London has bounced back, but not completely. You can still see the effects of the lockdowns.
There are still shops with the plastic screens up, to keep customers away from staff. They are coming down, one came down from a local shop to me just last week, but you may still see them. And we still see the old signs encouraging distancing and painted footmarks for queues into shops.
We see many people wearing masks. Now, in nearly all cities you visit there will be people wearing masks for some reason, and London was no exception, but there are still a lot more than there were. You don’t have to wear a mask for any reason (at least, not at the time of writing) but we always carry one just in case someone asks us to. If it makes them feel more comfortable, why not?
It was noticeable during the lockdowns that with so few cars on the road, the air quality was better. London is not a terrible place for pollution, but it was nice to get fresher air. We’re back to normal now. despite congestion zones and ULEZ.
Very many shops closed during the lockdowns. Some restaurants survived by delivery, but many did not. Even large chains eg Starbucks, Pizza Express and Côte closed branches. Now, it’s possible they would have closed anyway, but COVID certainly did not help. Many of these properties are still closed and boarded up. The entrances make sleeping places for the street people. Actually, rough sleepers use doorways of shops even when they are open, and you have to climb over them. It’s depressing to see so many boarded up properties in prime locations in central London.
One move in restaurants when they re-opened in a limited way was to remove menus. There was a QR code somewhere and you scanned that. This has persisted in many places. We were in a wine bar just last week that had no physical menus. If you don’t have a suitable device, you are stuffed.
To reduce physical contact, many shops moved to card/contactless payments only. Very many have continued with that. There once was a generally accepted lower limit of maybe £5 for card payments, but that disappeared and the upper limit for contactless at eg restaurants has increased. It’s pretty essential to have at least one non-cash method of payment at all times. We usually ask what is accepted before we buy.
Because of a boost in on-line sales, many of even the larger stores cut staff and stock. We were looking for a camera recently in a very well-known big store, and could see it in a glass cabinet that was locked, but was there anyone in the whole electrical department to serve us? No. the security guard tried to help with “order it on-line”.