Nothing is open and there is no excitement to be had. This is what Britain must have been like 70 years ago
In the spring, the question when you met an acquaintance was: “How are you finding lockdown?” Or, for the more formal encounter: “How is lockdown treating you?” No one asks that any more. It may have something to do with the answers, which were only ever smugness or lies, although you could say the same about: “How are you?”
However, I said it on a reflex the other day, and my neighbour replied cheerfully: “My life feels exactly the same.” I took his point. A lot of social life is speculative. We think we will have people over, but don’t get round to it. We appreciate the proximity to the V&A, while rarely availing ourselves of its services. The thing I mind about inessential shops being closed is not the lack of stuff, but how life is for the people who worked in them.
