but I didn ’ t want to be sitting inside . So actually , I was in the pub exactly four times last year . So when the pubs finally reopen , I ’ m gonna go because I do really miss that . I miss just bumping into people that you don ’ t know that well , and I miss being able to talk across a bar to people and to even talk to a group of people in person . The Zoom thing is okay , but it ’ s just not as compelling as just being there in the flesh , you know ?

Del Amitri

that they ’ ve seen a Brocken ghost — this weird phenomenon that has to do with water droplets in the air . And I ’ d like to see that , but it ’ s supposed to be terrifying .

IE : How did you adapt to pandemic lockdown ?

IE : Well , that ’ s the cool concept of the pub , which is short for public house — you can just sit down at a long shared table , drink neighborly beer like Guinness or Boddingtons , and have a great , non-drunken conversation with a friend from down the street or a stranger from around the world . You never know who you ’ ll meet .

JC : Well , I ’ ve not been on stage since September 2019 , and that was just to play with a friend ’ s pub band . And the older we get , the less we go out . But I usually go — well , not every week , but I ’ m usually in a pub on a Friday night at about 6 PM with a bunch of people , so I started really missing that . But when the pubs reopened over the summer last year , I kind of got the fear — I had the COVID Fear , so I didn ’ t mind sitting outside ,

JC : Yeah . What I really like is just to sit next to somebody in a pub on a Sunday night , and he ’ s ten years retired and used to work in the shipyards , and he ’ ll tell you about old Glasgow and all these things that you don ’ t know . But all that stuff ’ s just cut off from you during COVID , and that ’ s quite distressing . And in beautiful cities like Paris or Rome , maybe it ’ s different . But somewhere like Glasgow , which is not a pretty town . To take

the people out of it , it ’ s just awful . It ’ s just a desert , and it ’ s really ugly , and there are people just trolling around with nothing to do , looking really miserable . So it ’ s really the bars and the clubs and the people on the streets that just make it a really entertaining place to live . You take that away , and it ’ s just awful .

IE : What did you find yourself getting into during all this downtime ? Did you write ? Do jigsaw puzzles ? JC : I did a bit of writing , but the first two or three things I wrote were so obviously about the lockdown . And I just thought that everybody

’ s gonna be writing the same song because everybody ’ s gonna be living the same life . So nobody ’ s got anything original to say . And it took me about five or six months to write something that wasn ’ t about the lockdown , and I hope I ’ ve gotten out of that stage now . But yeah , I ’ ve just been doing what everybody else has been doing — I ’ ve been catching up on a lot of movie watching , reading a bit more than I normally do , and getting out for the odd walks . But mainly , I ’ ve just been doing emails and Zoom . Because the album was finished and we spent quite a long time mixing it , I had to mix it remotely ,

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