Is It Safe To Come Out Yet?

Freedom Day was in July 2021, but the restrictions weren't removed until the end of February 2022,  SAGE wasn't disbanded until the start or March, and according to Rishi Sunak, we were this far away from an Omicron lockdown in Winter 21/22.

Even so, we're only three months from the end of free testing for Covid.

The last of the perspex screens are coming down in the shops.

It seems to me that everyone on public transport has stopped watching everyone else as if they may be infected with the plague.

Over-cautious, virtue-signalling Arts Venues have finally accepted that their customers do not want to wear masks while listening to Beethoven.

So I guess it's safe to come out. Not that I haven't been going to the shops and wandering around bits of London.

I mean, other people look normal now. They really didn't even in March.

It feels like we are about ninety-five per cent normal: regional wars, strikes, near double-digit inflation, the NHS in crisis, all business-as-usual for my generation. Now if the Grown-Ups could only put a stop to this Woke provokatsiya (or possibly provokáció), we might be okay.

My thought was that, in ordinary times, I would start going out to movies and concerts in the evenings (again) and let the sleep patterns take care of themselves. Especially since parking near tube stations gets cheaper if I do that. So I'm going to start doing that now.

It is not, however, safe to go near airports, ferry ports, or any other kind of international travel. Long queues, missed flights, delayed flights, only half the security desks opened at any given time, passport control half-manned... no freaking way. Even if I did have a passport.