Muggins and His Wife Mrs Muggins Venture into Town During the Third Pandemic Lockdown of January 2021 (to drop her son off at the Blood Donation centre (and walk the dog!) Part 1 : Return To Town

     It was the first time either of them had been into their Town for many months, partly because of the virus lockdowns, and partly because there was a big out of town shopping centre fairly nearby where they could more easily go for shopping, where the parking was free and there was plenty of it. The planners had to some extent made the old traditional town centres and the ‘High Streets’ more redundant than they had ever been before. (And that was to not even mention the internet of course! At the push of a few buttons on a modern mobile phone or some such device they could have a package of virtually anything delivered to their door within days!)

      This venture into town was to see Mrs Muggins’ grown son to his long awaited blood donation appointment. What made the trip all the more exciting was the fact that they were still in the middle of the third coronavirus lockdown, which was the second one which was needed in this second wave. As a result nearly everything in town was supposed to be closed. At first the streets seemed empty, but as they walked around they did find that town was not dead at all, and indeed many people from many different Households were actually coming here for one reason or another. But by comparison with normal times he supposed it was not really busy, and certainly the people were hardly hugging each other in the streets, as if they had ever done that even in ‘normal’ times. (and anyway what is normal times anyway? Have there ever been such times as normal times? That was just the sort of silly question Alfred liked to pose, but it made a great question. He could imagine the politicians and personalities on Question Time getting their teeth and tongues into that one.)

     The first farce they encountered was the usual one, always a problem in towns, unlike the out of town shopping centre where there was plenty of it and it was for free. Instead of dropping her son near the blood donor centre in the town centre, on a bit of one way system that Mr Muggins could still remember from the days when he used to come into town, Mrs Muggins directed Alfred into a car park which would mean they could walk in to the centre with her son. Alfred began to protest, but then realised there was still time for a walk. After all they had brought the little dog with them for his walk. (‘Killing two birds with one stone’, as the expression goes!)

    There were few cars in this car park, as it should have been in the middle of a lockdown where everyone possible should be working from home, so there should be as little overcrowding as possible. Mrs Muggins was keen to get straight off after her son, who was always worried about getting to his appointments on time, so he was marching straight off, and she followed. Inevitably as was always the case Alfred was left with the responsibility of making sure they would not get a parking ticket, as, even in the lockdown, he had little trust that these rules and potential fines would be waived just because they were all in a pandemic together. He searched his trouser pockets for the required 3 pound coins, thankfully finding a few, as he always tried to make sure he had a few for supermarket trolleys, parking meters and the like, or any other unforeseen eventualities. There would have been little point asking his wife, as she made it a policy never to carry cash, so he always ended up paying for such things. At least he got the supermarket trolley coins back again afterwards. Not so the parking meters, unfortunately, but it was better to pay as he had learned once or twice by hard experience that parking fines were a hell of a lot more expensive and had to be paid in the end, even if the wife thought they might get away with it! He remembered fondly the times in the now distant past when it had been possible to park for free in his own town and just walk a similar distance into the centre.

     Conscience and common sense both satisfied, Alfred Muggins crossed over the road, with their little dog on his lead, content now to have got that little chore out of his way. He could now focus on enjoying his unusual and infrequent trip into his own town, a rare treat in these days of the virus crisis, and rare even in ‘normal’ times, as the years went by. He was curious to see whether he still recognised anything of his own town, as the planners and big businessmen, and the council leaders too seemed to be in such a hurry, as always, to change everything he had ever known, and as fast as possible. If the plan or target had been to make the town unrecognisable to the vast majority of its population they were doing a rather good job, he thought. Thankfully however there were still some buildings he still recognised, even if many of them were being used for purposes quite different from those they had been used for before. He could still find his way around familiar streets, even if driving around those same streets was now quite confusing and even unrecognisable, due to the changing one way systems and type of vehicle allowed restrictions, and the unrecognisable buildings that had suddenly appeared in certain places.