Ghost Town

How can a city seem like a ghost town even when it is thronging with people? For the past two days I've walked the city streets, negotiating colourful holiday crowds, past the wall of hearts that is heartbreaking every time you walk alongside it, past the queues at the big wheel, past the Royal Festival Hall, over the bridge. Or down through Covent Garden, with empty shops promising 'global brands coming soon' (ironic 'wow'). Lots of small jewelled niches have vanished off the face of the earth, ghosted in the triumph of 'let's pretend it never happened'-ism, and indeed, 'let's pretend it isn't happening'. 'Ha hah ha!', laughs everyone, and no-one in particular. 'What fun!'.

There is a hysterical edge to it all. There are still huge amounts of people getting ill, some with the original and very frightening Covid variant. I hasn't stopped evolving because it's a virus, and that's what viruses do. We are hosting its evolution while we lick our ice creams and travel mask-less on crowded trains and buses.

Little shops have gone up in a puff of smoke. It's a corporate victory: badly designed clothes and tech from afar, manufactured by frightened and overworked people in unsafe factories. We're all pretending everything has gone back to normal. That's entirely incorrect. It's gone back to abnormal. Am I the only person to see this?