Who wants to live in a nerdy world of no handshakes and no big sweaty crowds?
Few phrases inspire more horror in me than ‘the new normal’. It is falling from the lips of public-health experts and lockdown-loving commentators everywhere. Forget the ‘old normal’ of going maskless into the streets, or ramming yourself into a crowd of thirsty punters at the bar in a pub, or taking a lover without constantly worrying that he or she might make you ill with his or her breath. Such reckless libertinism was for the old world, apparently, the era BC (Before Covid). We are all now heading into the New Normal, a brave new world of forever social-distancing being built for us by a benevolent bureaucracy that simply wants to protect us from disease.
