Virus brings a life of freedom to a sudden halt

It’s expectations that are the problem.

In the course of my lifetime, the world has changed beyond recognition. When I left school, the possibility of going to university was, broadly speaking, remote. It was mainly the wealthiest of families who sent their sons to university (relatively few girls went - marriage and motherhood being the most they could hope for). Shops used to close on Wednesday afternoon and didn’t open at all on Sundays until 1994.

Young men of 18 years knew they would be conscripted into the armed forces, I opted to join the Brylcreem Boys (that’s the RAF). Many conscripts had never left home - or even their little village - until the day they were bundled together in barracks, where they were bullied by non-commissioned officers whose job it was to make men of them (us), so that some would, after six short weeks of training, be bundled off to fight a war in Korea.

You may wonder where I’m going with this, so I’ll come to the point.

There was increasing freedom - freedom to travel the world, to enjoy the company of friends in pubs and clubs with flexible opening hours, to pop to the shops at virtually any hour of the day or night, to play or watch sports, films and theatrical performances, to go to raves and vast music festivals, to study at university.

And then suddenly, almost without warning, the dread coronavirus put an end to everything. Little wonder, then, that the more rebellious seek to ignore the new, restrictive rules and in the less robust souls among us the disappointment and confusion create what are described as mental health issues.

We should have sympathy for every youngster whose life expectations have been trashed and who are, unsurprisingly, angry. The problem is, in the absence of anyone better to blame, it is the government and the safety rules which bear the brunt.

‘The more rebellious seek to ignore the new rules and in the less robust souls among us, the confusion creates what are described as mental health issues’