Colm O'Regan: the 5k makes you look harder for the hidden gems

Warning: This column may contain traces of looking on the bright side.

I think it’s important to put that warning in. It can be extremely annoying to be told to look on the bright side just while you’re trying to process the dark side. Another beaut is ‘others have it worse.’ We’re probably culturally pre-disposed to it here anyway because so many generations were told to offer it up.

That has its place, but it’s not a magic bullet for everyone and we should be careful before prescribing.

I haven’t a clue about mental health. I’m not even an expert in my own. When I say there is at least one upside of a thing right now, I’m just saying it for me and leaving it here for you to consider. If things are manky, I believe you. You know your own mank. Don’t feel you have to ‘offer it up’ or spare a thought for anyone worse off than you. Someone else can do that. Things are shite and it’s not your fault. Even if a cloud has a silver lining, you’d still be better off with no cloud.

BUT, *clears throat* … there might be one silver lining to the 5k Limit. Yes, it’s a total pain. You get excited talking about a possible outing then your voice trails off as the trail is blocked by flashing blue lights.

And even if you can travel outside of it for work, work is a now a weird enclave surrounded by closed shutters.

The 5km limit can be unequal. Not everyone’s Pi-R-squared is the same.

“So blessed to have this on my doorstep” trills someone as they post a picture on The Gram of the exquisite little cove that they now have all to themselves.

DELIGHTED FOR YOU, you think while staring at the pylon farm that helps bring the electric to their Aegean-like hideaway.

“Spring is in the air in this blue-bell meadow. My little patch of paradise” tweets someone else from their old growth woodland.

Well whoop-di-doo you say, peering through the curtains at the rather secretive entrance to a Mr Price. (No disrespect to Mr Price by the way. We go there on holidays now, several times a year, on a city-break.)

BUT, BUT… BUT..I will say one thing about the 5K. It does at least make you look harder within the borders. It makes you scour the big circle to see what is surprisingly closer than you thought. It makes you put out a message to Whatsapp inquiring if there is any other bloody thing to do in this 78.54 square kilometres at all.

2K was definitely crap. That was ‘I Recognise That Dandelion’ territory. But in the last few months, I’d be surprised if you didn’t find somewhere in the five kay you hadn’t been before. Because it doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in an area. It’s still possible to acquire funny habits about where you go. “Oh, we never go that way. We’ve no reason to. It’s not on the way to anywhere.”

Now in lockdown with ‘Anywhere’ deemed out of bounds, you might as well take the road to nowhere.

I went for cycles without the Google Maps. I meandered around, nosed in through the windows at wealthier people’s houses. (Not in a peeping tom way. They clearly wanted me to see their artwork. An entire country has forgotten what net-curtains are.)

Lookit, I won’t overstate what you might find. It might not be a new forest or a cave.

But last week, I found a new Mr Price! We have booked in there for the bank holiday. I think they sell silver linings.