Those with a watchful eye might spot something this week (or next) not seen in a while. And I’m not talking about a freshly poured pint, or the sight of your forehead after three months without a barber’s care.
Rather, as England and the whole of the UK, begins to ‘open up’ after the third national lockdown, and as we emerge socially emboldened into the spring sunshine inoculated to the tune of some 32 million first doses of Covid vaccine, there’s a chance we might see the handshake make a tentative return.
I can’t be the only one who has begun to wince slightly every time I see someone on TV shaking hands in a social setting, in a film or programme evidently filmed in the world before Covid robbed us of such basic, everyday civilities. It’s difficult not to reach inwardly for the hand sanitiser whenever such a scene appears.
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After a full year of Zoom calls, elbow ‘bumps’ and toe-rubbing (remember that?), do we actually feel the need to undertake this – let’s face it – rather archaic greeting-ritual anymore? Perhaps a year of enforced absence has consigned it to history, as emphatically as it seems to have done with a swathe of venerable department stores and Sir Philip Green.
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