Above top to bottom: Skegness Pier, Newstead Abbey, Lady Bay Bridge, Green Hut Cafe (Ollerton Roundabout), Clumber Park, Big Fish restaurant (Ollerton Roundabout). Drawing August was a Twitter art challenge.
All text and artwork copyright Ian G Craig.
Straw Trilby? – Check.
Face mask? – Check.
Reactor-light glasses? – Check.
Bus pass? – Check, although beneath my face mask disguise, its passport style photo is totally useless.
Today I decided on my first trip into town since lockdown began. It seems longer. Regardless of the virus, I no longer tend to browse shops. These days the word “browse” is officially defined as an internet activity, number 2 on the Cambridge Dictionary charts as such. People no longer browse in the real world.
The bus into the city centre deposited so much sanitizer onto my hands it would have facilitated a full shower. Shortly thereafter, just as that first dose managed total evaporation, the Art Gallery dispenser’s sticky deposit made for a generous top-up. And that’s when the identity requests began, with a curator like a border guard asking for my papers. Once upon a long ago, at various night club doors, it was “If you’re not wearing a tie, you’re not coming in”. Now, one is expected to provide contact details, “just in case”. Yeh right. I do appreciate and accept the need for all this. But for me, the simple joy of “going for a coffee” is fast being negated by what now feels like a form filling, tax return activity.
There are winners in this world of the Nouveau Normals. A few short years ago the bright blue Caffe Nero stores were very much the new kids on the block. Not so today. Wherever one walks in the city a veritable host of bright blue Deliveroo bicycles, carrying huge bright blue food boxes, dash, hover, and surge as they negotiate their narrow way through masked pedestrians. “Meals on Wheels” has become yet another term with a brand-new meaning for the 21st century.
All text copyright Ian G Craig.