Patrick Carlyon: Let’s not rush back to our old life too soon
A host of good reasons exist for going slow on a return to normal, not least including the loss of countless joys once the world reverts to everyday work, responsibilities and long pants, writes Patrick Carlyon.
Patrick Carlyon
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The momentum to lift isolation restrictions is growing daily. It’s assumed everyone wants to return to a version of the world as it once was.
But aren’t we being premature? Why the rush? What of the countless joys, discovered only to be lost, once the world reverts to everyday work, responsibilities and long pants? Will Shiraz Saturday survive the shift? What about Terrine Tuesday?
If isolation has been good for community health, it’s also a revelation for anyone who has discovered the freedom of swanning about in a dressing gown with a glass of pinot.
This is one of many insights only made possible because of social distancing: that most things, from accepting Uber Eats at the door to being your kid’s fill-in teacher, are better with wine.
Isolation has introduced us to our true selves. And if you’re not in the grouping that dislikes jigsaws, you fall into that other category which feels liberated because it doesn’t shave, doesn’t try and doesn’t care.
Here are some other isolation advantages that ought to be pondered before restrictions are lifted. Do we really want to give them up?
Six meals a day instead of three.
Six coffees a day instead of three.
Feeling drowsy throughout the day because you reluctantly roll out of bed at 8.45am after sleeping too much.
Having really good reasons to avoid the dentist.
Having a tank of petrol that lasts three weeks.
Not paying a CityLink toll for six weeks.
Wearing moccasin slippers, all day, sometimes with socks, and realising that the old man who wore Speedos in his front yard a few doors down from your childhood home was a largely misunderstood trailblazer.
All the food experiments, which resemble the failed concoctions on one of your new favourite TV shows Nailed It!, and the conclusion that poaching an egg only works if someone else does it.
The discovery that you have never been more fat — yet more fit — since those boozy university years.
The joy of watching what your untrained puppy does when you are normally at work. It seems those shoes don’t rip themselves to bits. Will she still urinate on the living room rug without an audience?
The life lessons learned by embracing the hitherto unrecognised excellence of light TV. How could they send home Iona and Summer from Lego Masters? Is Brickman a monster?
Screening phone calls because you’ve watched five hours straight of Tiger King and no conversation could be more important than finding out if Carole killed her first husband.
Zero to four showers a day.
Realising Trivial Pursuit questions from 20 years ago are better than the questions of the most recent edition because you now realise that you gave up on pop culture at about the same time that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez broke up.
The understanding that Lego building on TV is more fun than building Lego yourself.
The conclusion that staring at the lemons on the tree, and urging them to ripen in the next 10 minutes to avoid having to get dressed to go to the supermarket, almost never works.
That after six weeks of online conferencing, you have finally worked out that the little icon that looks like a microphone is what you click to turn off your microphone.
That not having a haircut for a very long time inspires vague plans to plunder your daughter’s hair tie collection.
That playing golf on a computer, instead of real life, means you are a far better player than you used to be.
The grim truth that choosing photo frames can never be interesting no matter how bored you are.
Having to fill your supermarket bags yourselves, and accepting the advice of a 15-year-old check-out person who patiently explains why the eggs go on top.
The waiting for the leaves from the overhanging oak trees to fall so the leaf blower can be throttled up two or three times a day for reasons that have not been invented.
The discovery that everyone you know, like you, is wondering why the daily allowance for safe drinking has not been tripled.
Knowing that Ricky “I’m Drunk Every Day” Gervais generally gets most things right.
Let’s go slow on the return to normal. There are higher imperatives than health and infection rates.
Some of us just aren’t ready to present ourselves to the world again. We may never be.
Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist