“When are you going to open up a dancefloor?”, I joked to the woman behind the bar at my local pub tonight. After months and months of COVID-19 social distancing, people are at last, able to stand around in bars and up to 50 people at a time are allowed to dance.
Even though I don’t go out dancing all that much, the restrictions have been one of the biggest psychological barriers for me. I can’t begin to count the number of times the bar staff at my local pub have had to ask someone to sit down, to observe the restriction that if you were drinking or eating you had to be seated.
Khoi’s opened up only weeks before the full impact of the lockdown. Pretty quickly, they were forced to close for what appeared to be a permanent situation. A few weeks later, they opened with take-away. Throughout these difficult times, I continued to support them by buying more than my fair share of take-away. They’ve responded to my support in a friendly manner on both social media, and as I walk past. “Hello James”, they’ll say with a smile. I’m looking forward to catching up with a bunch of mates there for dinner later in the week.
As we read the news about the terrible situation in the United States in particular (can it get any worse?), it’s nice to see things start to returning to “normal” here in Australia.
In the last week or so, I’ve attended quite a few Christmas celebrations, all with the appropriate amount of social distancing. By the time Sunday came around, I was starting to feel exhausted by it all. I’m not the “social” person I once was in earlier parts of my life. I much prefer a gathering of only three or four others, and often struggle when the table extends to ten, or there’s a roomfull of people. Nonetheless, I do like getting out and about, and I welcome the changes.
Since I last blogged I’ve been to the movies again, to see the movie, “Monsoon”.
Though I couldn’t convince the woman at the bar tonight to declare an impromptu dance-floor, I look forward to the time when I might return to Oxford Street, and do more than just sit around.