Let’s hope that by Easter the sun will break through the Covid clouds

Anton Rippon finds a wander down memory lane is one escape from the coronavirus restrictions

SITTING in the office on a December day, looking at a sky as grey as gunmetal, watching rain bounce off neighbouring rooftops, it does make you wonder where it will all end, this life under lockdown.

So many of our annual events have been cancelled, and there are close friends who I haven’t seen for getting on for nine months. It’s all in a good cause, and one has to take the view that it’s better to be part of the solution than part of the problem. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder where we will all be in 12 months’ time.

It is already too late for the tens of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to the pandemic. Their lives have been changed forever. For the remainder, I cling to the hope that, by Easter, there will be what, in 1940, Winston Churchill called the “broad and sunlit uplands” into which the life of the world may move forward. That the promised vaccines deliver our freedom.

In the meantime, I sit bewildered by the ever-increasing number of “experts” that emerge, many with differing opinions. I’m assuming that all this confusion is simply down to the fact that we have never before experienced anything like it. That Covid-19 presents the world’s biggest ever learning curve.

That is for someone else to sort out, though. Me? I’m just sitting tight, chatting to a few mates on the telephone, and waiting for the allclear to sound. A couple of phone calls a day can make all the difference. People living on their own need a daily dose of natter, and even those with families around them eventually want to hear a different voice, especially at this time of year when, some days, it’s like living under a tarpaulin.

Inevitably, after a quick grumble about the anti-vaccination movement and Derby County (just to be clear, the two are entirely unrelated in our minds) we begin to wander down memory lane. Well, where else is there to go when you’re under house arrest?

Last week we got yarning about the days when you knew the names of Derby’s pub landlords, when few licensed houses were run by a manager. Indeed, some licenses were passed from parent to child to create a sort of public house dynasty.

There was Harry Farmer and Billy Metcalfe at the Marquis of Granby, Joe Kent at the Durham Ox, Ted Taylor at the Queen’s Hotel, Harry Leonard at the Douglas Bar, Alice Baker at the White Horse, Florrie

Flounders at the Lord Belper, and so on … Readers of a certain vintage will have their own list, names that can be trotted out as easily as the Rams’ FA Cup winning team, even if that was 75 years ago next April.

I’m not sure when a youth culture took over pubs but there was a time when you had to serve an unofficial apprenticeship before you became a regular drinker. Pubs were usually the preserve of white male adults of middle age or older. Even after we had turned 18, it was more likely that we’d spend the evening in a coffee bar. They were trendy in the early 1960s. For us, it was the Genevieve in Gower Street.

Today’s pubs, in the city centre at least, seem to be mostly for young people. That said, as far as I’m concerned, most people are now young people, and, anyway, it’s months since I last went into a pub.

It’s fascinating, what evokes pleasant memories. Music always does it for me, but for most folk the aroma of things like new-mown grass or fresh-brewed coffee are reminders of happier times.

Personally, I don’t think that you can beat the smell that greets you when you’re the first one into a pub: that heady bouquet of last night’s stale beer and this morning’s disinfectant. But then I’m just an old romantic.

■ Anton Rippon’s local books are available from www. northbridgepublishing.co.uk.