Before the ticket check, before the bag check, there was the vaccination check.
This was the prerequisite for admission to the Custom House Square, the venue for a 10-night outdoor music festival which began in Belfast on Tuesday night with a sold-out performance from Tom Jones.
“Everyone just can’t believe they’re out,” squealed one woman.
Neither could Jones, who said: “It’s good to be back again.”
Festivals are back in the North, following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions last month around the performance of live music and the numbers allowed to gather outdoors; an estimated 30 per cent of tickets have been sold to people from the Republic, where such events remain suspended.
At Custom House Square, the 5,000 festival-goers must provide proof that they have been double-jabbed, or, for the unvaccinated, proof of a recent negative PCR test or proof of Covid-19 antibodies.
Like other similar events, it has also been enlisted in the drive to encourage young people to get vaccinated, with free tickets on offer at pop-up vaccination clinics.
“I haven’t even thought about the risk of Covid because we’re outdoors,” admits a festival-goer. “That’s probably a good thing. It feels normal, and there are very few environments that feel normal right now.”
Palpable
When Jones takes to the stage, the energy in the square is palpable. As he begins to sing, many in the crowd start to dance; it is as if something long been held back has been released.
“Fair play to Tom Jones for coming here, especially during Covid,” says Mary McConville. She and her cousins and daughter Aisling are each wearing a Tom Jones mask. “Well, we’re all told to wear masks,” she points out.
“We had no worries at all about coming along,” says her cousin Bernie Sweeney. “After all, everyone’s been vaccinated.”
“We’re all ready to get back to normal life,” they emphasise.
Yet for others it is clear the square feels uncomfortably crowded. Some hang back at the entrance to the square, away from the crowd, masks on; two women explain they left “because there are just too many people up there not wearing masks”.
Paula Morrison is “a bit nervous, but delighted to be out. I am a bit distracted because there are so many people without masks on, but Covid is something we have to live with, so we’ll have to get used to it.”
‘Paranoid’
Her friend Roberta Loughlin has travelled from Donegal to go to her 16th Tom Jones concert. “I work in a hospital so I am totally paranoid when it comes to Covid, but I feel quite safe here, they are checking everyone is vaccinated.”
For event promoter Justin Green – who works on both sides of the Border – it highlights the “ridiculous situation” that festivals can take place in Belfast but not in Dublin, and proves why that must change.
“We are the only sector that has been fully closed for over 500 days,” he emphasises, pointing out that “robust” measures have been put in place. “The Government must immediately issue reopening guidelines.”
