Let’s play nicely this time

Change is in the air. You can feel it on the streets, in the parks and on the common.

Things are gradually easing up and the excitement is palpable.

Everyone has responded gleefully to the decree that we’re now allowed out to exercise as many times as we want. People to whom the word “exercise” was once an anathema are now swarming to the nearest open-air space to jog, walk, throw frisbes, kick balls around, ride bikes and generally run amok. 

Meanwhile the garden centres have opened at last - to the boundless joy of us older folk for whom the urge to grow stuff seems particularly strong. I went to a nursery last week and joined the queue of happy seniors snaking around the perennials, scooping up bedding plants like gasping nomads who had finally happened upon a water source in the desert.

And socially-distancing friends are now allowed to meet up in pairs, provided they walk two metres away from one another. Ha. Doesn’t work. My friend Sue and I tried it the other day and it’s quite a struggle on the narrow footpaths. And if you happen to meet a similarly socially-distanced couple coming the other way, it all becomes a toss-up between breathing in one another’s air or trampling the farmer’s crops.

Technically this system of walking two metres away from one’s friend becomes easier on a pavement. But all you need is three matching pairs of walkers in one busy street, and between them they manage to span the whole width of the road and get in the way of cars. It’s actually quite a thrill because six decades in, I’m finally managing to stop traffic.

So basically my news is: I’ve visited a garden centre and I’ve been out for a walk with a friend. Hold the front page.

We’ve all become like a bunch of kids who’ve had our entire collection of toys confiscated at once, and they’re now being returned to us one by one. And instead of showing the disdain that any self-respecting child would demonstrate when confronted with a dog-eared, all-too-familiar plaything, we’re rediscovering them with joy and delight.

Let’s hope that when the rest of our toys are eventually handed back to us – the theatre trips, the clothes shops, the restaurants, gyms and pubs - we don’t become jaded and spoilt around them too quickly. It would be lovely to believe that this time we’ll afford them the appreciation they quite rightly deserve.