Pleasure changes hours: 'cappuccinos' instead of gin and tonics

Somehow we are governed now by a clock more than ever.

Everything has happened to have an alarm, a reminder on the mobile, a start time.

I think it must have started with the applause, which we put on at nine in the evening, but we agreed (when it was easy to build consensus) to advance it to eight in the afternoon for the children, so that they could sleep without noise during the harsh confinement.

And since then (with more or less agreements) we have been adding notches: the fixed hours of walks by age groups, the curfews, the reserved hours in the shops, the restrictions of the hospitality industry.

A myriad of regulations that vary almost every week, almost in every street, surely in every city or province.

We have all come to live under the same clock now, and this clock that orders us has also changed us.

This collection of hourly girths has also moved us the scene of desire.

When we were free to see each other at any time and in any place, we used to choose the night to meet each other, and the night was also the time of day chosen to recognize each other, to be close when we could be close.

But all this already has different habits and the time of discovery has become the morning: we are greeting the first generation of couples who met after sunrise and not before, who first shared a coffee and not a drink.

Because in the end it is about managing the desire for company and finding the cracks in the norm, and the brightest fault is now the breakfasts.

Perhaps for this reason, there is no city in which specialty coffees, sourdough bread makers and light puff pastry do not proliferate.

And perhaps the corollary is that everything we knew about fancy gin and tonic dressings, we now know about

lattes, flat whites

or

cold brews

.

During the last few months it has been easy to do the first count of the crisis: all the business closings that fell in March and have not yet risen again.

But it is also true that a new phenomenon is emerging, a symptom of a different reality: the hotel industry that rises early to accommodate breakfast.

Suddenly, you have to book a table to have a granola at 9.45am and the queues of couples or tiny groups that wait in the streets to enter for a

pain au chocolat

(Neapolitan of chocolate) in a trendy bakery.

Watch out for this, huh?

Bread and pastry shops that become fashionable: in 2021 we did not see it coming down the path of wild fermentation and

bean to bar

chocolate

(literally from the grain to the bar, an expression that refers to an artisan and refined way of making chocolate bars).

Instagram, which was already exhausted from so many croquettes with hats, burratas and truffle-scented baths, now turns green with sliced ​​avocados, rye bread and Eggs Benedict.

But for the record: what has remained after the hour shock is coquetry: these groups enter the specialty cafes to eat a cookie (or a vegan donut) with makeup under their masks, with the best of their wardrobe and shiny.

The image, in broad Sunday morning light, is one more extravagance to add to the list of things we did not expect, such as carrying a shovel in the car in case it snows or getting handsome to go to the gym.

The crazy side of outdoor sports also already has a resounding statistical reflection.

Strava (one of the most used athletic measurement applications) confirms that during the last year we have sweated more than ever: two million new athletes each month have downloaded the app and the global increase in activities is more than 33% .

But there is a devastating fact: 76% of the marathons we have run alone.

With no one to share them with.

It is 10 times more than in 2019.

It will take us years to find out what will be different for this generation of young people who have discovered (in their best physical moment) Saturday and Sunday mornings: a space traditionally reserved for sleep or hangover and which is now the setting of greater freedom for pleasure.

The pandemic has discovered a new schedule for them, but it has also shortened their social outlook by striking down the enjoyment associated with crowds.

Perhaps this is why Emmanuel Macron has always included specific apologies for young people in his appearances and France is considering sweetening the social control measures just for them: rebalancing in favor of young people a strategy that from the beginning, and for obvious reasons, has privileged the protection of the oldest.

Without a night, a new relationship model has been imposed on them.

From flirting in the dark and shouting in a basement to taking the first steps of love with a juice on a marked terrace.

From living together in a gang for days to having to choose precisely with whom to hurry the curfew in human groups that barely give enough to play a Parcheesi.

In 2021 we must choose better than ever with whom we complete the narrow capacity of friendship.