If masks are normalised, we all become subservient

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water – or rather into the museums, galleries, cinemas and places of worship where we seek our pleasures sacred and profane – the Government has announced that face-coverings will be mandatory in these spaces, as they are in shops, banks, takeaways and post offices. (The last one makes me wonder how easy life must be for hold-up artists now that it’s normal to roam the streets in a mask.)

It’s a bitter irony that the most hail-fellow-well-met of Prime Ministers should now be overseeing the isolation of the nation; you could tell it hurt this inveterate tablehopper at the banquet of life to say “I don’t want to tell people to spend less time with their friends. But unless people follow the rules and behave safely, we may need to go further. This is how we will avoid a return to full national lockdown.”

Masks come with a whole bunch of exciting associations, from superheroes for the kiddies to exotic, erotic gatherings for the grown-ups. But when they’re forced on us, all the fun gets sucked out. Both Mammonwise and morally, I believe they’ll be bad for the nation’s morale. Getting the retail section going again? Forget it. The only reason people still go shopping in the age of Amazon is as a social occasion. “Retail therapy” was never really about buying things except for the emptiest of us, but as a way of being with friends, drifting around like we still had all the time in the world, trying on possibilities. In masks, all we feel is our limits, and it doesn’t make us generous.

But that’s a trivial matter compared to the damage a masked society will inflict on those with concerns more pressing than trying out lipstick testers. Masks are manna from heaven for the Worried Well who fuss about their banal anxieties while disregarding those with real disabilities for whom masking will make life a whole lot worse.

Around one in six are thought to use lip-reading to make sense of the world; during one radio phone-in I heard the mother of a deaf child explaining how sad it is for her lipreading daughter to see everyone wearing masks; “She was such a chatty little girl and now she’s just completely silent in public. It’s heartbreaking.” At least 10 schools have made coverings mandatory for pupils and teachers, prompting an inevitable battle with parents like Molly Kingsley, co-founder of the campaign group UsforThem, who told this newspaper “Based on the anger we have seen … there is a very visceral reaction among parents to face masks in schools.”

On the radio I heard the mother of a boy with additional needs; “He’s terrified of masks. He’s already lonely. He’ll be an outcast if masks are mandatory.” We are told that masking-up shows that we care, but treating our fellow human beings as germ-spreading units is not my idea of kindness.

And as for the practicalities! When the PM promised “a greater police presence to ensure face coverings are being worn”

I certainly hope the manpower will come from a new division – the Toytown Police, perhaps – not from the current force who seem powerless in the face of cities running red with the blood of our youth. The idea of jails being emptied of violent criminals in order to make way for incorrigible Bare Faces is like something from a dystopian novel, back when there was still a market for them, before life imitated art.

Of the many totalitarian hellholes in the world, some specialise in suppressing women with facecoverings while others are equal opportunity oppressors. The poor beaten-down people of Islamist Iran and Communist China must cover their faces and know their place. There’s something extremely antihuman about forced masking, which is why the PM in an earlier, carefree incarnation triggered such a fierce backlash for his remarks about the Islamist mode of female garb.

“Fame is a mask that eats the face” goes the old saying – but so is fear. If masking is normalised, we will soon become subservient creatures, government-licensed gimps. I’ll try not to shame those who embrace their masks as scared sheep – but only so long as we who resist aren’t demonised as murderous wolves.