Be kind as lockdown tensions emerge at the shops – Jayne Dowle

I was musing on this as I stood in yet another supermarket queue. What does social distancing actually mean? Is it the case that we’ve spent so long being forced to stand two metres apart, we’ve forgotten how to be friends?

Is it just me, or are people getting nastier? Should we blame the Government for doing nothing much recently to lead from the front? Or is human nature becoming frailer as the pandemic pulls us down in its wake?

Anyway, my reverie was interrupted when a woman, perhaps in her sixties, barged straight to the front of the line, shoved my teenage daughter aside in her haste to grab a trolley and marched up to the entrance shouting “I’m allowed, I’m disabled”.

It was difficult to assess whether this rude person did have a medical condition or was just plain selfish. We’d all been standing there patiently, edging forward two metres by two metres and sticking to the rules. And then as one, we all shouted out in indignation.

When the interloper had disappeared through the doors with her purloined trolley, an uneasy silence re-settled over the queue, I felt sad; is this what we have come to? Uproar outside Aldi on a Saturday afternoon because a woman jumps a queue.

It wasn’t about whether the woman really was disabled. Or indeed, the policies of supermarkets vis a vis priority shoppers. It was about personal sense of entitlement versus respecting other people.

I’m not one to judge. My mother is disabled and uses a mobility scooter to go shopping. She hasn’t been near a supermarket since March because my dad is shielding until July.

I know some people with health issues have no choice but to shop for themselves, but this little supermarket spat highlighted how the spirit of ‘all in this together’ is crumbling faster than the Government’s attempts to create a workable track and trace phone app.

What would the Queen think, if she knew that rather than standing shoulder to shoulder, we’re jostling each other to be first through the doors of a supermarket? When Her Majesty vowed, back in April, that we would meet again, did she think for a moment that actually, there might be some people most of us would now quite happily avoid for the rest of our lives?

What would the late Dame Vera Lynn think, and all those men and women of that generation, who pulled together not just for a few short months, but six long years of constant war? They knew a thing or two about patience and fortitude.

In my queuing moments and at other times of reflection, I often think of my former mother-in-law. Born in 1921, she served in the ATS as a sergeant, married in her late thirties, had two children, then was widowed when the youngest was only six.

For the next four decades or so she dug in, worked full-time in local government and raised her family. Quiet and reserved, she made no public show of her accomplishments, nor signalled any virtue. Yet women (and men, thank you Captain Sir Tom Moore) like her were the backbone of Great Britain. Pulling together and doing their duty instead of tearing others down.

This pandemic has not shown us in a good light. I know we’ve clapped for carers and the NHS and looked out for our neighbours, but as we ease our way tentatively out of lockdown, divisions seem more entrenched than ever.

Furloughed workers are chastised for venturing out of their back gardens to shop freely in Primark. Those working from home (WFM) are accused of slacking by others who are still obliged to clock in and out. In reality, individuals adapting to this weird new way of working are more likely to be balancing a laptop on the landing whilst juggling two warring children and a newly-unemployed partner.

And sadly, given that we have to rebuild the British economy somehow, I’ve heard some pretty nasty things said to entrepreneurs attempting to re-open their businesses in the face of strict rules on hygiene and social distancing.

Last week a boutique owner friend found herself the target of a personal body-shaming vendetta conducted on social media. I’ve heard of hairdressers being reported to the local council for breaching rules, when in reality they’ve been deep-cleaning their salons.

I resent this malevolent spirit which seem to be hanging over the country like a particularly toxic fog. I wish it would clear off and take the lingering pandemic with it. And then we could all take a long hard look at what we have become, and resolve to #bekind from now on. Something good must come of all this, surely.

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