Over the past 16 months, many things in our society have changed: we stayed at home, we baked, we zoomed, we tutted at people enjoying green spaces, we seamlessly slid ‘lockdown’, ‘pandemic’ and ‘social distancing’ into our vocabularies. But one thing that has stayed absolutely, stubbornly, admirably the same is the British public’s dedication to a Big Night Out.
Forget Shakespeare, Constable, the Beatles, our true culture is best embodied by our seemingly primal urge to drink to excess, scream the lyrics to cheesy 80s music and generally make a tit of ourselves on the dancefloor.
So, doing my patriotic duty, I found myself queueing to get into a bar at 12.01 this morning alongside old timers, first timers, at least one Tory backbencher and, inexplicably, a Boris Johnson lookalike flanked by leotard-clad dancers brandishing huge sparklers.