It’s certainly one my mind as I plan a trip to Falmouth. At least that’s about as far away as one can get from northern England, but with headlines saying pubs may have to close in order to offset the rise in cases expected as schools open, you have to wonder if there’s a twist to come even as we’re heading down the M5.
So it’s with a real sense of caution that I make my first visit inside a church for a proper service since mid-March. This eucharist service is at Coventry Cathedral and is a perfect lesson in a lot of things I suspect we shall have to get used to.
Gone are the rows of hundreds of seats and the feeling of a space you can wander about in. Instead there is a one-way system and chairs placed two metres apart looking more like an art installation than a church. Everyone seems to be masked - this we’re told will become mandatory next week.
The service starts a little behind schedule as those operating the tech desk try to ensure all can be seen and heard not just inside the cathedral but for the many watching from home, perhaps still far too wary of the virus to venture out. What follows is a good five minutes or more of safety advice, rules we should know and urgings for us all to act responsibly.
The hand sanitising stations are here and here, we are instructed, the video of us coming in and the contact details we must leave are for tracing purposes should that be needed, there will be no touching or singing and we should leave smartly at the end so our chairs can be instantly wiped and cleansed. Gluten-free wafers are available on request, he adds by way of an afterthought. It makes the whole welcome look like the sort of safety demonstration you get as your plane taxies for take-off. We didn’t get as far as exits but I would be disappointed if, given the gravity of things as they stand, there weren’t two - one heavenwards, one heading the other way.
Once normal service gets started there’s a strong sense of trying to make it business as usual. Or at least of standard as it can be when the faces of those presiding and the congregation around me are so thoroughly masked. Sitting on your own in such an enormous space is inevitably going to make you feel small and the greetings given as a sign of peace end up being distant and rather forlorn waves of recognition such as you’d get across a deep and dangerous glacial chasm.
With all the singing recorded by an unseen choir and played over speakers and with so much of the building empty, there is a sense that this is a partial reconstruction of something we used to do back before the changes happened. A bit like yesterday’s Cup Final where my delight at the result couldn’t take away the sense that what I was watching wasn’t in any recognisable way the real thing.
But for all its oddities, it is comforting to stumble across some sort of familiarity and, I tell myself, a much better experience for being there rather than watching it all on the laptop for another week.
It’s one small step - like the man said - and a very tentative one at that. But it’s one which will hopefully lead to more. That is if the government and its scientists don’t suddenly decide we all have to take hurried steps back in the other direction.
