Cast your mind back. It’s 2005.
Big Brother House this is Davina. You are live on Channel 4. Please do not swear.
Get them out! Get them out! Get them out!
Except it’s actually 2020 and those faint chants in the background are your neighbours. Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!
With non-essential shops reopening today, and the government allowing more of us to see our loved ones, I have been thinking about what might happen once we’ve all been evicted from the house. When we have 30 seconds to say our goodbyes, and Davina yells “I’m coming to get you!”
It is possible that we have come to realise over the last eleven weeks what we can and cannot live without. There are some things that I haven’t missed at all. Could it be that certain services are deemed obsolete? For example I know that I no longer feel the need to pay for a £30 a month gym membership. Under the current leadership and rule of Joe Wicks and the rise of home workouts, I suspect others may feel the same. I also feel fairly confident in saying that no Brit will ever attend a pub quiz ever again. Aside from the obvious burnout, there are also simply no questions left to ask, it’ll be 50/50 for every Quizzee Rascal involved. And will we ever have things delivered ever again? After all this time unable to leave the house we’ll be desperate to make up lost distances. “No no it’s ok I’ll travel the 180 miles I could really do with the journey!!”
However there are certain things we’ve all tried over this time indoors that we can collectively agree should be left to the professionals. How many hairdressers and barbers will have to try to undo the efforts of our partners and friends? “Yeah sorry my fringe was by my chin so I let the postman have a go”. Fairly soon someone much more intelligent than I will have to resurrect my laptop after I decided to operate on it myself. Then estate agents will rub their hands together as people run toward them in search of new housemates.
Accidentally Ginger
I suppose the question is will things be the same as they were before? Judging by the queues outside Primark today, we were ready to refill our newly emptied wardrobes with more fast fashion as soon as we could. So maybe we will just jump back to our old habits and gyms and quizzes straight away.
I saw someone comment that this period has felt like the time between Christmas and New Year. No one knows what day it is and you have new things to find a place for. This combined with the pressure to come out of the lockdown a better version of ourselves, means we are approaching a sort of New Year’s Eve. There is a small hope that tomorrow will bring a new beginning and new behaviours, but for now we will all keep trying to enjoy the party that we didn’t really want to go to in the first place.