic’s health system, Israel blasting tiny Gaza, an Indian government that abandons its poor to Covid – not much bandwidth left over for what happens here next. No wonder there was a rush to sit at windy tables and drink, even eat, with friends sorely missed and ‘hospitality staff’; dull title for young and not so young servers who did a fine job of at least professing delight to see their customers again.

The shadow on the sun is that it could all reverse. Well, more than one shadow. Lives gone too early or damaged by ‘the virus’, diagnoses delayed, treatment interrupted, jobs wiped out, health workers pushed beyond endurance in hospitals and those who care for people at home pushed into close contact with others each day without proper protection; people on tills in all kinds of shop, binmen, bus drivers like others here and elsewhere have had no choice but to go into work.

Dots of sociability across the north were still worth cheering, especially if you were the sociable dots. Keeping the friends at a safe distance has been far less than the heartache of not being able to say goodbye, the feeling of trashing custom and decency by not showing respect and turning up at wakes and funerals. But more than enough takeaways and more than a year without sight of beloved children; it isn’t good for ageing people, is it, to live exclusively in a bubble of their own age-group. Having walked the legs off yourself, having been very sensible, it was time and past time to enjoy an outing wrapped in layers, seeing young staff out of sight for a year.

It’s been forward and back, rough on businesses told too late that their expensive preparations break mystifying regulations. A walk through Belfast’s old centre is enough to show the outline of pain for employment. Glimpses of Richard Needham’s newly published memoir are enough to suggest – as well as typical Needham vainglory - how far the big promises and fairly big advances are dented, perhaps beyond remedy. Debenhams, Needham writes, was the vital anchor tenant for Castlecourt. A closed and shuttered Debenhams clinches Castlecourt’s now ghostly atmosphere.

Vaccine-wealthy countries need to realise that selfishness will rebound on them, perhaps is already boomeranging. New variants already mean we’re not out of the woods, even if civic sense is roused enough to shake the careless and selfish across this small island.

Lots of casualties will keep coming into view and so they should, but losing social muscle is the individual’s version of a shrunken commercial centre. Even for some spared bereavement and the worst of illness, creeping back out to the big world will be a stretch. It may be easier to plead anxiety for a partner’s health, an elderly relative. But stiffen the sinews. Roll on something like a normal life.