Rituals: partying

Photo: Pip Farquharson

I went to a party the other week. My wife and I. A good friend's 40th. A good old-fashioned party, too. Dinner. Drinking. Dancing. Stories. Hugs. Social distancing was as popular as Kevin Rudd at a News Corp Christmas function.

It was a strange sensation after 15 months of such activities being frowned upon. It felt like real life was back. And it felt good. Just to socialise in a big group and tell old stories and let your hair down. It made me think afterwards about when it will all be back for real.

The vaccine program was the big hope, then the doubts came about AstraZeneca. Then we saw the worst images of the entire pandemic stream out of India.

And as we go on, Australian governments are locking down cities for less reasons than they were a year ago. One or two cases out of hotel quarantine are enough — leading to stay-at-home orders and the subsequent terror of small businesses, particularly restaurants stocked with perishable food.

I then got serious fears that this could be the new normal. Where life is normal, fleetingly, then it's not normal again, before returning to normal. A never-ending merry-go-round.

Partying with great friends in the old-fashioned way, in the end, brought about as many fears as it did joys. A sensation of what we’ve been missing out on, and will continue to miss out on, while ever COVID is around and in the news.

Very early on, I read reports the pandemic could last five years. I dismissed them. Naively, last year, I set a deadline in my own head that it would be over by Christmas. Make it there, I thought, and we'll be on a path to normal. Now I am targeting this Christmas. Maybe in a year's time, we'll still be here, right where we are.

In the meantime, these parties will pop up. When they do, embrace them and enjoy. You don't know what you've been missing out on. Then again, when the seven-year-old woke me up at 5.30am after combining a beer, white, red and even a rum and coke, I was wishing I never went. But only fleetingly.