I have lockdown Stockholm Syndrome – and am sad to see it end

Not everyone has been loathing lockdown. With the right sort of introverted personality and a good deal of situational luck, this long pause has for some had more upsides than downsides.

If you’d told me in 2019, without any further context, that next year, society would hit snooze for nearly four months; that I wouldn’t have to take the Tube or contend with rush hour, that I could squirrel myself away in the countryside, work from home with my dog at my feet and have a proper walk every lunchtime, that I could talk to only the people I actually like, not those I happen to bump into – and that all of this would be government mandated rather than some sort of self-indulgent return to the first days of university? Well sign me up, I would have said, what's the catch?

The catch, of course, amid more than half a million deaths, has been the crash of the global economy. For that reason alone it is high time we, the low-risk majority, crawled out of hiding and got back to business.

Some of us will bolt out from behind bars raring to go. Others, even those who made a fuss about being caged in the first place, will require coaxing. And then there are people like me, having liked lockdown almost from start to finish, lurking in the shadows, hoping not to be spotted, and content to stay exactly where I am.

Clearly, I have Stockholm Syndrome. It’s not strange that I’m dreading the revival of traffic, real clothes, crowded streets and awkward run-ins – who isn’t? But it is odd that I’ve stopped missing things like seeing friends and going on holiday.

Pre-lockdown, I was a jolly frequenter of pubs, and last year, such was my fixation on travel writing, that on one particularly busy stretch I visited New York, Namibia, South Africa and Australia all within a matter of weeks. I was an addict. It didn’t matter where to or why, or how exhausting, I never turned down an opportunity to head back to the airport.

In the run-up to last Saturday, when England’s tourism sector was finally allowed to reopen, my kneejerk urge would normally have been to join The Telegraph's pack of roving reporters in being first to stay at a hotel again. Instead, it was relief when I was asked to stay home and work the weekend shift instead.

Plenty of others, it would seem, have become too comfortable in their nests to leave. Residents in places like Cornwall, Devon or the Lakes were braced, wincing, for an influx of noisy British visitors on Super Saturday that never came. Many of London’s most touristy sites remained all but deserted.

Now would be a good moment to declare that lockdown has changed us all; taught us how to slow down. Or to vow that I’ll cut back on long-haul travel in the future. To do so would be dishonest. The drizzly weather likely played a role in why the English countryside wasn’t overrun last weekend, and I know better than to make grandiose promises about flying.

This weekend, I’m planning a trip to Italy to see Venice while it’s still half asleep; more, in truth, because I seem to recall it was once a dream of mine than because I want to change out my pyjamas and leave my dog.

I have no doubt that as soon as Saint Mark’s Basilica looms into view from a bobbing gondola, I’ll snap out of this reclusive state and remember why I chose this job. But I suspect, as the tourist industry breathes a sigh of relief to welcome foreigners once again, the locals won’t be as thrilled.

Lockdown has been hard on lots of people, but many others will be sad to let it go.