It’s time to celebrate the great indoors
The easing of the ‘outdoors only’ rule has opened up a world of attractions, says Chris Leadbeater. Who cares if it’s raining?
The pandemic has taken away some of the key tenets of human existence over the past 15 months: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if you will. But it has also excised lots of smaller facets of the day-to-day routine that were taken for granted before the walls closed in.
To pick just a few… The overwhelmingly sweet smell of popcorn in a cinema foyer – seven minutes before your movie is due to start. The irritation, building to fury, sparked by the word “delayed” flashing on a train departures board – even though the amount of time lost is a matter of minutes, instead of a locked-down year and a half. The tacit elbows-out competitiveness and meerkat-bobbing of trying to secure a drink at a crowded bar – rather than standing in polite socially-distanced lines with the chemical tang of sanitiser all over your hands (or sipping warm shop-bought wine on a damp strip of grass, because pubs are shut again).
To this list of the trivial yet oddly mourned can be added that most British of pursuits: the conversation about the weather (and the gentle fretting as to if it will intrude on best-laid ambitions). The long tentacles of Covid-19 have removed even the humble cloud’s capacity to be an inconvenience.
Ever since March 2020 turned up brandishing a lengthy tally of “thou shalt nots” – like a third-year fire warden breaking up a freshers’ party in a hall-ofresidence corridor – the random shower has been relegated to irrelevance. There have been but two responses to the prospect of a downpour. Either a) “We’ve been stuck inside for five straight weekends, I fail to see why a sixth makes much difference.” Or b) “We’ve been stuck inside for five straight weekends, so we’re damn well going outside today, even if the sky looks biblical and we have to eat our wet sandwiches under a tree.”
But hark, what glad tiding is this? Ah, yes, the luxury of choice.
As of Monday’s latest reading from the Government’s roadmap chronicle, indoor attractions across the United Kingdom are open again (as has been the case in Scotland, in certain cases, since April 26. Because Scotland likes to do things slightly differently.) We can go through doors – into museums, galleries, cinemas, bowling alleys, ice rinks and other places that come with a roof – rather than stamping around the park in a haze of déjà vu.
And with this, the weather gods are back in business. No longer will their meteorological tantrums be ignored, or endured with a shrug and a muttering about “making the best of it”. Zeus, Thor, Tezcatlipoca (the Aztec god of hurricanes – come on, keep up) are once again able to play their greatest hits. To rain on your parade. To drizzle on your barbecue. To dispatch thunder and lightning to your outing to the seaside. To make you look at the forecast, shake your head, and shout “Is summer cancelled? I didn’t get a memo about summer being cancelled. Right, the beach is out.” To make you consider the alternatives.
This means that we are about to witness the return of that staple of British common sense: the Rainy Day Plan. And not a moment too soon. After a month that has been largely overcast, we need substitutes for the “great outdoors”.
The following places are now on hand to offer shelter from the inevitable storm. The big British washout – how we have missed you.