From Stockport to Westminster, people in England ventured back out – masked or maskless – on the first day of reopening
“It’s so nice – step one to normality” is how Tracy Draycott, 55, framed the government’s much-vaunted “freedom day”. Four generations of one family – Draycott, her daughter, her granddaughter and her mother – were enjoying a day out in sweltering weather at the Merseyway shopping precinct, Stockport.
Draycott, a pharmacy manager, said she would still be wearing a mask at work to protect vulnerable patients, but would be ditching all other restrictions. “We need to start going again,” she said, adding that she was planning a big barbecue for the extended family after a difficult pandemic. Her daughter, Jessica Taylor, 27, had given birth to her first baby a week into the first lockdown, and Tracy’s mother had found the isolation “really hard”.
