On a Thursday I found myself in a Sydney pub, drinking draught beers. Draughts! Around me and my friend Oliver were people, wearing outfits. Nobody looked great, as though maybe we were all a little rusty on the clothes front; as though maybe the only clothes we knew about were jeans. (A colleague attended a dinner at a restaurant where four of the women at her table, including her, wore leopard print.) It was the week that bars and restaurants were allowed to reopen in New South Wales. The number of patrons was limited and social distancing measures were in place. The most important downside to this is that these restrictions make eavesdropping difficult. Other than that, laughing and drinking in the dark glow and general background noise of a pub was a delight. Much of my pandemic socialising had involved consuming glasses of white wine over video chat with friends in time zones where it was too early to drink. As they made endless cups of tea, I slid further and further sideways on the couch, my ever-rosier cheeks reflecting the blue light of a screen until the always-fumbled goodbye closing of a Zoom window. The pub in question was in Newtown – a student suburb bisected by the long and wide King Street. The journey there had been fraught. After abandoning a crowded bus at a stop halfway up a steep hill, I called a rideshare service. The driver had two phones mounted on his dashboard, one showing directions, and another scrolling by itself through Facebook. He drove at two speeds: advancing rapidly between stops, and jerking suddenly to a standstill. The car smelled of cigarettes. I gave him five stars. I arrived as Oliver was chaining up his bicycle. We had intended to go to the 160-year-old Courthouse Hotel but the queue wrapped itself along a hedge, to the end of the block and around the corner. If I were a completely different person, perhaps I would have remembered to book. In pursuit of draughts, we advanced down the street, me with a slight but distinguished limp, having broken my foot a few weeks earlier. Oliver, still flushed from a long bike ride, wore a thick sweatshirt embroidered with the words “I love you”. He is from Melbourne. It was just a simple pub we were after, nowhere schmick, but each was at capacity. I felt like a teenager trying to appear old enough to drink. Only now, we wanted to seem respectable, responsible, uncontaminated and uncontaminatable. We continued south, past closed, dusty record stores and vintage shops, until we found paradise in the form of the Botany View Hotel, where we were greeted by a man who took down our names and offered us hand sanitiser: a pandemic maitre d’. Inside, the room smelled of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and old carpet. It felt like the beginning of summer, when the sterile cold gives way to scents of grass, white flowers and hot garbage: just glorious. It was even better than the night, early on in lockdown, that I listened to a group of women singing Abba from a nearby apartment , while a man across the way yelled “SOCIAL. DISTANCING.” from his window, repeatedly, undeterred by the likelihood that these unlawful (but very talented) singers couldn’t hear him. I had last been in Newtown before the shutdown, for a colleague’s book launch. I had the next day off and took the books I’d bought that night with me to a harbour pool where I read, socially distanced, until sunset. It was the infamous last, hot weekend in Sydney, and people flocked to beaches, hastening the virus’s spread. News of the coronavirus-afflicted Ruby Princess had broken, too. In the distance, beyond the delicate sailboats, was another cruise ship, white as a Viennetta. As I climbed the stairs to leave, an officious wind began to blow. On that Friday in March, the world had just passed 200,000 cases. Fewer than 10,000 people were known to have died. By the time bars reopened in Sydney, the global death toll was nearly 400,000. There were 6.5 million cases. Back in Newtown, I waved goodbye to Oliver and boarded an almost empty bus. From the window I watched as small groups of friends emerged from bars and said sincere farewells, as though uncertain when they’d see each other again. Two young women hugged tightly, then squeezed one another’s hands before one of them climbed on board. Nobody yelled “social distancing” at them.