At long last, this week I’ve started to do stuff. A pub visit, a golf lesson, a farm shop breakfast, some train spotting. I’m not the only person who has found COVID-19 and the subsequent end of life as we know it tough to bear. I still do, but I suspect there are some people, including those who have never before suffered from mental health problems, who have find it harder to bear than most. Today, for the first time since early March, I went into town to visit the two remaining record shops. I felt if I experienced a bit of my boring old life, I might get a slight lift. The first bit certainly came true but I’m not sure I got a big lift.
I’m fine wearing a mask, even though I find it a nuisance and distracting when I am reading or even looking out the window, because I understand if I have COVID-19 I am less likely to pass it on to someone else. I’ll be okay from Friday when I must wear a mask in shops, too, not least because I won’t be shopping very much. I never do. The bus ride was quicker than normal because hardly anyone was getting on and off and the roads are not busy at the moment due to the effects of COVID-19 and the summer holidays. Arriving in town was just a little bit weird.
First call, the wonderful Rough Trade on New Bridewell Street. It was relatively quiet and anyway a maximum of 12 people are allowed in at any one time. You use hand sanitiser on arrival to minimise the risk of passing on or catching the virus when browsing and then it was business as usual. Still, at the front of my mind, is the feeling that things are far from back to normal. I did my best to immerse myself in the music. I succeeded to an extent, but I was still looking over my shoulder, looking to see who was near me, and I had to pause when visiting some sections of the shop because other people were browsing, like me.
After buying Laura Marling’s new album – I was always going to buy something to support a) the shop and b) the artist – I walked through the Broadmead shopping centre and that felt very much like normal and not in a good way. Even though it’s obviously outdoors, you can’t miss the thick fug of tobacco, interspersed with a whiff of weed. Many Bristolians are brilliant at multitasking and they were smoking and eating Greggs’ sausage rolls simultaneously. Very impressive. There are the middle aged to older men who have seen better days, before White Lightning came along. And Chuggers, one of whom leapt straight in front of me asking if I wanted a wristband. I adopted my usual strategy of accelerating straight towards him assuming he would get out of the way. He did, although I am not sure given the size of him that I would have come out of it well in the event of a collision. Finally, into HMV.
I don’t know how HMV keeps going but somehow it does. Once again, hand sanitiser dished out on the way in and – I have to say – this was a good experience. There were plenty of socially distanced fellow customers but as I followed the music from A to Z, as I have done at every record shop since I was first allowed to visit them, until making my final choice (John Coltrane and Hugh Masekela and Tony Allen’s final album together, if you must know). I still haven’t worked out what makes me actually choose a few records out of so many but something just clicks and I find I rarely make a bad call.
Out of HMV and into the modern, more upmarket surroundings of Cabot Circus. I didn’t feel any more comfortable here than I did in Broadmead. There were perhaps a few more people and there were queues as people waited to visit the clothes shops. Social distancing, however, did not exist with the mask wearers consistently being the people who ignored social distancing. That’s what the wearing of masks does to some people, particularly those who don’t know anything about the effectiveness or otherwise of face coverings. Still, they’re here to stay so why worry?
McDonalds on Bond Street had the biggest queues by far, but then it does when things are normal. The desire for high calorie, high fat food never disappeared during the pandemic. It was in high demand today and given the amount of McDonalds litter nearby, the street cleaners will have their hands full tonight. Which reminds me: litter.
There’s loads of it. Greggs bags, McDonald and KFC wrapping and boxes and discarded face masks, which could, for all we know, contain COVID-19. Irritated, I started to count thrown away masks but I gave up once I reached 10. I was too busy trying to scrape some chewing gum from the souls of my trainers. Perhaps, we are going through a phase of being litter-louts? We’ve never been great, which is why the council employs people to pick up our crap, but COVID-19 seems to have unleashed a devil may care attitude regarding how we discard rubbish, that being someone else can pick it up. It’s not my problem.
None of the electronic boards are working properly at the bus stops, but luckily my app was working properly. Well, sort of. Something went very wrong when setting out whereupon I actually purchased two identical day tickets.
I was glad to get off the empty bus. I cannot pretend I was completely relaxed. It could be that I am not used to being near other people after all this time obeying Dominic Cummings’ rules, even if he didn’t obey his own. As well as the ‘stay at home’ message, the ‘avoid public transport’ instruction was also on my mind. And the very unnatural – to me – social distancing is a constant reminder that things are not right.
If I am like this at the height of summer, I doubt I will be a great deal better come autumn when the shopping areas and buses are far busier and COVID-19 makes its unwelcome but inevitable return. I’m okay, mostly, when I am outdoors but less so indoors. With a virus still out there that could kill any of us, I won’t be taking too many chances until a vaccine turns up and what if it does turn up and the howling mad anti-vaxxers refuse to take the vaccine, leaving society vulnerable forever to COVID-19?
To be honest, my trip to town didn’t feel remotely normal, not to me anyway. The odds are I wouldn’t bump into someone who had COVID-19 but the virus is still out there. 79 more deaths today in the UK – a far bigger number than anywhere else in Europe – tells a story of its own.
