Here comes the summer... your guide to the ‘new normal’

As the lockdown eases, we can reacquaint ourselves with socialising in the sun – but not as we know it, says Guy Kelly

As lockdown gently eases and Britons begin to emerge, blinking like newborns, into a familiar but altered and unfeasibly sunny world, it seems reasonable to ask: “Just what do we do with ourselves, this summer?”

Recent official guidance – which comic Matt Lucas summed up well on Twitter as, “Don’t go to work, go to work, don’t take public transport, go to work, don’t go to work, stay indoors, if you can work from home go to work, don’t go to work, go outside, don’t go outside and then we will or won’t do something or other” – has been as clear as Dominic Cummings’s eyesight.

Holidays and weekends away are certainly still not on the cards. But the Prime Minister’s latest pronouncement does, at least, suggest summer socialising can soon resume in earnest.

From Monday, Boris Johnson has said groups of up to six people from different households in England will be able to meet outside, be it in their own gardens or parks, so long as each household keeps 2m apart.

“These changes mean friends and family will start to meet loved ones,” he said, in what will be a “long-awaited and joyful moment”.

Though it will be interesting to see whether this weekend’s wall-towall sunshine, combined with the exhilarating prospect of being able to use other people’s loos – though it is “absolutely critical”, Prof Chris

Whitty stressed, that anyone doing so “wipes everything down” afterwards – prompts many to await no longer, Dettol the downstairs bathroom and invite everyone they know around for a barbecue.

There are no specific guidelines for precisely how to act in this next stage of lockdown – a period that historians may come to know as The Awkward and Confusing Summer-socialising Phase When We Were Caught Between Relief at Being Back Together and Being Quite Passive Aggressive About Not Triggering a Second Wave.

But fortunately, we at the Telegraph have had access to a leaked list* of new community rules, advice and expectations for the days and weeks ahead. Remember: stay alert, control the virus, save your social life.

There are no specific guidelines for how to act in this next stage of lockdown

* An entirely made-up one