Social distancing for idiots

I had an interesting chat this past week with the proprietor of Giuseppe’s Bar, the nearest hostelry to my home

Gianni is a generous, smiley, gregarious character; attributes which come in handy in the hospitality trade. But on this particular occasion Gianni wasn’t feeling particularly pleased with life. Referring to the current compulsory closure of all bars he complained: “It’s my livelihood they are taking away from me; the ability to earn a living. This year business has been terrible, to put it mildly, but since July at least we have been able to open our doors to customers. Now we can’t even do that.”

I commiserated with him, but in truth when he was allowed to open he hasn’t exactly complied with the letter of the law. Directly outside Giuseppe’s Bar is an expanse of quite a wide pavement under an awning. When things were normal… i.e. BC (Before COVID) Gianni would place around 10 tables out there. On a weekend these would be fully subscribed by eight in the evening.

In deference to the pandemic he reduced the number of tables to six and spaced them out accordingly. However, whenever I have passed the bar during any evening, all semblance of social distancing has gone out of the window. Punters sit several to a table and I have even seen tables pushed together with up to 10 people crowding around them. Incidentally: mask-wearing is rarely the order of the day.

I pointed this out to Gianni and he nodded his head wearily: “But what am I to do, whenever I ask them to spread out they tell me they like to sit together. There’s only me in the bar, with Gejtu at weekends; I can’t keep running outside to clear the tables and reposition them. I don’t want to break the law, but I also don’t want to lose customers. We’re far from the only bar in the village. If I get too heavy-handed with my customers they’ll simply go somewhere else. What am I to do?”

He’s got a point of course; he keeps very orderly premises – clean and well run. As he said to me: “These days, they don’t only want me to run my bar, they want me to be a policeman as well.”

Jokingly I suggested to Gianni that he starts serving snacks and apply for a restaurant licence. He, at least, smiled but demurely said: “You’ve seen what space I got at the back; it’s as much as I can do to prepare some complimentary hobs bi’zejd, I don’t got room to make nothing else.”

The poor guy is at his wits end, he told me: “I got a young family to look after. If I can’t open my bar I’ll have to close it for good and try to find a job. That’s not going to be easy right now.” In many ways he is the victim of his own success. Under normal circumstances Giuseppi’s Bar is extremely popular; but it is still just a bar and liable to follow the current rules re closure.

It left me wondering just how many bar owners are in the same position. Your average Maltese boozer is hardly a vital business in the time of COVID-19, but it is very much an intrinsic part of Maltese life.

The sooner we get hold of an effective vaccine, the sooner we can regain some semblance of normality.