Have you been enjoying the sunshine? Perhaps that’s a redundant question: it has been difficult to avoid the delicious grins on people’s faces, the exaggerated generosity in their manners, the readiness to smile at strangers. Even the traditionally uptight denizens of London have been seen to unfurrow their brows and actually catch each other’s eye. Something feels different. Something feels – and forgive me if I’m speaking out of place here – not completely awful.
Nature’s good at that, of course. Give the lady her due, she always turns it around at the end of winter. In this part of the northern hemisphere we spend a good third of a year convinced that the world is cold, dark and possibly going to hell in a handcart, then out pop the daffodils and it’s like someone’s thrown us a surprise party but remembered only to invite our more cheerful, better behaved alter egos.
Last week’s sudden transformation – the rocketing of temperatures from the bitter bottom of the thermometer, the dialling up of colour across sun, sky and surroundings, as if a nine-year-old got loose with the Insta filters – has felt more welcome than ever. None of us expected to emerge from the pandemic only to face, immediately, the terrifying horror of war in Europe. Against the grim grey images of smoking buildings that have dominated our thoughts and wrung our hearts for the past three weeks, the blossom and bulbs have, perhaps, seemed to bud more brightly than usual.
The atmosphere of relief and release, in public spaces, has been palpable. Here was life finally giving us the smallest of breaks. Yes, you’d just received the email warning that your energy bills were about to go up by 100% – but just for a couple of days, you could turn the central heating off, and maybe even shed a layer.
The streets were filled with unexpected sounds. The barely remembered noise of pubgoers spilling out on to the pavements for their after-work drink, and the tinkle of the never-too-soon-for-ice-cream van. The thrum of convertibles, decanted from the garage at the first opportunity. The creep of free-floating jazz covers from buskers who can at last dare to play without their instruments freezing to their fingers.
We’ve been here before, of course. Two pandemic springs and summers have offered similar moments of collective relief. Everyone is wiser now, experienced enough to appreciate that one government minister’s back-to-normal is another government scientist’s false dawn.
And, yet, there are genuine grounds for hope added to the mixture this time. The latest data collected in England shows that a case of Covid now carries a smaller risk of death than a flu infection, thanks partly to the less harmful effects of Omicron and partly to the population’s increasing immunity. There’s a notable increase in people’s confidence to mix indoors, and a visible decrease in the numbers of masks and face coverings we see on a daily basis. This is, without doubt, the closest that things have felt to the life we knew in 2019.
It doesn’t have the feeling of a breakthrough, precisely, but it does feel like the gradual, groggy return to reality after an all-consuming bad dream. In fact, like a dream, some of us are already struggling to entirely inhabit the memories of what we’ve just been through. Last week, I visited my local library for the first time since it reopened, and the librarian told me that he couldn’t remember huge swathes of the past two years, whether because they were too nondescript or too traumatic to recall he wasn’t sure.
Arriving back home, I bumped into a neighbour, and we talked about the sunshine and the fact we’d both be out in our gardens soon. We remembered Brian, the presiding spirit of our street, whose life had been claimed by Covid at the start of 2021. We talked of my neighbour’s mother, who died of the virus earlier this year, and of the lifelong friend I had lost, and the household we knew just up the road that had buried three members of their family. It was strange to observe, a little impassively, how our communal history is already absorbing such extensive losses.
The that-was-then unreality of empty skies and specially built Nightingale hospitals may be receding from our outer consciousness, but there’s still plenty around to stoke our internal fears, whether that’s the invasion of Ukraine or rising costs of living. Statistics from the ONS show that adults in the UK are still reporting high levels of anxiety in their daily life; since the end of February, almost in line with Putin’s acts of aggression, those levels have begun to climb again, while overall happiness levels have fallen.
We know – we’ve always known – that a happy-ever-after is not how a pandemic ends, and that both the mental health and economic toll would be considerable. Global events, inflation, energy crises – all of these things will only add to our worry. An Ipsos poll last week revealed that financial pessimism in the UK has regained its highest level since tracking began 44 years ago: three out of four people believe the economy will worsen in the next year. Only twice before have we been so gloomy about the future, and the last time was in the middle of 2008’s financial crisis.
But maybe that makes this current spring-like sensation all the more vital to our wellbeing. The spirit of renewal is abroad, from the extravagant blooming of the magnolia trees to the diaries quietly but quickly filling with exciting new social lives. It cannot be wrong to take a temporary break from our very real concerns, and enjoy it a little.
• Emma John’s book, Self Contained: Scenes From a Single Life, is out now
