Forget pubs and restaurants, the lockdown reopening I am desperate for is the climbing wall

When gyms and climbing centres closed for the third national lockdown, I found myself improvising, writes Natasha Preskey

(Getty)

Last summer, I walked to the same spot in the same disused playpark in east London three times a week. There, I’d see a rotating cast of people, mostly men. After a few weeks, I began to recognise the same faces, though we’d never go so far as to nod or smile. Really, we’d all have preferred to be there alone.

Our shared bond was simply that we’d made a discovery: the orange netting encasing a climbing frame had been partially peeled away, and the structure featured a horizontal bar which was precisely the right height for pull-ups. 

After that, I started to notice people pulling themselves up on all kinds of objects. Low-hanging road signs, basketball hoops, tree branches, football crossbars. At one time, I would have been baffled by people’s willingness to face the inconvenience – and, quite frankly, minor public embarrassment – of dangling from a road sign to keep their biceps from wasting.