FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon is rightly “nervous” about entering Phase 1 of easing lockdown and us being able to meet – albeit socially distantly – people from outside our household. That low hum in the background is the buzzing of thousands of shavers switching on across Scotland as the fuzz of 10 weeks of hair growth – both facial and other – is banished forever.
No more rocking the Cruella de Ville look, as roots are coloured in, and chipped and unloved nails are smoothed, buffed and painted. Star-crossed lovers are limbering up to the big day when they finally get to see each other again. After all, those daily Skypes and endless texts didn’t quite cut it.
From 18 year olds, a year into their first serious relationship, to 80 year olds enjoying that one, possibly final, hurrah, this is the day that many have literally been dreaming about.
In the Hollywood-esque scene the sun shines, they’re in a strangely empty park, they’re looking so fine, groomed to perfection, smelling of Moroccan sandalwood, oozing pheromones after months of isolation.
Their partner approaches with the widest of smiles, love hearts for eyes and brain receptors on high alert. Instinctively, they hold their arms out to one another, just as the lyric to the background music kicks in: MC Hammer’s 1990s hit – You Can’t Touch This.
In one fell swoop the scene becomes more like vintage Bollywood where the protagonists sing to one another across a respectable 2-metre gap, chase each other around trees without ever touching, and sexually excite one another with suggestive eyebrow movements.
We are entering the Look, But Don’t Touch phase and it’s going to be a tricky one for thousands of couples who don’t live together.
I recently watched, sadly, as a neighbour who was living apart from her partner of two years circled around him when they met in the street.
I know how much they love each other and that he was going through a bereavement which made this circling all the more painful.
A friend recently told me she would rather not see her boyfriend of five years because it would upset her too much to not be able to hug him. She’s decided to wait until restrictions are loosened further before venturing the 40 miles to see him and his kids who live between two households.
And my 20 year old son said that although he was excited to see his girlfriend he was anxious as well. He doesn’t want to appear "cold" and "uncaring" if he tries to enforce the social distance rules.
Personally, I think the fact that I took a disastrous and ill-advised run round his head with a beard trimmer set to close shave yesterday, and left a Friar Tuck-style bird’s nest on top, might do more explain his anxiety at seeing her again.
Sadly, not all preparatory hair removal is necessarily a good thing. Remember that as you prepare for today’s tryst.
Our instincts are so strong – to hold, to touch, to feel – those we love. We long to smell their hair, taste their kisses, and listen to their heartbeats.
Can the state legitimately get involved in curbing these instincts? Instincts so powerful and pervasive that they could perhaps even overpower our instinct for survival. And if the state does get involved in this aspect of our lives, how prescriptive can it become?
The First Minister gave some hope for couples living apart yesterday telling us that there will be guidelines in the next few weeks. I, for one, am greatly looking forward to Nicola’s Framework for Foreplay, or Jason’s Leitch’s Joy of No-Touch Tantric Sex.
Jokes aside, it doesn’t feel right that government plays such a huge role in the minute details of our personal lives. When it comes to those most intimate relationships it feels like each one of us will take into account our differing circumstances. We will assess the risk to ourselves and to those around us and act accordingly, no matter what our instinct or the government tells us.
But, the clever government has one last card up its sleeve – one last dampener to your desires. I give you Test, Trace, Isolate, Support (TTIS), (and not Test, Isolate, Trace, Support as that would have been an unfortunate acronym).
The administration around this will probably be enough to calm the most lustful of lotharios. Numerous online forms, phone calls and questions about who you’ve seen and where you saw them later, I can imagine most lovers reckoning it wasn’t really worth the bother.
Instead, a nice picnic in the park with your own food and utensils as your partner suggestively dips a strawberry into melted chocolate, licks the chocolate off and then bites into it, will have to satisfy your most basic of instincts.
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