The Oxford Arms isn’t a great pub, but its doors open onto Camden High Street so it’s usually packed all day, every day. Seeing it shuttered was a shock. It looked so permanent, wearing its faded window advertising like tattoos of a long-ago girlfriend’s name. The Oxford Arms embodies everything that’s going on right now—or rather not going on. Birthdays passed over, games unplayed, friends missed, weddings postponed, songs unsung.
Behind that slapdash particleboard barrier is a pub still echoing with the conversations we used to have in it, and those we are yet to have. I could almost hear them as I stood there, and realized that for the rest of our lives we’ll talk about this mad time in pubs like this. In some ways we’ll pick up where we left off; maybe by Christmas it will be a pub again rather than a reminder of what we’ve lost. But I’ll always remember when the world stood still, when we were all so frightened and had no one to tell and nowhere to tell it.
