The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard’s walks around his native Copenhagen were legendary, notably for the rather unnerving atmosphere he generated wherever he went. A contemporary remarked: “One was always being pushed, by turns, either in towards the houses and the cellar stairwells, or out towards the gutters.” He called his excursions “people baths” – first the plunge, the slow immersion of the body, then the long soak. A tempting metaphor for our post-lockdown re-socialisation, perhaps. For the hot splashing of water, read friends re-united, and colleagues too; new faces, and then the steady background thrum of life, encounters at coffee shops, bookshops, restaurants.