32387: Wandering around an empty town in Spring
I chose to stay at Oxford over the Easter break, rather than returning home to Sydney. It was perhaps the most uncertain time, still in the early stages of the pandemic when every day seemed to bring changes, as the world steadily came to a halt. But the town was peaceful, empty, and as one wandered the streets, frequented the meadows, it was at a distance to all the other lonely people on their daily walks. The plants thrived, and so did the clouds. In those days, there were more ducks than people on the streets.
On the day when all the shops began to reopen, some of the spirit from a forgotten way of life came back onto the scene. The bustle of the town was revived, dug out from the archives of times otherwise lost, but preserved in the relentless traditions and impulses of happy capitalists and mild-mannered extortionists. How one had almost forgotten the glorious feeling of watching the contents of one's bank account be erratically converted before one's eyes into material goods, to be carried back home in a satisfyingly weighty handbag. But then again, one could easily feign this sensation by replacing the contents of one's bag with heavy stones and taking a walk around the park. No, this is not the most rewarding part of the shopping trip - it is the crossing of borders through to lands of categorised items, to delve into rows of books and paper sets; shelves of focaccia and baguette; square rooms of serviced goods and staff all too willing to have a chat about the products on display around them. It is the social world lurking in commerce that is all too often ignored, taken for granted; but on the High Street, one is indeed travelling - travelling across the history of mankind's luxurious inventions of excess and comfort, a journey through wholly unnecessary phatic and the casual compliment to put the customer in a prodigal mood. And so on the glorious day when non-essentials acquired the paradoxical combination of a more essential status and their old abundance, how happy were the spendthrifts, and how one could hear the people chuckle manically on the streets, doubled over with bags big and small!
Then came the day, half a month later, when the rest of the world returned to the scene. Whilst shops had been open and thriving for weeks now, the most essential of the social scene were still a desolate spectacle. Cafes open exclusively for takeaway were hardly cafes at all, and the regulars with any dignity avoided the site on pure principle. Museums, galleries, and pubs, the heart of the cultural scene, were soon to be welcoming again their old, drunken friends of the public (drunken with artistic passion and all the rest).
On the very first day, however, it was perhaps something of a surprise to see that all the lines in town led out of barber shops. Lines metres-long of men with scruffy hair and beards, some previously silky and now spikey, and others previously bald and still so (one could only guess why they were so keen to wait in line to have their scalp scrubbed in these early hours). How merry were the barbers that day, buzzing busily about, chatting their hearts away to make up for the months of silence as they attacked the men with their shears and masks. The men were always more efficient at the job; a snip, a chop, and the job was done. All social conventions were dispensed with in the line outside, a line or two exchanged indoors, and by the time they got to recounting the events of their uneventful weekend, they already smelt of aftershave and conditioner and were halfway out the door, careful not to brush into the next man in line. The shops operated like a rotary wheel, with one man out and the next man in. Bubbles and snippets of hair flew about like a hurricane behind the glass windows, the candy cane poles outside spinning as they had never spun before, hypnotising the passer-by and a sign of the arrival of the barbershop's Christmas.
Yet it was ultimately the return of the cafes in their true form which brought life back to the world. The moment one entered the old coffee rooms, one could smell the old roasted beans infused into the walls and wooden floorboards, still lingering from former times when strangers gathered daily to watch the other strangers lingering about in the same way, the one cup of coffee used to occupying entire mornings and afternoons. It did not take long for the cafes to fill themselves up again, people from every side of town flooding in with partners and children, friends from book groups and other acquaintances, reuniting with their regular hot drinks in the morning and raising the eyes again to meet the casually averted gaze of the other cafe dwellers. The excited dog sticking its tongue out at passers-by on the streets, wagging its tail at its owner, who sits outside on the checked bistro chairs, shades sitting atop his head, to watch the world from behind a veil of steam rising from the lip of the coffee cup. It is only a shame that these days, one had not yet regained the ceramic pleasures of plates and mugs - and how one missed the smooth kiss of the white coffee mug, the freckled plate that remains after one devours in a helplessly messy, but civilised manner, one's croissant. Nowadays, one is handed the somewhat degrading takeaway cup, and the accompaniment to one's coffee (likely a pastry of some sort) thrown into a paper bag, to be taken out at one's table and eaten as though one were not in a cafe at all! But let us not dwell on such injustices, for the articles accompanying one's visit were never very important. Rather, one needed only a seat by the window, which afforded at once a view of the world outside, the revived and bustling streets, and the world inside the cafe, the line that steadily grew and shortened with the dynamic ebb and flow of life. The advantages of the takeaway cup, of course, was that one no longer needed to pay much mind to distributing the drink across the hours. The empty cup, opaque as it were, could last hours, sitting there safely, contentedly, as the token of one's right to the seat.
It was the sharp, distinct smell of freshly ground coffee, which sharpened the senses as one regarded the other idlers of this microcosm of the world. The racket of all sorts of grinding, of ice-crushing and the rhythmic thump of the milk jug on the counter, mingled with the general commotion of morning chatter and the streetnoise in the background. The atmospheric music could barely be heard over the music of the atmosphere, and the familiar din of the cafe became more than welcoming to the ear that had for too long been accustomed to the lonely silence of isolation. One was born again into the world, and once again strangers were gathered in this delightful space of communal varieties, the compact pill of society where one was exposed so suddenly and all at once to the regenerated, wildly beating heart of the world that had rewoken. It was a glorious day indeed, to see the elderly gather in pairs and return to their former routine, resume their particular habits with the coffee and pastry combination that had not changed for decades. The cappuccino with the extra layer of milk froth but no chocolate powder on top, paired with a cherry danish heated up on the toaster; a flat white for the workman, large to sustain him through the morning paper. And yes, the old characters filled those voids again, returning to their favourite seats - the writer by the window on the round table for one, the laptop poised in front of them whilst the eye roamed freely from behind the screen like the peeping eyes of a hippopotamus above the water… The man in the beanie buried in a dog-eared book, and the two gossips in the corner to catch up on a lifetime of anecdotes… and the couple by the window breezing through the daily crossword. One looked around, and glimpsed again a world long missed, cheeks flushed as one caught up with the times, as past and present were drawn together again in the hearty dance of life. The masks became invisible and apprehension evaporated in the music of the public that resumed, as erratic as ever before. And this was the world that one had almost forgotten, that alternate beat that the heart had skipped these past few months. Suddenly, life resumed at twice the pace, and all the colours of the world returned. It was the jolly day when one's eyes were open again to the glories of an old world, dusted and propped back on one's mantlepiece to observe, admire, and to touch.
