The Fading Illusions of a Former World
On Friday my wife and I finally succumbed to one of the few things we’d missed about the pre-Covid world: we had a coffee from Starbucks.
The day before, we’d gone into town for the first time since March. I had an international cheque from the US Treasury to finally pay into a bank now they’re open again and my wife needed to use the post office. We decided to walk there for the exercise and as we masked up and entered the main shopping area (shocked by how few masks there were being worn and therefore unsurprised, days later, when Birmingham was added to the UK’s “watchlist” of cities facing a potential local lockdown soon because of rising cases of Covid), we saw the Starbucks and Caffè Nero we used to frequent back in the old world.
“Shall we?” We asked with our eyes. Then, remembering how small and cramped those branches were, we shook our heads no. We had coffee at home. We would wait.
But Friday, we were driving back from a National Trust property where we’d gone for a walk and realised we would pass a service station that had a Starbucks drive-through on our way home.
“Everyone else seems to be doing it,” we reasoned. And, as with my new tattoos on Monday, at least the risk would be for something we actually wanted - coffee - rather than being forced to risk our lives unnecessarily September 1st when the government is making us return to unsafe schools anyway.
Why not risk the ‘rona?
Since March, when the country went into lockdown, there has been surprisingly little we have missed about the old world. We thought at first we missed the cinema, but realised fairly quickly there were plenty of films we could watch happily at home. Occasionally we would add pick and mix sweets, ice cream and popcorn to our weekly grocery delivery, switch off the lights, close the curtains, and, picking a movie we hadn’t seen before, make our lounge into a cinema - no pausing the movie, no phones out. We’d even watch some trailers on YouTube first for added authenticity.
We had missed the ritual and routine of going to work at first too, but soon found ways to teach remotely that served the same function, as well as ways to socialise with our colleagues. We missed leaving the house, but took enough isolated drives to keep the car engine ticking over and then, when things opened up a bit, walks elsewhere that we scratched that itch too whenever it got too bad. Besides, we love our house and each other’s company. The yearning to see other sights was never that strong a pull anyway. We learned to do without and make more of everything we had.
We missed seeing friends of course, but as busy teachers with friends who live far away we never got to see our friends all that much anyway. Soon we connected with everyone via Zoom at least once and managed to see many people probably more than we would have done in a normal school year between March and August.
Shopping, for each of us, had been moving increasingly online too over the years. Many times in the last eighteen months or so, we had “gone shopping” for something, only to find ourselves frustrated by how crowded and unpleasant the high street was, seeking instead cheaper places to buy the same item on the web with far less hassle. We didn’t miss wasting afternoons that way now we were forced by law to stay away from the physical shops, and our Thursday stroll through town now that it had opened up again was marked by a total lack of inclination to visit any of the stores we hadn’t stepped inside since March. Just the bank, the post office, and home again.
Restaurants offered little appeal either. We used to love eating out, long before the government incentivised the country to do so to “help out”, but even then I had a habit of taking our favourite restaurant meals and trying to replicate them at home. During lockdown we realised we could still eat most of our favourite restaurant meals (albeit slightly bastardised versions) at home. In some cases the home grown variation being superior to the expensive original. The idea of crowding into a restaurant building full of close-quartered, maskless, people again did not stimulate the appetite even if it might stimulate the economy. We have continued eating at home throughout the pandemic.
There are some meals, however, I can’t get right (or can’t be bothered to get right because the ‘proper’ version is so delicious). Since March we have got three curry deliveries from our favourite local restaurant, and we got a Wagamama delivery for my wife’s birthday. All delicious and worth the potential risk of Covid to bring into the house. However, after five months of it not being in our system, the takeaway pizza we got on Monday - what used to be our favourite treat, and something we had looked forward to having again for so long - suddenly revealed itself for the horror that it is: an overly cheesy, salty hell. It sat heavy in our stomachs all night and made us realise it was no longer worth the Covid risk - or other health risks - to eat. The pizza spell had been broken.
But we did miss going for a coffee. That, and travelling, were the only leftovers from the pre-Covid world (and, I suppose, sports with crowds, held in noisy, full, arenas) that we truly missed. The travel itch had been satisfied not only with a few documentaries and books about other places, but with more fantasy - this last week we have taken a proper “staycation”. Not merely going on holiday somewhere in the UK (that’s just a vacation) but pretending our home is a holiday cottage somewhere else and living a life as if we were away - few chores, no work, lots of reading and relaxing, etc. But the opportunity to finally get an iced caramel macchiato that hot August day as we passed the drive-through was just too good to pass up. As with the pizza, however, as we sipped our takeaway coffees whizzing home along the M42, we realised something many had been saying for years: this wasn’t great coffee at all.
Since March we’d perfected our homemade beverages. Bought a bean grinder, a milk frother, various syrups. We could drink delicious black coffees and make silly lattes far better than whatever this was we were now drinking, and all without the risk of Covid (all I could think the whole time I drank the thing was: why am I putting my lips to this plastic lid when I have no idea what might have touched it before?) The coffee spell was now shattered too.
It has always been obvious that capitalism is performing a con, trying to sell us things we don’t need to make money for someone else. That’s capitalism’s whole ballgame. Before Covid, however, I feel some corrupted notion of recognising the con but feeling the rip off was “worth it” in some way was still in play. I knew I had coffee at home, but liked the ritual of going to the coffee shop; knew I could make the same food, but liked the idea of eating it in a restaurant; knew the movie could be watched at home later, but felt the excitement of the big screen and epic sound system; etc. Having all that taken away these last five months has allowed some of those illusions to fall apart when juxtaposed against the big new question: but is it worth risking Covid for?
You can’t live in a complete bubble, and it is not desirable to shut out every aspect of interaction with the world for fear of catching a virus which, while potentially very deadly, statistically will likely only make someone of my age and fitness mildly sick. But you also can’t ignore the risk - others of my age and fitness have also died as a result, especially those, like me, with asthma - so you have to think about your choices. I’ve been happy to risk potential Covid infection (and do everything I can to minimise that risk each time, both to myself and to others) to:
Get groceries
Take occasional walks
Get books or clothes delivered
Get a tattoo
See far flung family members once
Get very occasional takeaway delivery of meals that can’t be easily replicated at home
Have a plumber/electrician visit to do some essential work on the house
Do a chore which cannot be done remotely
And although I believe the unsafe way we are being asked to return to a full reopening of schools in September is crazy, if proper safety measures were put in place (small, socially distanced groups; large rooms; masks, proper bubbles, etc., supplemented with remote learning), I would be happy to take reasonable risks with Covid to teach my classes in person, where necessary, and do my job as effectively as possible at this time.
But it is not worth risking Covid for a shitty coffee I could make better myself. Or for a greasy pizza not half as delicious as any number of better meals I could cook as an alternative. What were once habits in an old world have been broken by this new one, and the emptiness at their heart has been exposed.
A thought has been passing through my head a lot these last few weeks as too much of Britain is looking like there’s no pandemic at all: adapt or die.
It is the key to evolution and natural selection: those species which can best adapt to the new, ever-changing, environments are those species which do not perish. I wonder how much clinging to the old world is evidence of humanity’s failure to adapt? The people who refuse to do things online because they “just don’t like it as much” as doing things in-person; the ones who won’t wear masks because “they’re uncomfortable”.
I think about the climate crisis. How much we need to change our lives to lessen our impact on the planet and assure our future survival. How much we have refused to do so even as the temperatures rise and ice caps melt.
Because we like the old way of doing things. And we don’t like change.
And now with Covid. Our world transformed over a weekend. The opportunity to radically rethink education, the economy, social care, health care...and instead of doing so, instead of adapting, how quickly we ran back to doing things exactly as they were before, even when we knew it was no longer safe to do so.
Deciding to drink less Starbucks and order fewer pizzas may not seem like a lot, but it is just one small adaptation from my old life among the countless others since March that I welcome this five months of reflection for bringing. The illusions of the old world are fading, slowly but surely.