I may well be out of step with many other people because I haven’t felt deprived of ‘touch’ per se.
I miss the variety of activities I was doing before lockdown, and I miss the socialising with other people, the conversations and stimulation of other people’s company.
I have never been very keen on the 'hugging and kissing-on-both-cheeks’ greeting which seems to have become the norm in the last 25-30 years. When I was a teenager and university student (1960s and early 70s) this wasn’t how we generally greeted each other, but it has become the norm for my children’s generation. I have sometimes wondered if the change was due to the increase in continental holidays in the 70s and 80s, since hugging and kissing has always been traditional especially in mediterranean countries?
I am particularly not keen on this habit when it’s women and their husbands whom I barely know!
Many of my friends have grandchildren and they badly miss their spontaneous kisses and cuddles; I’m sure I would too in their shoes.
To this day, I miss the love and warm embraces of my mum and dad, despite their deaths being long ago now.
It’s a great sadness that we have no prospect of visiting our son in Australia or of him coming here - it’s a year since we were last together and he was due to visit this month; and we miss meeting our daughters for our shared interests - theatre trips, exhibitions and museum visits, hiking or walking together.
However, during lockdown we have walked every day along the very many footpaths emanating from our village, and this has resulted in some unexpectedly interesting conversations with total strangers - comparing routes with a man and his dog who lived in another village further north in the valley, discussing the origins of a conservation field renowned for its butterflies and orchids with a man who was instrumental in setting it up back in 1975, and discussing the development of a small community of houses with one of the original occupants. We asked her about plans for developing a former golf course which is the backdrop to their community, and discovered a man from the city (London) had bought it and had various equally impracticable ideas, the latest being putting up 60 yurts and calling it ‘eco-tourism’!