Many of those walking through the expanse of Nottingham’s Old Market Square on Thursday were very clear that they would be giving the city centre a wide berth this weekend in anticipation of crowds marking the last days without localised Covid restrictions.
“This is the last time I’ll be coming into Nottingham,” said Norma Harper, 74, catching some respite along the square’s walls after an unavoidable appointment with an audiologist to fix her hearing aid. “I think the pubs will be full this weekend.”
Harper, who was keeping her pink camouflage face covering on outdoors, has good reason to be perturbed. On Thursday, it was announced that the city’s coronavirus rate was 689 per 100,000 people – the highest in England – and there are currently no extra measures in place on top of those imposed nationally.
Although an announcement from the government including a ban on mixing between households was expected by Nottingham and Nottinghamshire councils this week, it is understood to have been pushed back until Monday. Earlier , a document leaked by NottsLive suggested restrictions would not come into force in Nottinghamshire until next Wednesday.
In response, Nottingham city council’s leader has warned of the “huge burden” placed on local authorities if less Covid-conscious residents view the delay as an opportunity to go out for one last blowout with friends this weekend, running “the risk of making a bad situation even worse”.
It is a view shared by Simon Davies, 60, who – with a Boris Johnson cutout over his face mask – was out campaigning against the government’s handling of Brexit as part of a Nottingham pro-European group.
“It seems insane not to bring in restrictions sooner. The government is too populist, they want to make people happy,” he said.
Although Davies said he wasn’t “terrified – I wouldn’t be here doing this if I was”, he said he felt that the city and county councils had taken a “sensible approach in treating people like adults” by advising them to stop socialising before the government intervention.
But, with most cases in the city still being among 18- to 22-year-olds, many of whom are students at Nottingham’s two universities, some people believe curbing virus rates will not be a simple process.
Emma Graves, 20, a second-year textiles student at Nottingham Trent out for coffee with three of her housemates, said her circle were being sensible, but added she was “lucky enough to live with eight people I like”.
“If I lived with people I hated I might have been tempted to act differently,” she said, empathising with fresher students living in student halls with relative strangers.
A 20-year-old student at the University of Nottingham, out for lunch in the trendy pocket of the city known as Hockley, went so far as to say he and his friends wanted to catch the virus.
“It’s a bit of a thing in our house. We kind of just want to get it so that we can stay inside for two weeks and just get it over with,” he said, while the friend he was with added: “It’s just a cold.”
Both said they would be making the most of what is potentially their last opportunity to hang out in the city centre’s many Wetherspoon pubs this weekend, if they could manage to get a table. “At the minute all of the Wetherspoons are packed until closing time,” said one.
At Foreman’s, an independently run punk and rock bar on Forman Street, supervisor Jordan Spencer, 28, said this weekend was likely to be busy. “But our customers keep the lights on. They don’t need to have the rules reiterated to them,” he said.
The bar’s staff will be keeping a keen eye on the relief packages offered to the hospitality industry during winter lockdowns. “We’re anxious that some of the places run by [the pub chain] Greene King are already struggling to survive,” said Spencer. “The fact that we’re independent is worrying.”
• This article was amended on 9 October 2020 to remove a reference to the “concrete” expanse of Nottingham’s Old Market Square. The square’s predominant material is granite.
