Well thankfully it's been sunny. Yesterday I drove to Waitrose for my government-mandated food essentials trip. That was surreal. You have to queue up round the car park.
"Excuse me," said I, two metres away from a lady emptying shopping into her boot. "How long did it take you to get round?"
She smiled. For a moment, I wondered whether she appreciated the human contact with a person outside her household. I think she did, because she gave me a longer and more detailed answer than needed, and it was sprinkled with kindness.
It wouldn't take me long, she said, 'the queue moves quite quickly because it's one in and then one out. And when you do get in, it's really dead.'
It's strange to queue up so far apart. It looked like we were all in a weird music video from the 80s. Most had trolleys, a few had bags for life. I had my empty rucksack over my shoulder. We all waited quietly.
Had it been raining (and yes, next week it might be) this would have been the worst queue since Alton Towers. But the sun was warm and spring-like, and there was room to stand. My shadow fell across the concrete, black and mysterious. The air was still, and the sky, blue.
Inside, where I was ushered in by a marshal, the store was quiet. They'd only allowed a handful of people in, so finding what I needed was really easy. It isn't hard to forget the reason why though - in almost every aisle, people swerved to avoid each other, and the staff stood at the ends with worried looks. There was a thought-out process of how to pay too - a red line, taped to the floor, an operative explaining where to leave your things, where to scan your card and when to pack it so that she could stand back a couple of metres.
I liked the efficiency of it. And another example of slowing down, taking a breath, doing things in a smaller, more measured way where we're not driven by greed or by money. It all feels really quite old-fashioned.
That's a good word. Old-fashioned. The Intrepids, secretly enjoying the distance we're all keeping, report that on their daily walks they're meeting and chatting with all sorts of people (at the regulated distance of course). Conversations are happening, and not the usual angsty ones, but the polite, friendly, all-in-this-together type chats, as I had found with my car park lady.
The streets are empty too - nobody's going anywhere (and nor should they be really) so on a stroll, it's nice to see the roads so Christmas-Quiet. You can hear the wildlife, the leaves, and of course, the lovely birds.
I smiled at the checkout operator, and she smiled back as I zipped my rucksack around a loaf of fresh bread.
"Stay safe and have a great day," I said, as cheerily as I could.
"Oh and you too," she waved. I headed back out to the sunlight, to the queue of waiting people, standing two metres apart around the car park. I smiled at an older couple, holding hands. They both beamed back. The birds sang happily in the trees by the quiet main road.
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