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As the UK inaugurates the slow easing of its lockdown measures, people are embracing the possibilities of freedom with the abandon of a Roman bacchanal. Parties! Friends! Intoxication! Haircuts! Cocktails! Dinners cooked by other people! Live entertainment! Shopping! Behold the orgy of fresh pleasures that await us. If there were a way to combine everything, we would do it all at once.Â
The Roaring Twenties are now very much upon us. In its half-yearly World Economic Outlook this week, the IMF predicted that having contracted by 3.3 per cent in 2020, the world economy would grow 6 per cent in 2021. With a further 4.4 per cent increase predicted for 2022. Out of our way coronavirus, we’re ready for the fun.
The real prospect of widespread immunisation in many developed countries means there is now palpable excitement about the resumption of normal life. Our threads are full of breathless wish lists: “when cinemas reopen I’m going to find the darkest, loudest cinema and watch supersized franchise films until my eyeballs hurtâ€, tweets one film aficionado; another user lists all the breakfasts, lunches and dinners they’ve had the irritating foresight to book. Theatres will resume their schedules — we might finally get to see Jake Gyllenhaal in London — while a generation of kiddos have discovered a summer full of festivals is now within their grasp.
Which is terrific. Except, will you? Really? Be all that busy? Quite apart from this year promising to be a hysterical, impossible-to-get-a-ticket rush of unreconstructed Fomo — good luck trying to find a beer garden next week — it’s unlikely we’ll be able to sustain this feverish excitement for very long. We seem to have forgotten that most of us were slumped across our sofas watching Netflix of an evening well before coronavirus crept into our consciousness. Or that we moaned about late evenings and the obligation of going to parties. Some of us could barely muster the energy to answer basic texts.
Never mind that, though, because the promise of possibility is back with us, and so we must plan to re-enter society in a drama titled: My Best Life. No invitation will seem too trifling. No opportunity left ungrabbed.Â
Isolation has warped our perception of normality so that even the most pedestrian existence is now reimagined to resemble something conceived by Darren Star. We want clamour and glamour, and lots of cocktail drinking. Certainly, I have been guilty of fantasising about my post-lockdown lifestyle in oestrogen-drenched scenarios involving rosé, balmy weather and a new wardrobe of evening clothes. When not confusing my normal life for an early 1990s romcom, I like to imagine myself in 1960-era French bohemia, or some time in the 1980s when the mullet hairstyle was last cool.Â
Lockdown has shaken up the time continuum. Having been shielded from the real world for so long, it’s no wonder that I’ve slightly lost my grip. Suspended for weeks in an immobile present, where plans have stalled, it has been inevitable that we must retreat into the past. I have never felt so close to my young self than during these interminable periods of isolation, re-watching films I first enjoyed in adolescence, revisiting long-forgotten albums and replaying favourite memories while waiting for life to actually begin. It has left me feeling terminally nostalgic, and emotionally unmoored. Moreover, I realise, the normality I seek is a delusion. Instead of looking forward to my future, I see that what I’ve actually been missing is my youth.
Likewise, our technologies have encouraged more confusion, prompted by daily reminders on our mobiles alerting us to every holiday and special moment that we’ve had. Everybody’s at it, sharing snapshots while trapped in this weird cycle of nostalgia. When the past is so overwhelmingly in our present, it’s no wonder we’re losing touch with time.Â
Hence, when we think of normal life resuming, it’s tempting to fabulate a lifestyle in which we imagine ourselves much younger then we are. We think of a future where children are mercifully attended to by others, responsibilities are vanished and everyone leads independent, unencumbered lives. Escaping quarantine will thrust a new reality on us. The lockdown time machine will bump us back to earth. I spoke to an older friend recently who was slowly realising that she wouldn’t be diving headlong back into social inebriation because she’d forgotten that most of her friends were now so elderly that many of them couldn’t leave the house.
For this month of magical thinking, however, it’s fun to imagine an idealised version of how we plan to live. The anticipation has always been the best part of an outing, and it’s understandable that after so many months of nothing we’re convinced we’ll relish every moment of the day. I just hope normal isn’t a dreadful anticlimax.
Whatever else, we’re going to have to negotiate an awkward phase of social re-entry. While we might imagine nights of sparkling conversation, we should probably bone up on our small talk before going full Algonquin Round Table. Having exhausted the topics of gardening, post-lockdown haircuts and Line of Duty, we might discover that the banter struggles to ignite. As for me, you’re still likely to find me on the sofa, watching Netflix. Just like I did before.
Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com
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