Now that COVID lockdown is over in Canberra, don't forget to be a good neighbour

Those well-meaning folk would have been heartened by the queue outside my barber's after we were permitted a haircut. Half a dozen strangers formed an orderly line along a bench, bantering and gossiping. Nobody pushed in. The Mullet Men sat patiently and affably, like a herd of sheep penned up in front of the shearing shed.

Such elementary courtesy also extends now to counter staff. Henry Lawson boasted that "I call no biped lord or sir", but I have never followed his example. Any postie or delivery man who drops the essentials of lockdown life (wine, books, jigsaws, chocolates, more wine) outside my front door will be lavishly thanked and praised before they scuttle back inside their vans.

Anyone at the Post Office or the bank is treated with politeness and gratitude unknown in normal times. Leaving aside speeding cyclists and sweating joggers, civility reigns during exercise, especially as masked groups in permitted numbers, many wearing unfortunate working-from-home attire, trudge around the lake.

Closer to home, we not only greet but attentively ask after all our neighbours. We neither need their help nor seek their advice. Neighbours cannot nudge you into exercise, persuade you to lose a few kilos, or loan books you might enjoy. That would be asking too much when we have already received generous gifts of home-made food from up and down the street.

We ask whether can hunt and gather for everyone else, check how best to help by filling an order from the markets or offering a lift somewhere. We have run a miniature click-and-collect service for friends in lockdown, whose earnest shopping lists can be supplemented with biscuits or flowers. Like so many others, we have taken more care to check in with friends by Zoom, scrutinising their faces for signs of wear and tear as we swapped stories about holidays not taken, then about kids, and gardens.

Absent long lockdowns, residents of the little, distant states have had no opportunity to nurture those genuinely social skills. When we meet again, they may be baffled by our good manners, our willingness to wait our turn, and - most of all - our evidently inexhaustible patience. Resilience, forbearance and tolerance, along with patience, are virtues to be sustained when full freedom is allowed. Those spared lockdowns would be even more impressed if we applied a new civility to debates on climate change, domestic violence and water allocations.

Only an inveterate optimist would claim civil, civic virtues are taught in schools, let alone amidst the rough and tumble in playgrounds or on the more rules-bound violence on sports fields. Nor are they inculcated through performance reviews or promotion panels. You have to teach yourself; civic virtue is improv., and recognition that virtue is its own reward is often hard-won.

Much of the little I know about virtues was taught in a soup kitchen in Brussels, the school of hard knocks come to life Even in pretty good times we did it tough. Over winter one or two clients each month succumbed to cold, neglect, illness or disorderly lives. First thing every morning we would scrounge day-old pastries from grudging, grumpy bakeries in the district. Clients could be served only one meal each day, with a thermos of soup offered as a meagre dinner.

Life in Canberra does not demand uncivil experiences like those in Brussels. Nonetheless, one Brussels lesson is worth remembering.

If you are willing to reach out, nobody is actually beyond your reach.