Jumping to conclusions is never helpful

You would have to be a celebrity holed up in a Welsh castle for three weeks not to have noticed the recent dramatic shift in the nation’s mood. The news that a vaccine for Covid-19 has both been discovered and approved for imminent rollout has been celebrated like a World Cup victory in some quarters – not that anybody from England aged 60 and under can honestly claim to know what that feels like. The world’s science community has rightly been afforded the praise and adulation usually reserved for footballers and the spring has returned to the step of millions, who, like me, had written off most of 2021 as well as this year. Although we can be almost certain that it won’t all be plain sailing from here, there is a genuine hope from many that we will be back to something resembling normality before too long. I am not quite as optimistic as some that we will soon return to how it was as the changes coronavirus has brought won’t be undone in a hurry, if at all.

The decline of the high street appears to have been accelerated by the virus while the future of many pubs is in serious doubt. We are yet to discover just how severe the financial impact of the past nine months will be, but the politicians have already hinted that tough decisions will need to be made in the months and years ahead.

However, it is the change to society itself that worries me the most as there are genuine signs that post-Covid Britain might be an even less tolerant place than it was before, which I know is hard to believe.

At the start of all of this, a genuine sense of community was one real bright spot amid the gloom, fuelled in part by Thursday nights and the banging of saucepans in honour of the heroes – there is no other word for them – working on the frontline. Neighbours began looking out for each other more than perhaps they had before and random acts of kindness became commonplace. While this hasn’t gone away completely, there is a sense of increasing intolerance among some, who have quite simply had enough of curbed freedoms and having to spend more time with their families. Perhaps understandably, people are more preoccupied with the behaviour of others now than ever before with curtain-twitching coming dramatically back into fashion. Worrying about whether the bloke going into number 56 is there to fix the boiler or to indulge in illicit scones and a cup of Yorkshire Tea with his great auntie Doris isn’t conducive to longterm community cohesion. Jumping to conclusions has never been helpful but, just by listening to others, it seems that an increasing number are doing just that. The collective patience of a nation is also thin on the ground, especially when it comes to the correct wearing of face masks indoors. Woe betide you if you absent-mindedly venture down the cereal aisle with your hooter poking out the top of your face covering as you will very likely to be put straight by a fellow shopper, who almost certainly has the self-given nickname of ‘Covid police’. It will be argued that community vigilance is important during a pandemic but what worries me is the long-term cost of this and whether neighbours and friends will be able to forgive and forget comments and actions of others during this undoubtedly stressful time. Will the fact that the bloke who recently moved in six doors down had his mates round during Lockdown Two be the source of resentment locally for years to come? Hopefully not and once the nightmare is finally over for all of us, we can get on with living our lives, making longterm plans and enjoying meaningful human contact once again.