Beep beep beep... it’s time we all gave each other room

Jonathan Brocklebank

OVER the past 102 days I have developed an imaginary beeper which sounds whenever I am within two metres of a fellow citizen who does not live with me.

Think of it as you might the parking sensors found in posher cars than mine which alert you to the nearness of another vehicle’s bumper as you reverse into a space.

‘Beep, beep, beep’ goes the internal sensor as I close in on the soft fruit section in Waitrose and I hang back until the shopper on its radar has chosen her strawberries and moved away. ‘Beep, beep, beep’ it goes on the pavement when a passer-by hogs the middle lane and I find myself stepping out onto the road to silence it.

Now that Nicola Sturgeon has taken the first steps towards removing the two-metre social distancing rule so that businesses in the retail and hospitality sectors might stand some chance of surviving the pandemic, will the beeping in my head gradually fade, I wonder?

I hope not. While coronavirus has proved devastating for many and deeply unsettling at best for the rest, there is much in the behaviours it has ingrained in us that I am in no great hurry to forget.

Discomfort

Consider, for instance, the standing room-only trains which, for as long as we can remember, passengers have blithely accepted as a fact of life because it is rush hour and travelling in abject discomfort is just what nine-to-fivers do.

Think of the swathes of humanity stuffed into buses taking passengers to and from aircraft, of strangers’ flesh pressing against yours, their breath assaulting your nostrils from six inches’ remove because someone parked the plane half a mile from the airport terminal.

Remember what it is like when you are aboard: your knees wedged against the back of the seat in front, your elbows jammed into your own ribs because making journeys miserable by maximising passenger numbers is, for as long as we can remember, how airlines make their money.

I hope when I find myself in these situations in future, the beeper will still sound, that I will remember how unwise this snuggling up was considered in the Covid era and reflect on the extent to which I’m prepared to do it again.

Transport operators might do well to think about this too. Why was it ever OK to crush so many of us into such confined spaces?

More than three months into lockdown it is difficult not to sympathise with those whose livings depend on packing people together – performers, sportspeople, theatre, cinema and arena staff. But should it not also be difficult to imagine entering each other’s personal space with the insouciance we did formerly.

If tens of thousands of British coronavirus fatalities don’t remind us to be aware of risks, perhaps that beeper could.

I am even considering, going forward, vocalising the beep for the benefit of personal space invaders. It would not be the worst that could happen to them. Long ago I gave serious thought to adorning my desk at work with cacti to discourage colleagues who seemed to think it was all right to plant their bottoms there while talking to me.

I still fondly remember the chief reporter in Aberdeen who became so incensed by bosses leaning in over his shoulder to read his stories as he typed that he would break off mid-sentence and type ‘stop reading over my ******* shoulder’ instead. Lockdown should have provided the long-awaited wake-up call for those who never twigged that we live in invisible bubbles and have excellent reasons for preferring most of the world to stay out of them.

‘Beep, beep, beep’ I would like to say when, quite needlessly, people stand too near or beckon me closer to whisper some supposed confidence in my ear. ‘Email me instead,’ I should tell them.

Bubble

The reality, of course, is it likely won’t happen. I will, as a consequence of my upbringing, continue to be courteous to people even as my internal beeper shrieks that they are penetrating my bubble with impunity.

Will fine dining establishments suffer a similar crisis of civility? Can we expect waiting staff to carry on leaning in over the shoulders of customers because that is the ‘proper’ way to serve food and this isn’t Pizza Express?

Will they still hover around your table looking for things to do, such as pouring your wine or handing round the bread basket because fussing around in your personal space is ingrained in their training?

I imagine so. I imagine their bosses would tell them it is what diners expect.

It would be gratifying indeed if public health considerations formed part of this discernment, if our expectations evolved in the light of new evidence on what keeps us safe.

It would be progress if, on arriving at a place that is too crowded, our default setting were to decide that is the case and back away rather than piling in among the throng for fear of missing out.

Armed with imaginary twometre beepers acquired in 2020, shouldn’t we all give careful thought to the times when we really do have to let go – the dentist, the hairdresser, those very necessary holiday flights – and the times when it is clear the alarm is sounding because someone is making a tidy profit from our claustrophobia?