It seems that post-covid amnesia has struck. Echoes of the pandemic are long gone from ski resorts, with masks flung away like graduation caps and social distancing long in the past.

At the start of my journey, in a plane leaving from Gatwick, masks were firmly in place and the pandemic was not yet forgotten. Signs were paid attention to, and everyone was considerate of the close quarters that we were all in. Lateral flow or PCR tests were not required, but the masks seemed sufficient, and the journey went smoothly.

The ski resort, however, was a different story. Throughout the week I don’t think I saw a single mask worn. Signs were posted by the cable cars, claiming ‘masks were mandatory’, but there weren’t any in sight. We began thinking that they were old signs, a lingering reminder of our social responsibility, but as they were posted at every single lift, it is unlikely that this was the case. The smaller cable cars were more sparsely filled, people often opting to wait for their friends. However, the larger, more infrequent ones were packed full of people with only the smallest windows open at the top.

With multiple university ski trips there, the clubbing scene was undoubtedly the same. Queues spilling out onto the piste around the most popular club an hour before opening, and many drunk skiers tumbling down from the Folie Douce after an afternoon drink meant that people weren’t shying away from gaining back the social life we all put on hold.

Over the Easter holidays, cases hit a higher peak than they did during summer. But since the vaccine rollout, deaths have gone down, and the major consensus seems to be to live with the virus. Contextualising my holiday with the knowledge of the cases rising, it would be awful that the precautions we were previously so clinical about have gone. However, contextualising it with the knowledge that we have likely passed the worst of it, and young people are eager to catch up on missed experiences, this was really a celebration of nearing the finish line. Premature or not, post-covid amnesia may not be all bad.