Let’s do this together

I’ve booked my first outing to a local pub in six months. It’s on Friday, April 16 from 5pm until 6.45pm.

OK, that only gives me one hour and 45 minutes to pour six months’ worth of cold beer down my neck, but I won’t be needing even that long to catch up with my mates, as there’s nothing to report.

In fact, when friends ring or Zoom these days, nobody even bothers asking anyone how they are. Sometimes you forget and you switch the video on and say, “Hi – how’s things?” And the person’s face falls and says, “Oh you know, the usual.”

Having tried not to count down the days to our roadmap out of lockdown, I now find myself itching to restart life.

I’ve watched the entire back catalogue of Netflix – and even rewatched some of my favourite Scandi crime dramas in Portuguese with Arabic subtitles to add an air of mystery to the plots.

I’ve also decluttered my life to the point where if I throw anything else out, I’ll have nothing to wear on April 16.

Even my dog Boris is bored of seeing me and, if he could talk would say, “We’re in a rut. I need some time to myself.”

It’s beginning to feel like the entire nation is bored and restless, and even Bristol, the place with the most hippies per capita, has swapped knitting their own yogurt for civic unrest. Damn it, I’d probably start a riot in my leafy suburban town too if I didn’t have the greatest admiration for the police.

One TV show that doesn’t need any foreign subtitles to make it more impenetrable is Line of Duty, and thank goodness we’ve got another series to keep us going over the next few difficult weeks. As AC-12’s Ted Hastings would say, “Mother of God, just let it end, fella.”

Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.