Colm O'Regan: With the prospect of getting back to normal life, there an impulse to continue huddling
Pullets. It’s one of the words from my childhood that I assumed that everyone used.
Words like haggart — the field or farmyard closest to the house — or budget — a knapsack sprayer my father wore like the Mandalorian (without any protective gear, natch) or Latchiko which was a catch-all for people who’d be hanging around and might possibly steal a lawnmower. And then I didn’t hear them again for years.
But yesterday, I thought again about pullets, young hens. Hen people will know it but I heard it much in non-hen circles.
Every couple of years the hen-house was replenished with pullets to replace those lost to old age or The Fox. It wasn’t one particular fox. It was many foxes. But they would strike without being seen.
Sometimes those pullets came to us from cages in giant sheds where they hadn’t had a whole haggart to move in their hen-circles.
After these battery pullets arrived, they huddled in the hen-house for days. They didn’t know how to roost so they stayed in the corner waiting for some bad thing to happen. Unwilling to move. Or even unable to comprehend the concept of moving or the giant world around them.
And then gradually, once my mother had mixed Layers Mash with water for enough days and edged them out of their big pile of Hen, they started to get a new lease of life. And before long they were pecking the ground instead of each other and going on to scratch out a very happy existence. Before dying of old age or at the paws of Big Fox.
Watching the news of lockdown easing, I’m delighted to see all the delight of others but also part of me is a Pullet on Day 1 in the Hen House.
For so long I’ve gently vented about lockdown. I have begun many sentences with “I just want to…[insert perfectly normal experience]”.
But now I’m faced with actual prospect of getting back to normal life, there an impulse to continue huddling. To shy away from crowds. To flinch slightly at what we used to call a traffic jam. Hiding is comforting too isn’t it? It’s the duvet or the warm shower you don’t want to get out from under.
I’m half-joking when I say this but would there be anything to be said for getting the Social-ists involved? A public campaign with teams of social organisers sent out to gently shake the socially huddled out of their lockdown cramps.
They could be like census takers. Going around to visit every household with quasi ESB-meter-man-like powers. They could briskly question the occupants - especially men who look like they may be wearing Them Jeans for more than 40 days in a row.
For a modest fee they could ask us about work-colleagues friends, cousins, five-asides, even siblings we haven’t seen in a while and press us on what plans we have to meet up. Even going so far as to take our phone AND JUST FECKING RING HIM (Obviously there are GDPR considerations so we can pretend it’s for a voter database and no one will know whether it’s ok or not.)
They match your diary to whatever restriction is being eased that week, so that there’s a bit of momentum. You’ll meet X work colleague for a haircut, someone else at the bookshop. Have a very enjoyable catchup with a third person in the queue for underpants at Penneys.
You see, no matter how huddled I am, I’ll keep an appointment. That I can deal with. Anything to get me out of the hen-house and into the haggart.
