A year on and Covid 19 rolls carefully towards the end.

 A year on and Covid 19 rolls carefully towards the end. 

It doesn't really feel like a year but it is and that's an undeniable fact. It's been one whole year since the entire globe stood still, static, statuesque, blinded by the headlights and then reduced to utter stagnation, immobility and finally lockdown. Little did we know at the time that it would take nearly as long as this to resolve or find the definitive cure to a worldwide medical ailment which eventually became a torment. 

But the ides of March are upon us and abnormality could be about to meet up with normality in a way that it had never thought possible. Who could have foreseen this state of affairs at any time in our lives. But for a year now we have withstood the rigours of Covid 19, regretted what could have been but never was and then blamed anybody who knew nothing of this mysterious virus. We looked at each other, examined all of the statistics, figures and scientific data and still we agonised endlessly. How did it happen and why was it allowed happen? More to the point could the coronavirus have been avoided? Probably not.

Still, this could be that crucial moment when we gaze across at our friendly medical officers, hoping that sooner rather than later that the green light will be given, the air traffic controllers have given their thumbs up and the world can be restored to the rudest of health. It is not quite the time to put on clown's outfits or dress up as court jesters or indeed throw custard pies at each other because June 21 is the day set aside for colossal celebration and monumental, mammoth street parties. Some of us would like nothing better than a week in a pub garden, maybe a medieval banquet groaning with plentiful supplies of chicken legs, mutton, venison, beef or just a family barbecue that just keeps going until the end of this year. 

Today we learn that a vast majority of Britain have now had the first vaccine designed to keep the numbers of infected Covid-19 cases down to a respectable level. We are down to only an average 250 deaths a day which, although still a wretchedly disturbing amount, is still much more of a substantial achievement than it was back in dreadful January when we were talking of well over a 1,200 fatalities a day which still sounds like quite the most horrendous number. 

The wards and hospitals of some of Britain's finest hospitals are no longer populated by quite as many visors or masks than there were a couple of months ago when it looked as if some of those poor nurses were on the point of a major breakdown. How we sympathised with the two nurses who had to be ushered to one side and told to cry it all out. They simply couldn't take it any longer. The unreasonable pressures placed on some of the most admirable and well qualified members of the medical profession had now taken its toll on them. They were at breaking point and some were pleading for end to this seemingly incessant illness. 

Now however the tides are turning and by the end of May hopefully we can all turn to each other once again and slap each other on the back in congratulation. And then we can abandon ourselves to a million glasses of foaming Guinness, a huge consignment of every conceivable lager ever produced and then just wash away our sorrows with vineyards of red and white wine from every corner of France. Then we'll attack large off licences of brandy, port, whisky, cognac, an impertinent Chardonnay and another lorry load of  spirits, scotch, mead if you can find it anywhere before downing every intoxicating cocktail in western civilisation. It should be the most unforgettable party of all time. 

Then we'll head off to the teeming, heaving West End of London because that's the way it should be even when we didn't think it would ever be. We'll put on our glad rags, brandish some of the most outlandish flags and banners ever seen, print  whole sequences of funny, old messages and the latest in jokes of the day before doing the conga around the lions in Trafalgar Square for the 570th time. We'll have a ball and we'll never forget this particular day because there were times when we must have convinced ourselves that this day would never arrive. 

If Westminster council, in their infinite wisdom, have got any sense of occasion, the great British public should be able to attend the loudest pop music, 1970s and 1980s disco, the most classical names, bands and singers from the 1950s and 60s. And then perhaps for an hour or two homages to the great composers of the 18th and 19th century with a dash of wartime glory from Glen Miller, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Dame Vera Lynn. 

For quite a while some may have been tempted to make nonsensical comparisons with the Second World War. But this is quite absurd. And yet it just feels as though we have been totally estranged from our loved ones, kept imprisoned in our homes and then compelled to stay there for as long as possible. There is a lot of lost time to make up and much psychological damage that has to be addressed and healed. Some of us feel as though the outside world has now become a permanent exclusion zone, a world trapped in complete isolation, where even the birds and pigeons are more or less clueless. 

But hey come on folks. The world is now about to open up its springtime song book, the season of cuckoos and tulips, more and more runners in parks, loose fitting shirts, longer days, abundant cherry blossom, gambolling sheep and lambs just itching to get out into that meadow for a good, old fashioned snack of grass while the rest of us think of Easter and chocolate eggs, Pesach or Passover for the proud Jews that we are. 

Before you can bat an eyelid April will ignore the inevitable showers, shrugging them off as some urban myth when the thermometer says 80 degrees in the shade or maybe wishful thinking. By the middle of May the coronavirus could well be dumped unceremoniously into the dustbin of history and we can begin to climb out of this deep well, this large hole in the ground from which there seemed no redemption. So here's the slogan for the age. Never stop believing. It's slowly but surely and very cautiously but June 21 has a lovely ring and resonance. Keep safe everybody. And try to focus on the longest day of the year. This may be a gross understatement but it could be pretty memorable.