A great day for freedom...?

Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. 
Not from tyranny, oppression or persecution, but from annihilation. 

We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: 

We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! 
For today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

So spoke President Thomas Whitmore, prior to dispatching American fighter jets in the film Independence Day to save the world from alien invasion. The irony, obviously, is that yesterday was supposedly our Independence Day. We could queue for the first professional haircut in almost four months, or for those absolutely desperate, get a pint in a pub at 6am. Freedom for me was the strange sensation of sitting in a local cafe, ordering a coffee and lunch. Something we would have not given a second thought to before the lockdown, but now it felt like fresh air entering a stuffy room.

Except it wasn't. Even then, even feeling good about putting coins in a local independent business's coffers, I couldn't help feel anxious of other people, people from outside our bubble, people now less than two metres away after months of crossing roads just to avoid the risk of someone passing on the disease. Queuing for my haircut at 9am was civilised, if uniquely British, due to a convoluted 'foldback' system to avoid the queue extending beyond the width of the barber shop's frontage. It meant that, on arrival in what you thought was the back of the queue, you were swiftly advised by mildly indignant Billy Bleach types that "the queue starts there, mate". Cue some British eye rolling and knowing grins.

So, now, we can go to the theatre, the cinema, a library, a museum, theme parks and zoos. We can gorge ourselves in restaurants and get leathered in pubs, albeit at tables separated by distance and a sheet of perspex. But we still can't work off the lockdown kilos at an indoor gym or in the council swimming pool. For those who require a pedicure, nail bars remain shut while hairdressers have flung their doors open. Grandparents can once more see their grandchildren, but there's no hugging allowed, even though footballers can tackle and backslap each other after scoring a goal. I get it, that it's science-driven; I get it that indoor proximity makes COVID-19 easier to transfer than outside, but it still seems like inconsistency.

The virus "wants to take advantage of our carelessness", said the prime minister when announcing the easing of lockdown. And yet the beach at Bournemouth appeared to have listened to Boris not one jot. Even our local high street yesterday, which had been a paragon of mask-wearing, socially-distanced obedience for the last three months, on the very rare occasion that I ventured out, was as giddy as a drunkard emerging from the pub after a lunchtime session. All of a sudden, people weren't even observing a metre's distance.

I'm no fan of Bojo, but I think the government is genuinely trying to do the right thing in getting commercial life going again. And in that, responsibility lands on all of us to behave responsibly. But we know people won't and don't. People will simply think that the shackles have been thrown off completely, rather than been merely eased. As of yesterday, there are still 2,838 COVID-19 patients in UK hospitals being treated, including 231 on ventilators. The death toll went up by a further 67 yesterday, which may be dramatically less than mid-April, when the attrition rate was the equivalent of three Airbus A380s crashing every single day. But 67 in a day is still as many as a fully-laden coachload of pensioners driving off a cliff. It shouldn't happen, and if it did, you'd expect a rigorous enquiry. The number of infections in the UK is still significantly higher than elsewhere in Europe. Even the government's own health and science wonks are clearly worried that the British public now has the idea that COVID-19 has suddenly gone away. Indeed, if anything, it is growing across the world. Just look at the United States, where anti-liberal protesters have gathered to belligerently cough in defiance of the idea of wearing a mask.

Yesterday was not a return to normal. It was the emergence of a new kind of normal. It was a window merely cracked to let in a slither of fresh air and no more. If was a reminder of how desperate businesses have been to get something going again. My barber's, whom I've been a customer for decades, had made the effort to have hand sanitiser ready, masks if you wanted them, explicit signage on how many people could be inside the shop at any given moment, and well spaced seating for those who could come in and wait from the queue outside. Predictably, there was one knob who huffed at the measures, but for a small independent business, one which has stood on that site since 1908, staffed by three hairdressers who are effectively freelance, there was an immediate sense of relief that life was creeping back. It didn't stop me feeling ill at ease, being in that queue, an anxiety created partly from the fact that I was placing vanity over my own health (I am in a high-risk category). But it was a calculated risk. The kind you can't help the government is making on a much grander scale. You just hope it's worth it.