COFFEE SHOP CONVERSATIONS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
COFFEE-SHOP
CONVERSATIONS.
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
I met a total stranger in a coffee-shop yesterday, as you do,
and, as we were the only two people in the place besides the staff, we chatted
for well over an hour about… guess what? That’s right, the pandemic, lol.
Shure, what else do Irish people have to talk about these
days besides the blessed pandemic, unless it’s climate change, which is making
our Irish weather even more unpredictable lately, or giving out about England for
causing Brexit, which is causing our package deliveries from the UK to be
delayed because the stuff we’ve ordered is all sitting in containers at Customs
or on lorries somewhere in Eng-er-land? Ahem. No offence, Britain…!
The pandemic, Brexit and climate change-slash-the weather,
that’s all we Irish have to talk about nowadays. Isn’t it shocking? Still, at
least we haven’t yet lost the art of conversation, as evidenced by my lovely
chat with Maura yesterday.
She told me how she’d come into the area for the first time
in ages yesterday specifically to eat in a restaurant she remembered as serving
good, no nonsense ‘mammy dinners’ in generous portions.
Heavy-hearted, I had to tell her that the restaurant she
sought never re-opened after the third big lockdown, the one from January to
May of this year. The one that depressed us all so much that no-one wanted to bake
banana bread or jump about to Joe Wickes’s fitness webinars any more. Maura was
sad but not surprised at the news. Some days it seems like half of Dublin has closed down
because of COVID-related restrictions.
My two favourite little coffee shops, not including the one
we were both in yesterday, shut down at the start of the pandemic. One never
re-opened at all, and the other only re-opened recently, after nearly eighteen
months of being shut.
My favourite little sandwich place closed its doors for good.
I feel guilty about that one, because before the third lockdown I deserted them
for a more convenient- and cheaper- sandwich place. I remember the manager- of
the place that shut down- saying to me last year that he didn’t think the shop would survive a third lockdown. I guess he was right.
Mind you, Maura said, holding up her smartphone, you can get
everything on this yoke now. Nearly all the food places do delivery now, and
even Tesco delivers as well, so if you ever fancied being a recluse from
society, now would be as good a time as any to make a start on it. True, so
true.
What with Netflix, online Banking and online
nearly-everything-else, along with supermarket home deliveries and virtual
this, that and the other (you can even get ‘the other’ online now, but you do
need to meet up in person if you feel like you need more than just a virtual
jerking-off, if you’ll excuse my French) and online shopping extended to
almost every commodity you can think of, why would you ever need to leave the
house?
I personally need to
get out most days myself, just for fresh air and a brief walk and change of
scenery. I need this for my sanity. Writing is a reclusive, lonely pastime at
the best of times, so I do need to get out for a bit just to feel like I’m part
of the human race again for a few minutes.
But I can understand why some people, who mightn’t have been
too keen on their fellow man to begin with, would enjoy the chance to ‘cocoon’ in
solitary splendour for a time. Hell is other people, isn’t that what they say,
and we’ve all met people who make this little saying the truest of all truisms.
Say no more…
Am I shying away from meeting up with old friends since the
pandemic, my new acquaintance asked me with interest. Oh, absolutely, yes, was the immediate
answer. I didn’t even have to think about it. The thought of actively,
deliberately meeting up with a friend for a coffee, a chat or a meal gives me
the heebie-jeebies now. Maura said she’s the same.
Are we afraid of catching the virus, or have all our social
skills just rusted from disuse? Who knows? Personally speaking, I’ll Facebook
you, email you or even text you- God help me, I’ll even phone you for an actual
conversation- but don’t ask me to meet you in person or I’ll be obliged to tell
you that I’m self-isolating because the vampire bats from Romania which I’ve
been fostering since 2018 are incubating a form of COVID 19 that could be dangerous-
no, deadly- to humans.
And, yes, that will be a lie. Don’t make me lie to you,
friend. These days, I only seem to want family around me, and I think a lot of
people feel the same. What it will mean for friendship and socialising when all
this pandemic malarkey is over and done with, I just don’t know. But it really
doesn’t bode too well, does it…?
What about nights out, we asked each other then. We love them,
we decided, if by nights out is meant nights in, with pyjamas, wine, crisps and
Netflix. Nights out are for mad people who see 10pm as the beginning of the night,
not time for beddy-byes with your teddy bear hot water bottle because you’ve
got to be up early in the morning to watch Netflix in your pyjamas.
Nights out? We’re too old for all that, we decided smugly.
Who needs COVID and STDs, hangovers and the morning-after pill, when you’ve got
Netflix…? Staying in is the new going out. Home is the new Outside World. Home
is everything now.
Restaurant, office, school, cinema, gym, church, bank, playground and the Lord knows what
else can all happen within the boundaries of your own four walls now. Home has
never been so important, so precious, so desirable, so necessary. For the
people who don’t have any, there are no words that a person thankfully not in
that situation can use to adequately describe how that must feel. Praying might help,
and a donation to a homeless charity for Christmas this year. If it’s the least
we can do, then we should do it.
Anyway, moving on to the biggest and most important question of all, how do we feel about people coughing in our vicinity?
Maura and I discovered that we each feel the same about the coughers, the
sneezers and the snifflers, and the people who leave the house with a
cold/flu/COVID because ‘I was just so tired of staying in, you know? I just
HAD to get out of the house to stop myself from going mad!’ Off to Leper
Island with the lot of them, but let them have Netflix. We’re not monsters…!
I’m glad, anyway, that two Irish women who’ve never seen each other before in their lives can still chat, gossip and be convivial with each other across the width of three tables in an otherwise empty coffee shop. It was great fun, too, chewing the fat about all the things about the pandemic that are gradually changing us as a people. It's like one big social experiment that we’re all living through now, is how Maura put it.
We didn’t exchange numbers, though, or agree to meet for
coffee and a chat again. God, no. That would mean that we were thinking about
becoming friends, see, and that’s… Well, that’s just a bit awkward at the
moment, you see, because, erm... Well, you know. Maybe after the pandemic…
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her debut romantic fiction novel, 'THIRTEEN
STOPS,' is out now from Poolbeg Books:
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is
out now from Poolbeg Books:
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