Socialising is back — and I’m already eyeing the couch

The first weekend after lockdown was, obviously, spent in a mad social whirl of gardens, parks and picnics and already I’m longing for a quiet night in. Suddenly, the blank diary pages are filling with distanced socialising. Like the reopened beer gardens, we are now taking bookings well into May.

Don’t get me wrong. I love everyone we saw. They rank among my favourite people in the world. The problem was the quantity, not the quality. Did we have to cram them all into one weekend?

Perhaps we overdid it in our excitement to get past the holographic social contact of the past year. But as we sped towards another London garden, I thought wistfully of the quiet weekends I had cursed as recently as last week but which had been a treat before the pandemic. 

Even as the thermometer plunged, we were undeterred. Like Captain Oates, we were just going out and we were going to be some time. At a cousin’s house we sat in a shady garden, swathed in blankets, clasping mugs of tea, as if we were indeed polar explorers.

By evening, the gardens of suburbia were illuminated by electric patio heaters arranged in circles to disguise the fact that they have a functioning range of about 25mm.

Maybe we pushed it too fast. We were all a little desperate for something more than another Zoom call or one of those Netflix series that ought to come in a box marked “break glass only after a year of pandemic”. 

But this kind of re-entry into society needs management. You must be careful not to overdo it. For one thing, no one has anything much to talk about, except which of their friends has long Covid, what vaccination they had, how they coped at work and whether they are going to risk a foreign holiday.

Everyone had the same idea. Parks were filled with groups of six, each with obligatory picnic and cockapoo — the pooch that is slowly colonising the well-heeled parts of London like some kind of dystopian dog novel in which all traditional hounds are driven to extinction by hypoallergenic crossbreeds. (Actually, the future is still up for grabs as cockapoos and cavapoos act out a Krays v Richardsons-style battle for control of the capital’s green spaces. Say what you like about the cavas, at least old ladies could walk the streets safely.)

The depressing aspect of all this is that I had hoped lockdown might have cured me of my antisocial side and would spur me into an Indian summer of socialising. As the pandemic began, we all lamented those invitations we had declined, the office parties or book launches from which we had cried off, not knowing then that these would be our last pigs in blankets and glasses of warm Riesling for at least a year.

Post-pandemic, it would be different. There would be no midweek event too tiresome, no ennui too crushing to keep me from a 7pm think-tank lecture. After decades of mild misanthropy, I would become a yes-man. Except, it seems, I won’t. The craving for company will always be balanced by a desire to flop on to the couch. Like everyone else I’ll rush to those first few parties but, socially speaking, it feels like the new normal might end up being not too far off the old one.

It is, of course, different for those who have had to endure this crisis living on their own. Being locked in with your family has its downsides — as the girl has been happy to point out — but it is better than being at home alone. Nor are there grandchildren I’ve been unable to see (well, none that I know of).

Perhaps as the weather warms and the pubs reopen the excitement will build but, even so, it is now clear there needs to be a gradual road map to recovery, with limits on socialising and plenty of time built in while we check for side effects. I suppose passports are a step too far.

I recognise my bah-humbuggery may just be a variant of prisoners’ anxiety at the shock of freedom. But while others have had dramatic life-affirming revelations in the pandemic, it begins to feel as if I am still, depressingly, the same me.

Follow Robert on Twitter @robertshrimsley and email him at robert.shrimsley@ft.com

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