This week saw the re-opening of non-essential retail in England, as Covid-19 restrictions continued to ease. From Birmingham to Bicester Village eager shoppers flocked back to the temples of commerce and capitalism that have been out of bounds since March. Once again, they were able to have Nike on their feet and Pandora on their wrists.
The consensus seems to be that this is a good thing. And in many ways, I agree that it is. It's good that retail workers can get back to earning a living; it's good that small independent businesses might get a fighting chance at survival and it's good that the Covid infection rate is much lower now than it was was a few short weeks ago. I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone a walk around their local shopping mall when they've been looking at the same four walls for three months straight.
But I also feel a profound sadness about the speed at which we just couldn't wait to get back to a normal that has failed us all. This is the part where we all get played.
Despite the horror and loss of Covid, it presented us with an opportunity to do differently. Almost overnight, we stopped thinking about profit as the defining force of our world. We not only realised what really mattered: we acted on the realisation. We built new hospitals in mere days and miraculously found billions down the back of the sofa. We stopped listening to CEO's and started listening to each other. Corporations went into overdrive to convince us that they'd cared about us from the start. All over the country, grassroot co-ops and mutual aid groups organised themselves into collecting prescriptions, sharing food, supporting carers and checking in on neighbours. Every rainbow in a window was an overdue expression of gratitude for the real heroes of our world as they risked their lives to save ours.
For a moment, it was beautiful and some of us dared to hope. But hope is cruel.
Now, we've started the shift back to normality. The ringing of cash registers will be only the first phase of what will be a brutal payback. The free-market corporate idealogues and their mafia associates in government have been hit hard. The disaster capitalists will leave no stone unturned as they seek to claw back what they consider to be rightfully theirs. Then, they'll take more.
Like everyone else, I hope we're winning the fight against Covid. We have another fight to win as well.
They're called 'non-essential' shops for a reason.