It’s the small things that I miss the most

ALOT of people suffer FOMO, but perhaps lockdown is curing them of the infamous Fear Of Missing Out. After all, there’s nothing they can miss out on. Maybe, though, it is being replaced by emotional surges of WHAMMO – which is shorthand for ‘What We Miss Most’.

In this strange new world of isolation, what is it that you miss most?

The question had not occurred to me until recently – probably because I’m one of those shallow, irresponsible, types who lives in the moment and who, sort of, prefers to cope with life one day at a time. The future has always seemed a rather distant and almost impossible world to me – and now, increasingly, the past does too.

Ten months ago during the first lockdown, the question “What do you miss most?” was something a lot of people went about asking one another. When I say “went about”, I mean they asked it in Zoom conversations or on radio chat shows. Pondering whatever it was we missed seemed like a bad idea to me, because you can soon start yearning and hankering for something, let alone craving for it, which is surely not a good way of bolstering one’s mental health.

Now, though, the old fashioned “normal” seems so incredibly distant, you can almost feel comfortable wallowing in recollection. Added to which, hopefully, we will all soon be jabbed in the arm so we can return to some degree of normality.

So even I have now started thinking about the things I miss from the “old world”. And the main WHAMMO hole in my life, apart from not seeing my son and daughter, seems to centre on things such as an occasional visit to the pub. Because those memories represent the moments when I was most likely to be interacting with groups of other humans.

Which means it is the incidental stuff I miss most. A casual chat with random acquaintances at the bar. Sitting next to a friendly stranger on a train or plane, having a good old chinwag and putting the world to rights, knowing you’d never see them again. Strolling through some mountain village with a group of foreign journalists on a press trip, talking about one another’s very different worlds. So it’s not the big formal occasions I care about. If someone told me I’d never attend a large wedding party again, I wouldn’t give much of a toss. I don’t really care if I never go to watch another football match in a big stadium. I would not miss those award ceremonies where medals of honour are being doled out – even in the unlikely event that one could be coming my way.

Those occasions are so important to most people, and to society in general, it won’t be long before systems are devised so they can happen again, albeit with participants suitably masked and socially distanced. Organised events are just that: organised. Event committees, venue management teams and other official bodies will make careful arrangements and well-structured gatherings will be back on track again in the not too distant future, one would imagine.

But it’s the little, unimportant, very human moments – when your life, for example, coincides with a stranger’s like two ships passing the night – which could become an endangered species. Those person-to-person interactions – which go against the grain of lockdown or self-isolation – are the ones which may not return to our lives for a long while yet. Despite the jab I hope to have soon, I can’t imagine feeling sufficiently confident or safe enough to interact with complete strangers for the foreseeable future, unless scientists really do get ahead of all the Covid variants.

It’s a shame, because standing around in best bib-and-tucker at some special event doesn’t really float my boat when it comes to feeling alive from head to toe. I’d much rather be walking in some crowded foreign city street on a hot summer’s evening on my way to some snug little restaurant down an alleyway filled with fellow diners all having a good time.

It is hard to imagine, but only 18 months ago I was doing just that in Sardinia. A new friend gathered some of his companions, and together we toured the pre-dinner bars before eating fabulous food at a crowded restaurant. Then we called at various nightclubs and some of us rounded off the night watching the dawn come up over the Mediterranean... While I can imagine being able to go to a football match in a well-spaced stadium or a concert in some carefully laid-out venue before the year is out, when – I wonder – will any of us have a night like that one in Cagliari again? The crowds, the stuffy little bars, the heat – the mystery and intrigue of an evening spent with complete strangers?

That’s my WHAMMO. And it seems an impossible dream because it is quintessentially about human interaction – which is exactly what Covid preys upon. The close proximity of others, talking and laughing...

If anyone had ever told me this would be what I would miss most in 2021, I’d have regarded them as nuts. But it is a Holy Grail millions of us would love to rediscover right now.

A casual chat with random acquaintances at the bar... having a good old chinwag...