I’m Not Sure I’m Ready For Normal Yet by Tom Beasley

Normality is a funny sort of idea at the moment, right? We all want to get back there, and none of us is particularly sure how close to it we’re supposed to be right now. For some people, the government’s incredibly successful vaccine programme and the removal of the remaining social contact rules was enough. When I leave the house at the moment, many people seem to have simply called time on the whole thing, happily rubbing shoulders on public transport and in supermarkets, having consigned their face coverings to the nearest wheelie bin. It seems that for a lot of us the daily figures around new cases, hospitalisations and deaths have begun to lose all meaning. […]

Was The Line Of Duty Finale Really That Disappointing? by Tom Beasley

One of the biggest trends of the last decade or so in popular culture has been the diffusion of TV audiences. Once upon a time, millions of people would tune in to the same channel at the same time to watch Dennis Taylor pot the crucial climactic black ball of a snooker final. Even more strikingly, half of the entire population would watch an EastEnders character hand over divorce papers on Christmas Day. But, with hundreds of channels and dozens of streaming services available at the click of a button, that communal experience is now mostly gone. […]

We Might Be Locked Down, But We’ll Soon Get Back Up Again by Tom Beasley

So that was Christmas. Weird, wasn’t it? I live in the heart of what was Tier 4 and so spent the Saturday before the big day foraging in the aisles of a supermarket for whatever scrap of turkey was left on the shelves, having had my plans for a return to Coventry scuppered at the last moment. The day itself was, thankfully, a lot of fun – albeit more subdued than normal – and New Year similarly passed in an enjoyable flurry of booze, Zoom quizzes and internet-facilitated Mario Kart races. When the clock ticked over into 2021, social media filled swiftly with optimism, as if the horrors of the last 12 months would disappear the moment we hung our new calendars on the wall. […]

Face Masks Are The Most Unlikely Political Football Of Our Lifetimes by Tom Beasley

I find myself wondering a lot about how the humble face covering became such a divisive political issue. It’s not as if there isn’t enough going on, even without the whole pandemic unpleasantness. Britain is heading towards a kamikaze break from the EU, America is rampaging into an election in which the incumbent President seems primed to contest a hypothetical defeat well beyond polling day and racially-charged unrest over police brutality is still bubbling under the surface. But the world is getting worked up over a little bit of fabric in front of your face that might save the lives of everyone’s gran. […]