Your 12th April Checklist, Courtesy of Licklist
We’ve spent the last three months thinking about it, talking about it, dreaming about it, and now it’s so close we could almost touch it – yes, on 12th April the pubs will reopen their doors (their outside doors anyway…) to the public. In less than two weeks, we will all be gathered in beer gardens trying to work out whose round it is, whose lighter it is Covid-safe to borrow, and most importantly, where you’re all going for food afterwards.
Spending the night talking to actual humans, outside, drinking a mojito (not sloppily made at home with a cocktail shaker that leaks), is going to be a shock to the system. So, before this day arrives, there are a few things you should probably get sorted out first. If you don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of your carefully selected group of six, that is.
1. Find your gang.
The first step is always the hardest, they say. Summoning the energy and the willpower to put that first message on the group chat is actually surprisingly difficult, especially considering you’ve all been communicating primarily by sending voice messages of yourselves screaming at the top of your lungs for the last couple of months. Don’t worry. It will get better. And then it will get worse. And then it will get better again.
(Credit: @memecrunch)
2. Cancel on them.
Once you realise that you have no idea where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, you’ll have a crisis of confidence that will make you wish you could delete that message from the chat and pretend it never happened. Unfortunately, you can only delete messages before people have read them. And even then, you look weird if you do that. Nope, you’ve committed now. Except if you cancel on them at the last minute?... No, don’t do that either.
(Credit: @pinterest)
3. Look back at your camera reel and cry.
What you thought would be a quick flick through your Facebook memories will inevitable become a two-hour long trip down memory lane, tearing up at that shot of your friend jumping into a skip at 3am. Even the most uneventful nights out will seem as unattainable to you as a 6-month round trip through South-East Asia, as you sit on your sofa alternating between ugly crying and shovelling garlic bread into your face.
(Credit: @GIPHY)
4. Panic on the sofa.
As you rest your plate of garlic bread and can of Coke on your belly, you will realise that this isn’t normal behaviour - and it’s certainly not the behaviour of someone who wants to fit themselves into a crop top in less than two weeks. This will lead to the worst of all stages – the health and fitness panic. As you eye the corner of your living room that you have dedicated solely to Reese’s mini eggs, you will sign up to Peloton and join David Lloyd in the space of 30 minutes. Don’t worry, by the next morning you will have forgotten all about that and just be left with a crippling sense of confusion as to why hundreds of pounds are missing from your current account.
(Credit: @thewinelife)
5. Shop!
Step 4 and 5 are closely interlinked, I’ll admit. With a wardrobe full of clothes that no longer fit, you realise that you need to go shopping - ASAP. The only downside to this plan is that all non-essential shops are closed (which governmental department decided that Zara wasn’t essential, and can I have their contact details? I need a word). The only option is online shopping, and that’s difficult because you have lost all sense of what size you really are. There’s only one thing for it – the maternity section of ASOS.
(Credit: @GIPHY)
6. Obsessively google restaurant menus.
You’ll soon realise that 90% of the world population has put on a few pounds over lockdown, so who even cares?! Now you’re free to peruse the food menus of every dine-in restaurant within a 10-mile radius of your home, trying to decide where you and your mates will end up after chucking-out time at the pub. You’ll decide on bang-bang cauliflower and a pork katsu from Wagamama’s in the end – the same thing you’ve been ordering twice a week ever since Boris held that press conference 3 and a half months ago.
(Credit: @me.me)
7. Give up obsessively googling restaurant menus.
The sheer amount of food available to you will eventually become overwhelming. Looking up, you realise it’s 2am and you’ve been doing the same thing for three hours now. It’s probably time to stop, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be unable to close your eyes without having visions of Waga’s with a side to KFC for dessert for the next couple of days.
(Credit: @onlyforu)
8. Forget how to speak to people that aren’t in your immediate bubble.
There’s nothing worse than being five minutes into an enthusiastic monologue about The Crown only to realise that everyone else zoned out about four and a half minutes ago. Talking to people that aren’t your flatmates is strange because they don’t get all your classic in-jokes about pot plants and chicken nuggets. Don’t worry – it’s their fault that they weren’t there for the classic cactus mishap of January 29th.
(Credit: @memegenerator)
9. Forget how to use public transport.
The thought of sitting on a seat at the back of the bus – a seat that probably hasn’t been deep-cleaned since 2011 – surrounded by strangers, is a weird thought. Where do you put the money, how do you get a ticket, where do you get off?!? And don’t even get us started about trains and tubes. It’s a scary world out there when you haven’t walked to the end of your street since Christmas.
(Credit: @memecrunch)
10. Be late.
No matter how excited you are for the pubs re-opening next month, I can guarantee that about 20 minutes before you agreed to meet for pre’s you will still be sat scrolling through Instagram in your bath towel, like you’ve been doing since last March. Just blame your lack of punctuality on social distancing rules. Finally – we knew the global pandemic would come in handy eventually.
(Credit: @GIPHY)
So there you have it – everything you need for living your best life when the 12th April rolls around (except actual money, that is). If you don’t go through these 10 stages before the 12th, did you even do lockdown?!? (jokes – you’re actually probably just a better person than we are).
Words by: Rebecca Clayton