SLANE, CO MEATH

It really is a different world

A FRIEND works in Dublin’s north inner city. In a way, she is on the frontline. She’s been texting me since the lockdown began, saying: “It’s like Beirut in here.”

She says the virus is everywhere in the area. She says she knows the buildings where it’s rampant among the inhabitants who live in cramped conditions. She knows of people who won’t get tested because they fear deportation. She knows where she can and can’t go; she knows who to be wary of when they come into her place of work. There are still days when she is very, very nervous.

Work took me that way 10 days’ ago. It was the first time I had been back near our city centre office since it was shut in early March — since when we have all been working from home.

It felt like a different world. It was a different world.

It’s not that things haven’t changed here. They have. It’s just that the all-pervading, all-consuming sense of the virus is no longer lingering in the air, hanging over every thought or action.

I’ve heard of only one person in our area who contracted Covid-19 – a healthcare worker.

Part of the debate around this crisis appears to have moved to talk of regionalising our exit from lockdown, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that the public is a little ahead of the politicians, medics and scientists on this one. There has been a ‘soft’ exit under way. People heeded the warnings and helped flattened the curve. Now feels like the time to restore some balance.

Those who are worried and vulnerable are minding themselves, or being minded. Those who are not are getting braver or more adventurous or (dare I say it) confident.

People are moving out, exercising, talking to each other across narrow roads and halfempty streets. There are walkers, joggers, cyclists along the various paths by the

River Boyne, or in the nearby wood. Mostly keeping their distance.

It’s not life as we knew it, but it’s a life.