If I can’t go to the pub or a field in Surrey where you take antisocial dogs, then I’d like to visit an alternative Britain – a place of optimism, where an end is in sight
Delusional optimists have to live with catastrophising pessimists for balance, but a downside is that it takes you ages to catch up with each other. Mr Z asked me what was on my bucket list. I was thinking, we have 30 or 40 years to figure that out, and I have much more important things on my mind, such as I have just got a 12 quid voucher from Waitrose out of the blue and I’m cock-a-hoop.
He actually meant an activity bucket list, before the full-scale lockdown that now looks inevitable to everyone, but a week ago looked that way only to him. On the spot, I blurted out: “Trampolining.” I recently took up trampoline circuits, a weird fitness subculture where, possibly pandemic-related, everyone laughs wildly for an hour. I don’t want it to end. It is not as if we can break the two-metre rule when we each have our own trampoline. Mr Z looked nonplussed, as if I had failed … well, not at marriage, more a single marital module, which I can retake.
