“THE majority of folk are abiding by the rules,” says 71-year-old Jack Whiston, “but there’s a percentage who are going about as if nothing has happened”. It’s 9am on a Tuesday and Whiston has come out on his daily mission to buy a newspaper in the Kirkgate shopping centre in Leith.
Whiston is like many of the older and at-risk people I have talked with in my local area who are continuing to go out regularly to the shops. While many older people are in compete lockdown and avoiding the shops all together, others still come out for weekly or even daily expeditions. Some find it a fearful experience, others alienating, still others don't seem too bothered. In the Kirkgate, one shopper complains that the social spacing is “anything between two metres and nothing.” When I ask if that worries him, he replies, “No, my dear, I’m 82, so I couldn’t care less.”
Leith is a microcosm of the struggle to obey the rules, and the flaunting of them happening everywhere. Look on Twitter and you see the same complaints from across the globe. A Glasgow shopper complains, that "the number of folk who can’t follow arrows round shops is truly staggering.” The singer Mike Scott, tweets, "Social-distancing violators on the streets in Dublin. I call 'em out + remind 'em of the 2 metres / 6 feet rule."
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Jack Whiston observes that there are plenty of people out there who still don't seem to be able to follow arrows on the supermarket floor. “The Tesco round there,” he says, “has got markers on the floor. There’s an announcement on the tannoy, every five minutes, telling you to keep 6 feet away and follow the arrows. But there’s still folk walking the wrong way.”
Whiston has worked out a safer way of conducting his weekly shopping by avoiding the hotspots and peak hours, but, in his daily life, he still sees infringements of the rules. “In the park, when the sun’s out, it’s a joke. I come along about quarter past nine and there’s the same three men every morning with dogs and they look like they could actually touch each other. They’re older men, not young people... The young people in the park are ignoring it anyway. There’s a group that hangs out beside the old bowling greens, sometimes as many as twenty there in the evening.”
There are times when the Kirkgate shopping centre seems more dangerous, more rife with social contact than others – when the bank opens, when the chemists open, and in the afternoon when groups gather. Shop workers in the centre, tell me that the social distancing in the area was “really bad”. Their chief complaint is the group of alcoholics and addicts who have always regularly gathered there.
“We need more police presence,” one says. “Down at the benches they had a party a few weeks ago and one guy had a ghetto blaster and they were all dancing. We’ve not seen our grandkids for weeks and you’ve got idiots like that gathering together.”
She also observes that she has seen plenty of examples of shoppers not following the arrows or respecting the two metre rule in the queue. “See if they’re queueing up and there’s somebody not keeping their distance and we say something, the reaction we get! It’s been unbelievable.”
81-year-old Alex Hamilton, a regular runner and cyclist, also out to get his weekly Lidl shop observes, that what’s been most nerve wracking are certain cycle routes. “The main problem is pathways like the Water of Leith. Cyclists and runners don’t give enough room. I actually feel safer on the roads because there’s less traffic.”
“The other thing,” he observes, “is I walk with my wife, and if someone is coming towards us, I go behind her, but lots of couples, mainly young couples, don't do that. There are some older people who don't too, but not as much. I think the younger people still feel immortal.”
One thing that's striking is that it’s not only young people who struggle to keep to the two metre rule. The old do too. Never have I found myself having to step away from people so much as I have on this day of interviewing. Some, possibly, are stepping in to me because they are hard of hearing. Others seem not to care. “It’s all nonsense,” one elderly man tells me. “It’s not even airborne.”
Over-seventies also describe their own struggle to stick within the rules. Maggie Cuddihy recalls, “I went to the Chinese supermarket and I was just so engrossed in looking at all the wonderful things they’ve got that I walked up to the till, and the woman behind me in the queue said, ‘Please move away from me.’ I had clean forgotten.”
Meanwhile, from other parts of Edinburgh I've heard tales of close shaves with joggers. One friend tells me she only goes out for a walk after 10pm at night because of "the inconsiderate people on the streets and in parks". "Don't get me started about the joggers!" she says. "Oblivious, breathing like horses, apparently under the impression their headphones give them total protection from the virus."
Even dog walkers are increasingly viewed as danger. A friend whose household is shielding, describes, "I love animals but I’ve been running away from untethered dogs... I dropped my sun hat on a walk the other day and a nice chap picked it up and brought it to me... I had to back away from him and ask him to put it on the ground. It’s so sad."
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