The sky was bright blue, and cloudless in every direction. I pulled the shiny rental car into the parking bay and climbed out, the early morning heat rising from the concrete to meet me.
This is what they call Freedom Day then: the final lifting of all restrictions after sixteen long months. Delayed by four weeks, following the rise of the Delta Variant, but now here at last: we’re no longer required to socially distance, to stick to the rule of six, to wear masks... it’s all over. We are free.
I... slipped my mask on, carefully hooking it round my glasses, then I pushed open the door of the rental place and immediately sanitised my hands.
‘Freedom’ is an interesting concept isn’t it? It needs boundaries, definite edges, a code of morality - we all know this deep-down. And all that’s really happened on this Freedom Day is that the government have shifted the impetus from the law, with all its penalties, fines and guidelines, onto us and our consciences; onto our codes of ethics and personal choices. We are free from the law, but not from the virus. And we’re certainly not free from the consequences of our decisions.
“That all seems to be good,” said the guy, checking round the car. His eyes glistened above his mask in the unmistakable pattern of a smile. I smiled too. I thought I’d scratched it on holiday, but it turned out to be nothing to worry about. I bade him goodbye, slung my hands into my pockets and started walking home.
The dawning truth is that there might not ever be a literal freedom day, a WATIO (when all this is over) as I used to call it. That’s why the government’s message around this is ‘If not now, then when?’
Covid is part of our world, like flu or chicken pox - the theory being that we learn to live with it, fighting it with the best tools we have, hopefully including more and more thoroughly researched vaccines, and yes, for the time-being, people making responsible decisions.
And so I’ve decided. I’ve decided to end this Isolation Diaries series at 100. I think otherwise, I’ll be writing about it forever. And like the skipper up front says, hey, if not now, when? I’ll do an epilogue, and I’ll still keep mentioning it, for sure, just not quite so specifically. I think probably, like the rest of the country, we’re all fed up of the talk.
I caught the bus back home in the end. It was too hot to walk, and even in the early morning I was already sweltering. I haven’t been on the bus for a while; funny, I used to catch it all the time. How strange that life was as close and as packed and as busy as it was!
I fell into an empty seat, mask on and face steaming pink with the heat. There was nobody else, save the driver in view. Would it be my freedom now to take this stuffy mask off and breathe? Or is all of our freedom protected by people like you and me keeping these things on? Is it an exercise of liberty to push that freedom to its outer limit? Or is freedom best expressed in wisdom?
‘I guess,’ I thought to myself, ‘The freedom is being able to make the choice.’
The bus rumbled on down the leafy streets, past tired shops and houses caught in the dust and sunlight of a baking hot day. People milled around out there, pushing buggies and chatting, debating and remonstrating, laughing and listening. ‘They are so precious,’ I thought, ‘each one of them.’
I pondered that choice in the empty bus. And I kept my mask on.
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