Month: April 2020

A Journal of the Plague Year Week 6

Sunday 19th April 2020

Frozen has got to be the world’s biggest hatchet job. On first viewing I mistook it for a straight-to-DVD offering, despite the refreshing take of having two female protagonists rather than the usual Disney woman-chasing-man, whose main preoccupation was to instill the universal truth of beautiful=good, ugly=bad. I swear, Disney has a lot to answer for in terms of setting up generation after generation to subconsciously believe that crap, and act out, like WWII.

OK, so one sister has zappy powers (bizarrely it has all to do with that everyday substance in our lives and loves, ice). And it all turns into a big misunderstanding whereby the villain is understandable, and good and evil aren’t so black and white. Plus there’s that nice sideline in the handsome prince (SPOILER ALERT) turning out to be a baddy, and the lovable idiot actually being the love interest. How refreshing, for the world’s most heteronormative, White-washing, nose-pinching, gender misaligning, hierarchy promoting, Nazi courting media power of our age. That’s why the critics loved it, and yes, that belter of a song too one may have heard on every radio in every child’s room in every karaoke at every point in time ever.

I do think pre-teen kiddies are a little undiscerning, and easy, avid voters. Make the ~~dictators~~ protagonists pretty and singy and they’ll be invested, add some cutesy idiots and toys/ animals with human personality and they’ll be entranced, then committed, then enshrining it to memory – forever yours to their dying day. Even when there are about 17 writers jostling for position, and a storyline by a drunken, trashy committee waiting for pizza.

Frozen was meant to be very loosely based on The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, one of his most popular and timeless of classics. ‘Loosely based’ in the most generous understanding of the term, insofar as it has snow and a queen in it, like how Jaws must be a retelling of Finding Nemo.

Well Frozen II doesn’t disappoint. They manage, within the first 20 mins, to fit in (BEWARE SPOILERS):

A new race of people next door, a tribe everyone forgot to mention in the first film

A war

A flashback to parent memories

An enchanted forest

A ‘transformation’ of the lead characters

Giant footprints, giants

A rockfall of gnomes/ baby trolls

A random forest tornado

A game of charades involving a talking snowman, a caribou and a misunderstanding

A mystical, onset-of-schizophrenia voice only Elsa can hear, day and night

The three most annoying notes every conjoined in time or space, akin to a delivery truck backing out or car alarm as sung by Enya -oooh-eee-ohhh (see above)

A vast, 700ft tall interstate dam that is source of geopolitical instability

Floating coloured ice crystals evenly peppering the air (Elsa’s latest psychosis-induced party trick)

The evacuation of the townsfolk in the middle of the night

The blowing out of all light/fire with a sudden pink fizzle

Rippling urban earthquakes

A big mist that blocks out the sky and pushes out newcomers -source of geopolitical instability

A pink forest fire, set by a cute arsonist salamander (like a baby Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon)

A talking fucking little snowman

Oh and three songs squeezed in already.

You can imagine the Disney team sitting in LA, a bit bored, scrolling through IG and porn, then Hank brings the coffee in. Yeah! Let’s introduce an avalanche! Yeah and under it they’ll find pink earth that makes them sleepwalk! Yeah and a cave which lures them into a place of… of… magic earthworm world! Yeah and one of them talks and we can call him Bingo! No Boner, with an Irish accent! Yeah then Elsa can sing her way out, yeah coz one of her notes makes her hand freeze thing go crazy… and man, d’you have Bono’s agent?

I think their CEO of storyline must be a 7 year old girl. Who is really the daughter of a real Disney CEO. She’s called Emmy and must be obeyed.

Of course, she works a treat. Frozen became the 5th highest grossing film of all time when released in 2013, and the biggest grossing animated feature ever- only to be usurped by Frozen II (and er, the live action Lion King).

Though tbf to Emmy, Andersen’s offering was along the same lines. It did also throw up a set of questionable fictional devices. I’m not kidding, you’ll need to take a seat..

Semi-siblings in love, a magic laughing mirror, the devil, trolls, a murderous snow queen, a pandemic of evil mirror crystals, a magical rose garden, talking flowers, a talking crow, a fake prince lookalike, an evil sorceress, a bush that can see the dead, a robber band, a robber girl, a robber girl’s pet doves, a frozen lake called the Mirror of Reason, a winning pair of skates, red shoes, a reindeer called Bae (Disney surely missed a trick on that one), a Finn woman, a Lapp woman, and a spelling bee.

Maybe the Frozen series is just a majestic retelling in the spirit of northern European folk fables. As in you start off with some adorable 1 percenters then add whatever happens to be dawdling along in your mind at the time, preferably after a heavy bong/ green fairy sesh (might as well throw in breakfast/ Fido’s dinner). All as filler before an Abrahamic happy ending.

Though I still have yet to see a Disney princess as anything other than a catalogue model, or fat -and no, Moana is not.

As with all sequels, not only do they have to contend with the previous cast of characters they now have to introduce new ones. Each time there’s another instalment they try and keep the favourites -or forever court fan disapproval, though in the end they’ll be dragging along a Big Brother House of cartoonish characters in a cartoon. Each vying piteously, shamelessly for screentime, with a dedicated writer (the one who thought them up in the first place) to battle for their segment.

Just look at Ice Age, once one of the most lucrative sagas and its gaggle of rabidly intrepid explorers, denigrating into a repetitive series of comedy shorts for each of its 25 characters (no, really – 25). Thus the franchise had to end, after winding down into vastly confusing storylines borrowing one personality after another on multiple leads, in a total fucking shitshow mess. A winning example of profit over art.

In other news Disney has stopped paying about half its employees -100,000 of them, saving it $500 million a month despite announcing $1.4 billion profit for its shareholders from the last 3 months alone. The new streaming site Disney Plus is also seeing extraordinary growth with the international lockdowns, clocking up 50 million subscribers since launching 5 months ago. Rest assured, Chairman Bob Iger has selflessly given up his paycheck for the duration of the pandemic in the spirit of comradeship, though his $47.5 million from last year ($130,000 per day) might help him cope. Chief exec Bob Chapek has also vowed a full 50% paycut, that’ll limit him to only one new mansion a fortnight.

So yep, I sat through that for the evening’s entertainment. Such a big part of my life.

This is the shit I have to put up with in lockdown. Rant OVER. Should just let it go.

Took a walk with J, all the way to the river and back via Battersea Park, stopping off at an old church looking like the original template for the ones in New England. It had a graveyard which J was most interested in as it reeks of history. A lot of the gravestones had melted away after a century or two of acid rain; it’s a shame if they’ve ever been recorded, and are now just slabs of rock, to be used as paving, which is a thing in the UK in every old church.

A transcript of the above will show that Mary Stringer, born 1751, outlived her husband Edward, who died at only 33. She became his widow for the next 50 years till she died at 82. She also outlived her three sons, John aged 3, Edward aged 5 and Thomas aged 22. Only her daughter Mary Ann survived her.

Another gravestone speaks of possible emigration, rift or perhaps fall in riches. A family tomb bearing only one name, whose ancestors ultimately chose a different plot, if at all they existed:

These are what we’ll be remembered by one day, if anything. What legacy will remain, perhaps electronic, or lost to ether, given that Facebook or Instagram are unlikely to last the next century if not decade – my gravestone may well turn out to be that arm poking into a TikTok of a cat vomiting, for a full 4 milliseconds. Or a shoe.

Maybe we’ll be remembered only in abstract figures, via transactions made and algorithms changed. And some day one of those equations will become alive, a new god, and remember us. Thanks to my little hand tapping coyly on that keypad, my darling porn History adding to its journey to sentience.

Perhaps my heart will go on as one of the billion fuckers to ever watch a Frozen film and contribute to their $2.35 billion takings. I am that $7.96 back in 2014 and 2020, that bottle of water CEO Bob ordered in Cannes, that so sated his wonderful lips. We can but dream, as ever furnishing the lives of the rich and powerful and ice zapping, that is so much of what our lives amount to. To spread the magic.

My friend once did a gig as a photographer on a Disney ship, where they worked her every day of the year, made her pay for the camera and equipment, and wouldn’t let her off the damn boat or break contract. While playing to the oafish hordes -the type of people who go on Disney Cruises. She said it was shit.

And I’m not even going to mention Walt’s admiration for fascism (note how everyone in say Monsters Inc are just SO happy to work in a vast, inhuman factory that rules their every waking thought and identity). Celebration, the Floridian Disney town whose residents are banished if they get a criminal record, and whose strict rules made them refer to it as Mauschwitz, issued an edict that they’d be turfed out if the term was heard.

Of course they then dubbed it Duckau.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 32

Saturday 18th April

Nadir Shah, ruler of the Persian Empire attacked the Mughal Empire in 1739. At that stage India under the Mughals had been the world’s largest power (vying with the Ming Dynasty in China). They commanded a subcontinental golden age -a quarter of world GDP and industrial output, one of the three Islamic Gunpowder powers and ruling from the world’s largest castles, stationed over the Hindu and Sikh populace. Then Nadir came along, beat back a 300,000 strong army and sacked the capital, Delhi, massacring her inhabitants and taking 10,000 slaves. They also carted off the fabled Peacock Throne, Koh-i-Noor (Sea of Light) and Darya-i-Noor (Mountain of Light) diamonds, plus enough gold and riches for the entire Persian Empire not to be taxed for the next three years.

That helped considerably in the downfall of the Mughals, already embattled by the native Marathan uprisings (which in turn would go on to fragment into civil war, and allow the British and Dutch to keep bribing their way across the minor fiefdoms in a 270 year process). Thus the world’s largest manufacturer, steel, metal, minerals, food and textiles producer, shipbuilder and tertiary employer, with one quarter the global population and per capita wealth higher than in Europe, had by the 20th Century been transformed into a vast resources mine for the UK, and the world’s most profitable colony ever. A sum of $45 trillion in today’s dough has recently been estimated as to how much India bankrolled Britain.

Next time you look at our glorious Victorian architecture of the era, you can thank India for funding it -or Mr Nadir for putting it in process, the world’s greatest empire so fallen as to furnish the feet of the next one. So what a tangent.

Today is a nadir, from where the phrase was coined.

I have been thoroughly invaded by foreign foe, culture made stagnant. My industrial output redacted, trade winds poisoned and society curtailed, riven by domestic dispute and a new policy of isolationism. Kingdoms have fallen in this small flat.

As has played out across the land, and world. I think it’s all getting to us just about now, the 3-4 week mark tempting the winds of rebellion. My highlight of the week has been to get a takeaway. Salt baked squid with chilli from our local Chinese, though I suspect they kinda forgot the salt and we had to add it ourselves, and the squiddy itself wasn’t squidgy, more rubber as a sign of overcooking. But it was like a Michelin restaurant with ambient light and a piano tinkling, just to the screams of a tacky Netflix horror (The Girl From the Third Floor, 23 out of 40 on the horror cliché list) while the world burned.

Before this I’d been lost, sick of the computer, any gaming, any writing, any TV, and unarsed to read. I lay on the bed till I fell asleep, which has been the MO for the other two, who have taken to siestas midway. I even tried to cut n style my hair for something new, but chickened out into a halfway monstrosity, which is about as dispiriting as it can get. My futility exemplified by a hair crisis, like when you lose it in dreams and are utterly crumpled.

We’re all getting the cabin fever, and today marks a change. Tomorrow I’m going to read. Maybe write a bit. Fuck installing a rota, that doesn’t work. I’ve no energy to keep it up. I’ll need to go out and get some sunlight at some stage, though it may kill me, such is life at the mo.

Have been following the darling #VeryBritishProblems Twitter page,which is a sign things have reached a lowpoint. So not Twitter interested; my profile embarrassingly made up of nothing but complaints on public transport over the years -the only time I feel Twitter useful -as vent when no other avenues are available. So much so I had to change my handle to Transporta, like some kind of network nerd to justify the whining.

#VBP though is funny AF, though not quite reality. It goes far to portray our species as affable, endearingly ingratiating and anxiety-riddled. And yes, there are many of us far-too agreeable Brits about, but when interacting it’s not always the same apologetic partner to play off. And that congeniality only survives if it’s reciprocated.

Instead you’ll sometimes meet that steely gazed Ukipper/ Tory you pfaff and ingratiate yourselves around, making yourself suddenly ridiculous and public interaction a gauntlet, #VeryEthnicProblems. As a fellow Southerner there is a code which we all partake, and it only works if everyone is in on it. At once adorable and infuriating, often requiring a translator.

If a Southerner says:

“Yeah we should definitely catch up some time!” = Let’s never see each other again. Ignore me the next time, fool.

“If you don’t mind” = You’d better do this

“EXCUSE me/ SORRY, but” = How fucking dare you!

“Are you sure?” = I want you to do it but am embarrassed to say so

“Not bad” = quite good/ very good

“(pause)…lovely” = shit/ ugly

“fine” = shit / ugly

“interesting” = shit /ugly

“I’ll definitely” = I probably won’t

“so… planning any holidays?” = You bore me

“I don’t want to make a fuss” = I’m about to make a fuss.

“How’re you?” = I don’t care

“I’m fine” = I know you don’t care

“I’m fine. No really!” = fuck you

sigh/ slight flaring of nostrils/ upturned eyebrow/ look aside = fuck you

“I don’t want this to sound racist/ I’m not racist, but…” = I’m about to say something racist

“Many thanks in advance” = if you don’t comply there will be repercussions

Signing off an email with “Regards” = I hate you

Not putting an X (kiss) after every text = I hate you

“I’m a bit worried about Helen” = I’m about to character assassinate Helen. Let’s take her down, publicly.

“I’m just wondering” = I am about to make a statement/ confront you

“I’m a little concerned” = I’m very fucking concerned and disagree with you

“I’ll ring you right back” = I may ring you within the hour

“You’re gonna love him. He’s so funny” = he’s very ugly but you’re in his league

“sorry, it’s just not my vibe” = I do not like you, I do not want to be seen with you

“have a great time” = I really don’t care

“sorry to hear” = I really don’t care

__(nothing) = I hate you

__(nothing) = I’m secretly in love with you

__(nothing) = 42

To finish off, some castle porn. The world’s largest fortifications from Mughal India, though by dint of the British Raj’s decision to term them ‘forts’ (claiming their garrisons were stationed therein, and ignoring the royalty still inside), they aren’t recognised in the Guinness Book of Records. This despite several larger than the record holder, Hradcany in Prague (which isn’t even particularly defensive, a moniker in name only). Once again, the nuances of the Brit lingo perpetuates. But for what it’s worth, enjoy -the last vestiges of an empire:

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 31

Friday 17th April 2020

What is there to say when there’s nothing worth saying? When your daily report has nothing of value, and is lived through a screen. There is perhaps the food that A made, an aubergine sliced down the middle then given a pizza-with-toppings treatment, and ending up looking like a heart. Or the heavily reduced Easter chocolate, mine an overly sweet bunny now missing an ear.

Then there are the menial tasks, of which there was one of note (straightening a bog seat by tightening a screw, then lying in shock from the germs).

We can follow with the usual offerings from the media dept, dreamt up by another in a different time and space, as if a form of communication. Of note today were the several Saudi shorts now available from Netflix -each lively, fun and depressing.

Then nothing, a wasteland of more filtered light and noise, all sound and fury. What is one to do with voids -should they be left to grow, or fester till forced to put something in it? Are they to be feared? Or embraced?

The obvious answer is we fill the damn thing. But with what? Time drifts, but is finite. I find too often I’ve run out. The background of the TV, always on, is currently an Attenborough on the driest of deserts -the Chilean Atacama where in some places rain has never been recorded. The only place more parched are the windswept Dry Valleys (clue’s in the name) of Antarctica, where not even snow has settled in thousands of years, thanks to a constant, cutting maelstrom funneled by topography. Where air-dried seals or penguins, hopelessly lost, remain centuries after their preservation. I am feeling a little bit like one of them, imminently to be fossilised into sofa or bed.

Guilt stalks the landscape -no matter how highbrow that TV enlightens, it’s still a cold glow. The book that so teaches, or engenders a new life apart is still flattened, static whenever I look up into reality.

I need to write. I realise I have nowhere to do it. The living room a domain for our cold faced contact to the world, and J who studiously reads now or researches. He’s having problems too lately and it’s all starting to get to us. The bedroom is an equally soul-sucking trap of blankets and horizontality and never having to change clothes, lair for A who spends his days scrolling.

I look up occasionally at the pixelated herds of elephants in the Namibian desert, who spend their lives on a neverending trek between locating underground watering holes. Like being a survivor of an aircrash, and spending your days eking out an existence of survival, waiting for a rescue that’ll never come. This was incidentally a subject of one of those Saudi shorts, a black comedy showing us it may be as good as it gets.

I need a hobby. Feeding the pigeons come to mind, one step away from becoming one of those bread grannies, parked on benches with several loaves and a darkening sky filled with humming. A caught some lady feeding the fish in the ponds yesterday, before he pointed out the Don’t Feed The Fucking Fish signs dotted about -overfeeding is a big cause of death as they don’t know when to stop. She went off sheepishly, another life destroyed.

Another new offering from Netflix is on the ever so exciting people in engineering. As usual with US docs lately, it delves into the lives of everyone ever who walks across the screen. This time each engineer is portrayed as worldly and SJW (more Social Justice Warrior, less Carrie from Sex and the City), striving to keep buildings standing in earthquakes and teaching kids how to build bridges for a better tomorrow, cue constant little violins in the background. Once again a lot to be said about America and its need for heroes. However, looking at the tale of a graduate who chose to forego a lucrative placement for working in the Developing World (building a plank bridge in Haiti, framed by the sweeping story of a family whose mother died traversing it), I realise again my calling, despite the gushing, no pun intended. How I’d always wanted more than a pay packet.

I need meaning, like this. It’s all catching up, this self-centred navel gazing that’s the only thing to focus on. The episode came on the back of an article I read earlier on, of a CNN reporter who caught the travel bug after visiting her sister in China, which mirrored my own plans once upon a time. To graduate, then spend the rest of my days traveling and volunteering; I once contemplated walking round the world, being mostly mute.

Ah such imagined bliss. This also ignites the other article following, on a hip new joint in Taipei called the Misanthrope Society, dedicated to the dark and stormy visuals of those who hate humans, and avoid their contact.

That was then, in the past. How life planned out, walking straight into the wage trap instead: of working to not have to work. At first to save for that camera, then the rent, then to inveigle a way onto the housing ladder, thus becoming a landlord and funding my freedom. That was the plan, to travel and be unbound. But now 20 years later, and look, still nowhere near the first rung.

There’s also something to be said about how the media you see and hear, even in passing, affects you. But that’s for another day, another battle hey.

I may perhaps exercise, or not. Yeah, not. Fuck it.

888 people died of Covid-19 today in UK hospitals.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 30

Thursday 16th April 2020

Broke the record for staying in bed doing sweet FA, watching TV and the internet mindlessly. It’s sickly. Hopefully the lowpoint of my daily lockdown experience, and the only way being up from now on.

I realise increasingly I’m gonna have to ditch the internatz sessions if I’m gonna use this time to write a book, as well as the blog. Less bullshit, more conviction. Less keyboard warrior, more slow time scribe. I’ll need to remember people pay money to isolate themselves and write, they go on retreats, become fire-watchers or hermits and wall themselves in at great expense.

I think the realisation has come from watching Kong Skull Island play luridly in the background while I put together a whole bunch of useless map comparisons (who knew Ecuador was bigger than the UK?) for a random architecture forum. Ah, yes, life, the one I forgot to get even in lockdown. And through it all, comparing Iceland to England, Bangladesh to Russia the surreal series of background explosions, choppers, and a big ape stomping on people.

This is my life at the mo:

Seriously, what a shit film. Cartoonish, absurd, and quite jarringly gory. And don’t even get me started on John C. Reilly’s character, the only local with an actual role or speaking part -endemic to every exotic King Kong/ Tarzan/ Jungle Cruise/ Anaconda film where leaving the West to get sticky equates to Here Be Dragons. He achieves characterisation by dint of being the only American (his Japanese comrade conveniently dying beforehand, the tribe conveniently mute and er, unsmiling) -and thus obnoxiously endearing at every interaction with the camera, drop a kitten and he’d probably be there to catch it with his face. Gurning between your legs.

I think though what irked me, and kept me up at night was the pulping of humans by giant feet, fist and teeth, which was a tad too inhumane despite the dodgy CGI. Much more palatable when you see them scream a bit and get chased before being bitten, rather than casually obliterated. Human flies.

Tom Giggleston does however redeem himself as having the world’s most velvety man-voice throughout. He should be doing Sheba catfood ads, or Milk Tray, that perfect tine of Englishness without being too posh, even when he is pretending to be a gun-for-hire. The kind that isn’t creepy, no, having just stepped out of Claridges, possibly a Bentley, with a squirming binbag on the backseat.

The rest of the day’s viewing was Netflix’s The Windsors series, that also droned in the background, and looks like the setup for The Crown, who just cobbled their storylines off this research, including never-before-seen footage and letters from the Royal Collection archives. Quite a segway, King Kong > Queenie.

The weekly shop had to happen, the fridge looking like a wasteland of leftover veg, a cleaved carrot, a half swede, some mushrooms, none of which I have any interest in getting to know. In Lidl I treated myself to a German bartkartoffeln (read: fried potatoes with lardons) as my first semblance of civilisation. There was no queue for the supermarket, despite being quite crowded inside, and hardly anyone wore a mask, which we’d happened to have forgotten also. I know some of my East Asian friends only go out with shades, hat and mask to avoid recognition, like they’re Donatella stealing through Primark, or Gary Glitter in a playground. But you’d do that too if you were EA and opened up any random comments on say Asian pet food supplies to the local weather, and see the hate. Got stared at a few times on the street and in the shops, one with a real look of fuck you, so had to give it back. It’s hard to work out sometimes if they wanna fuck you or fuck you.

For all the hate -and yes, let’s pretend China can be vilified for that local cover-up at the start, and not knowing what they were dealing with – it’s still a month’s lag that many Western nations had, but squandered. CNN published a story today on it, on why Europe/ NA delayed their response despite knowing it was human-to-human and highly contagious by then (not to mention having seen all the Asian nations enforce lockdowns), with the US and UK particularly late to the table:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/16/asia/asia-europe-us-coronavirus-delay-intl-hnk/index.html

For perspective, Wuhan took 2 days to go lockdown from human-to-human confirmation (or 8 days from the first suspicions raised on Jan 14th), while NYC took 22 days from its first (and even with the benefit of watching a similar-sized city in China go through the rigmarole a month beforehand). Animal>human infections never result in lockdowns or even quarantines, as seen in the periodic outbreaks of Bird Flu round the world, or the 3-4 new zoonotic viruses we annually find. China’s mistake was believing it the same, with the local police covering up news for a week before the State warned those doing so ‘would be nailed to the pillar of shame for all of history’.

The US squandered a month it could have prepared/ prevented, and was still repatriating 40,000 Americans from China after the travel ban.

Meanwhile, the UK waited a full 2 months after the first case to enforce social distancing, business closures and stay-at-home. It may be gauche but I’ll say it now: surely there’s blame in that too? If one’s to point the finger at China, all sweaty and fat-handed, weaving from side to side, for dropping the bowl, it kinda figures us doing the same makes us as culpable, especially granted the foresight.

Anyhoo I digress, gotta stop bitching. On the forum that I’m ~~addicted to~~ occasionally browsing, there’s a 587-and-counting page update on C-19, frothing for blood at every turn -and that’s a skyscraper architecture forum. For the Good News To Restore Your Faith In Humanity post asking for admissions, there are just the two pages, and it’s been like that all year. Good news just doesn’t sell (you only need to ask those Jehovah’s Witnesses bored AF by their bookstalls). Albeit the one about the kindly centenarian who’s doing a garden marathon in his zimmer, while raising £14 million for the NHS has just been added. I raise a glass, with dry hands.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 29

Wednesday 15th April 2020

Today has been especially sluggish. Giant-leopard-spotted-sliming-through-treacle-sluggish. With a limp. Didn’t sleep last night due to a headache pill containing the barest whiff of caffeine, and thus was trancing glo-sticks to an allnighter in my head till 6am, faceplanting the pillow. It’s not so much counting sheep by then but chasing the fuckers down and shooting them.

Got up 3 hrs later to start my day. Another joyless meal: Thai chicken soup out of a can, poured over fried bacon, carrot, potato and rice. As amazing as it sounds. Yep, I’m hitting the stage of using up what’s about to start crawling about or becoming smoked.

J thankfully gave me a chocolate mini-egg and some shortbread, two humane essentials at the mo, along with power, internet and water. Watched Maleficent II -crap film but a welcome change. I’ve heard there’s a high demand for media set in historical or ahistorical climes, pre-digital, pre-internet, pre-phones-4-U, pre-car, pre-TikTok. Sherlock Holmes, Game of Thrones, Dan Jones that kinda thing. I think we’re all desperate to just get TF away from reality for a spell -every morning the global hobby being lying in bed and reading endless newsfeeds, literally in-yer-face for hours.

Hearing about the World Health Organisation and its demonisation via the Trump regime, the continuing breakdown of the global food distribution network, more racism (casual, overt, politicised) and more large business closures (Oasis, Cath Kidston, Warehouse). Today I progressed to attempting to chase a refund (Sainsbury’s Bank having trouble for some 1.5 month-long reason, despite promising multiple times), having to book new mandatory time off work, chasing up cancelled holiday plans and checking bank records all becoming a wonderland of bureaucratic shite, a dervish of dates, times, passwords, password generators, statements, emails and assorted fuckery. They say people work longer than they did before computing, even though so much time’s been saved the bureaucratic nature of all transactions nowadays means it just becomes a blizzard. The same applies to the workplace -nothing will ever save you time, you just do more work.

I need to decouple myself from Americana, in all its garish glory. I need some Wuthering Heights, with wolves. Possibly set somewhere more exotic than Huddersfield, like the brooding wastes of Kamchatka or Hokkaido or Earthsea. It breaks my heart that I’ve had to cancel three holidays -the most we’d ever booked. I would’ve been in the wilds of the Tyrolean forest right now, working my way to Lake Garda. Possibly spotting a bear from a creaking train carriage, the kind with a restaurant car, aspidistra and doilies, and a mysterious murderer on board as light entertainment.

Yesterday’s film was Cold Skin, a 2017 French-Spanish funded horror from a book of the same name, La Pell Freda. Shit. Dodgy prosthetics, unscary creatures that have the big-reveal within the first 20 mins, and a pre-cursor to the Pattinson-Dafoe offering, The Lighthouse, also about two deteriorating men trapped on a lighthouse island. This version though had none of the menace or ethereal qualities that would define such a setting, replaced with tiresome screenplay, ham acting and weak characterisation (one of them unbothered that the other just tried to kill him, or has him effectively trapped each night). It scored 20 out of 40 in my horror cliche list I made last night. If ever you’re terrified by blue-tinged gimps, manatees, or just rubber this is for you.

I tried to feed the pigeons again. This time going one level up in the stairwell so I could lob the dinner disaster from yesterday onto where they roost. They all ran away like stupid fuckchickens, and the food lies scattered in the sun. Some have come back and are just sitting there in the pigeon-sitting-there way they do. I swear, these animals have no idea what food is. Or maybe it’s cannibalistic, feeding pigeons an omelette, though I’ve seen them snacking on KFC many a time.

The night’s offering was The Handmaiden, satiating my recent aversion to Hollywood. Pre-digitalis (tick), historicist (1920s, tick), foreign (Korean, tick), non-formulaic (LGBTQ crime drama, tick), no fucking explosions (tick). Fantastic storytelling, perverted, perverse and exotic -but I’d uploaded the directors cut. Which thus meant sitting through a near 3hr epic. J very nearly fell asleep until I conspicuously, loudly fiddled with the cushions.

J’s been a bit down these last few days, the lack of work and meaning starting to hem in the walls, but has started reading which apparently is making a world of difference. At Home by Bill Bryson which I’ve leant him, one of the driest subjects (domesticity) made into a rip-roaring journey through history with laughs a minute and studded with delicious, sordid details. Once again historic narrative saves the day.

Dinner was a slim-fast milkshake thingy (Complan, which I used to love as a snack while a kid), bought during the panic buying as something we could savour as a last resort, starving already and watching burning skylines. There’s been nothing much more to my life today. No sleep. Internet. Sleep. Internet. Eat. Film. Sleep.

I officially ran out of alcohol today, the last dregs of the raspberry gin.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 28

Tuesday 14th April 2020

The horror movie checklist:

Large house with multiple rooms. Old.
Dark house, where multiple 20W lamps are needed in every heavily curtained space. Even in daytime, thanks to broody, rainy locations like Southern California. Firelight.
A basement/ attic stuffed with middle class clutter and weird AF shit.
A basement door to the garden that is jammed. Extra point if a spade is resting outside, with a wooden handle.
An unlocked front door. All exteriors are pretty much unlocked, the opposite once inside.
Creepy doll
Jewellery box with a twirling ballerina.
Painting close up. The eyes.
Door knob slowly turning.
Looking through a slat. Surprise!
Key doesn’t work. It will later.
Old newspaper/ photo album with grainy black and white of an unhappy loner.
A diary/ investigation wall. Tortured drawings.
Upper middle class family. One of the parents is creative.
Pale, sickly looking child. Very serious. Nerdy, independent.
Pale, sickly looking service staff. Extra point if they look and act Victorian, despite hitting their twenties in the 1990s.
Creepy old person/ disabled person. Extra point if they have a foreign accent.
Skin disease.
Teen sex scene.
School angst. Bullying.
Southern accent
British accent.
Someone innocently bursting into a room, or grabbing someone by the shoulders from behind, to greet them as you do. Or just walking past with the sudden sound of screeching strings.
Walking into a room. Stopping. Freezing.
Calling on someone and finding them violently compromised by a household object.
Explosive flurry of urban wildlife: birds/ bats/ rats/ a cat.
A barking dog, that becomes a whine.
And then I woke up!
Secret room.
Sharpened bench/ farm tools.
Shower scene, eyes closed. Extra point if she doesn’t check the heat/ wait for it to warm.
A fall from height.
Woman/ child calling stupidly, announcing herself at all times no matter the glimpsed shapes and skittering sounds. Half a point if it’s a teenage guy.
Quit it guys! This ain’t funny guys!
She who runs falls.
I have a great idea: let’s split up.
No one believes me! /I’m going mad! Can I trust mine own eyes?
Noises on the level above. Tracking them.
Hiding in closet/ under the bed scene.
Blissful diorama at the end. But it’s not the end…

Score for this evening: Child’s Play (2019) – 11/40 Surprisingly refreshing, though everything as trashy as promised and quite a dalliance into torture porn, ewww.

Another blanket-drowned day. Up at 5am, back to bed again by 8. Then awake by 11. No breakfast. Attempted lunch at 4pm.

Grated up a swede, threw in a potato too why not. Garlic and onions. Bacon. This’ll be like one of those German potato cakes, or latke, yeah!

Dash of soya, green tabasco. Some of that Bosnian spice mix why not. Fry, till crispy on the edges.

Doesn’t work. Crispy, yet soggy. Smoking AF. Tried it anyway.

Waaay too salty, it’s that Bosnian stock mix thing. Better make rice to water it down. It’ll be like what rice was designed for, a few choice slivers of flavour intensity like jewels in creamy fluffiness. Yes.

Gawd, it’s still awful. This calls for an egg, no three. A full on omelette. Like a tortilla. Yes. Separate the rice, return it to the pan.

OMFG inedible. Salty, sludgey, eggy. Like super eggy. Burnt.

Every surface smells of egg, room is noxious too with weird smoke pong. Open window, re-wash all the china, glasses and cutlery.

Let’s try rice porridge. The kind that actually demands a salty accompaniment, commonly duck egg or thousand year egg. That’ll surely utilise the flavour. Yes.

OMFG it’s literally poison. Burning a hole into the bowl. Complete fucking giant egg write-off. Half my larder gone on it too. This is like McCandless’s existential nadir when he kills that moose in Into The Wild.

Pounding, vomitous migraine from disrupted sleep plus no food.

Looked up some foreign cinema, after my diatribe about Americana yesterday. After an hour of research, downloaded a Chinese film noir, The Wild Goose Lake, apparently second place to the Palmes D’Or. Took an age to get started (clicking away pop ups like Whack-A-Mole, restarting on new tabs, loading up a stream at dial-up speed). Then no subtitles. None found either online.

Have a sudden urge to play whack-a-mole with real moles.

Tomorrow I’ll try and give the chum to the pigeons, they’re probably starving. Though I tried the last few days to feed them.

They have got to be the most stupid animals I’ve met. They watch me throw them crumbs, then whole slices like a performance artist. One of them works out it’s bread, but the minute it falls off the roof, it’s as if disappeared. They do not make the connection, as slice after slice ends up on the floor below. Even when a day later I collect them and deposit them, shrine-like, in the middle of the carpark, they remain like modern art. Speaking volumes about our disposable consumerism at an epoch-changing time of want and the Heiglian ideal. Yes.

They’re probably new pigeons. The rest have starved to death, and these were the chicks that survived. They have no idea what bread is, but if they’re willing to peck at vomit, they’ll maybe be able to peck at my ~~lunch~~ dinner attempt.

In the news.

Trump has had a meltdown, publicly ranting at reporters for an hour and a half, and including a pre-prepared video on the injustice he’s endured, notably under questions on his running of the C-19 show.
Many Africans in China are now facing homelessness following an outbreak of C-19 reinfection in the African districts of Guangzhou, and a nurse who was attacked after a man escaped an isolation ward. A slew of evictions followed, and a sign even put up asking Black customers to please not enter a McDonalds (later the company apologised). Although social media campaigns have now sorted food, clothing and re-housing, and the govt is making a statement they have a zero tolerance to racism, the local police were said to be hassling the unfortunates, and even blocking aid-givers.
It’s seen as an excuse for the council to finally push the community out, once hundreds of thousands strong, inline with a crackdown from 2018 eliminating visa-overstayers and illegals, which China has been increasingly inundated with this last decade. The history of racism and pandemics goes hand-in-hand, and galling given that Chinese round the world have been victims, but now fellow perpetrators. The world is studded with fucking idiots.
World food production is looking increasingly threatened by the collapse of logistical transport networks, processing factories and retail. Most immediately vulnerable are Pacific nations, with desert nations and smaller European/ island countries to follow.
Russia is giving hints it’s gotten serious over there, Putin looking serious alongside. China has recently been having many cases of reinfection coming from across its northern border, notably the border city of Suifenhe reentering lockdown.
Japan is also looking worse, with hundreds more cases. Like Russia it’s been following a light lockdown if none at all, relying on masks and social distancing. China’s other re-lockdowned city is a port that services Japan, Jiaozhou.
Another 778 died in UK hospitals today, bringing the total over 12,000, despite still an undercount. The BBC is no longer reporting the deaths, or at least making it obvious.
Globally deaths are at 120,000 and 2 million infected.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 27

Monday 13th April 2020

I’m sick of Americana. It’s been 3 weeks and all I’ve seen is drove after drone of US telly culture via Netflix and The Internatz. It’s all starting to get too much, the cop shows, gun heists, coffee breaks, nasal drawls, whooping, blondes, chinos, cardigans, plaid. Immaculate lawns, garrulous housing, sass, likable gangsters, car culture, rest stops, trip hop, laptops, likes, stories, handles, vines. Making such a BIG deal about social mixing or not correlating with the racist, classist and sexist realities, obscuring the banality of the everyday, the gutted city centres, the crime, the boredom. How every scene conjured is pure, complicit fuckery. Lies, lies I tell you!

It’s just so fucking gushing about it all.

Not all cafes and bars are buzzing. Not all classrooms are vapid. Not all of California is sunny. Not all of Xmas is snowing and candle-lit. Not all of Mexico is dusty and orange filtered. Not all of NYC is just SO magical! Where are the drone shots of Queens? The shopping in Wal-Mart? The social and racial segregation indexes now on par with Apartheid-era South Africa? Where are the people who don’t live in 4-5 bed houses (no matter how rich or poor they are)? Where are the sweeping stories of people working in your average smalltown office or restaurant or shop or supermarket or factory? Where, oh where are the legions of working and (lower) middle classes? The fat? Where are the people who don’t wear make-up to bed? They have their stories to tell also -and even if the same ones, whether funny, exciting, romantic or resonant, why is it the upper-middle class resoundingly get the roles?

Talk shows are an embodiment -and the fact news agencies are morphing into them a sign. Every chat show host, presenter, news anchor and primetime guest too cartoonish, every audience too canned, too willing to whoop joyously on each statement that’s ended with a raise in octave, pause, then a look out to the crowd. Ratings, ratings ratings, catering to what we want interminably, back in 2009.

OK I get there are the many offerings that do represent, a big menu of them. American Beauty, The Wire, Sundance that kinda thing. But they are so very drowned out by everything else.

Endless Tiktok (Chinese I know), Drag Race, IG, Bojack, Cardi B, Lana Del Ray, Mark Wahlberg, Trump, Punk’d, React Channel, Prime, Disney, Pixar, Marvel. I mean I need something more exotic now, something historical. Also, another gripe: US documentaries. On one hand the tabloid idiocy of decorating information by screaming it out and dumbing it down: overdramatic audio, menacing voiceover, too-frequent summarisation (for the ad breaks every 15 mins I’ve heard), Flash graphics (trying to look sciencey), and hammy, sepia-toned dramatisations. Swear to Beelzebub, your left hand could feature in 72 Creatures To Watch The Fuck Out For, as they rotate the same shots of it turning claw shaped and raking at some gravel, or grabbing a cat to the sound of pick squeals.

On the other hand it’s the yonder extreme: slow, dragged out, formulaic and dry. The foodie documentaries a good example, varying with arthouse and voiceovers, endless conversation and life stories when we just wanna look at the grub, the culture, the recipes, the history. It’s food for fuck’s sake, not Nelson Mandela. We are not interested in the timeless glorification of a food hero that takes up an hour-long biopic, or extended reels of a rich man going shopping. I swear, sometimes I think Americana is so very glorifying and hero-worshipping as it helps with the hierarchy. Just too much formula.

What is missing is gravitas. Humility. Truth. Reticence. Detail. Please don’t clap. Please don’t call me Sir. Netflix, Apple TV, Quibi, Youtube, do for the love of cake just tone it down a notch or three.

My other option is Arte, our European attempt at global domination via France and Germany (and like Dunkerke, stopping right there). Ah, the fresh air. But then you only have about 20 programmes to choose from, thus forcing you into whatever arthouse/ history/ social science/ particle physics funnel they recently dreamt up from their tiny planning studio. And rapt as you may be with Malian wedding rituals, a biopic on Joan Miro, or Mannerist architecture in 16th Century Portugal it quickly becomes as entertaining as the wallpaper. I watched two entire episodes on a bunch of German God Squadders walking the medieval pilgrimage route over the Pyrenees, towards the Santiago de Compostela shrine. Mesmerised as they crossed whole bridges (someone losing a shoe in the river -heartstopping), calling in on statues, looking at buildings and getting some of the country air. They had a whole fucking season dedicated to them – those same people, that one journey. This is why Europe, denizen of holiday snaps and colonialism is no longer setting the world on fire, even with Eurovision.

Took a good, hard look at my life after that.

And don’t get me started on the Beeb. Dumbed down as to be squatting over the ranks of what the Mirror or Daily Mail would offer (though we’re not at C5, Sun scoop spectacular quite just yet) if they were given a £20 budget to source writers on the nation’s pulse, via their readership. It is so riven with ham and hack it could be Christmas. Dr Who (sorry), Celebrity Scissorhands, War of the Worlds. And their exposées are just so damn one-sided, so very choreographed by a ~~presenter~~ investigative reporter who’s already charted out the story beforehand, including conclusion. Watch as Tracy investigates slaughterhouses on rumours animals get hurt in there, or Benjamin go to North Korea to check out their journalism schools. Maybe a harsh dressing down on race relations when hanging out at a KKK rally, involving multiple hidden cams and jittery chases.

TV has become a raison d’etre in these times. It is like power, food and air, a social birthright. And goddamit if what we’re getting is Coffee and fucking Kareem it’s time to man the barricades.

Morning a write off thanks to far too heavy a weeding session in the gardens, had to run to find a bucket, rummaging under the sink and finally settling for (thankyou J, precious metals trader), an antique silver planter in the Japonisme style to vom in. Highlight of my day. Oh and Antiques Roadshow.

Then a bikeride in the sun, on the same trail to Chelsea Bridge and back. Got fatshamed by A laughing at my baby tire when I took my top off (26C), cuddling round my rippling 12 pack. I’ve been nurturing it with soft drinks, biscuits and the odd cake since lockdown, it’s my friend. A buddy messaged to ask if I wanted to take a walk in Crystal Palace Park, forgetting that I’d moved from the area a while back. We decided against after realising it would involve a train trip, which is pretty much illegal and likely swarming with plain clothes police. It would’ve been one awkward meet up anyhoo, 2 metres apart at all times and talking like we’re on stage. Pretty much it, my life in a paragraph.

Quibi is the hip new thing A is currently smitten by, though he (nor anyone) can ever remember its name. The platform specialises in 10 minute bites of programming, from comedies to episodes (that suspiciously add up to the same dozens of hours) to documentary snippets to full on gameshows – all specially condensed for our half second attention spans. They’ve also been edited to be watchable portrait or landscape on your phones.

It’s perfect for cutting out the pfaff, but it doesn’t bode well that they’re catering to our wants (where recently tv all round the world has been trying out 15-20 minute offerings if you’ve noticed). How will we learn in the future if this becomes a norm? How will we get an appreciation of the smaller, slower things? In a similar vein another platform, Blinkist edits down entire books into 15 minute reads. I’m worried. But also enthralled.

All they need to do now is do something worth watching.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 25

Saturday 11th April 2020

The first day of Easter break, and the sun is out in force, enticing everyone like the Nicki Minaj version of an ice cream sundae. Purring outside your doors, bikini washing your views, and stroking the bike seats. The fun police meanwhile have been expecting you, finetuned to follow squealing into the bushes and compromising selfies from the lawn.

A had a bikeride, all the way to Hyde Park, and reported on vans blaring public announcement, notably that anyone not exercising needed to stay in. Hence why the streets and spaces had noticeably less festival-goers, from the usual rollerblading Bodyform ads that Battersea’s been recently. J told me however that Barry Island near his hometown was inundated, the beaches like a Baywatch episode but with shittier weather and pastier, anorak wreathed skin. I imagine this to be the case for much of the country.

Going out and lying on the grass is the new crack. Illicit, irresponsible, brazen. The domain of the wild and rebellious, who throw caution to virus-laden winds. They can be found loitering beneath the trees, perhaps slap bang in the centre of the lawns, relying on too vast a distance for the copshop to walk all the way, or perhaps just not giving a shit. Chewing gum as they approach, lazily twirling a windmill or blowing bubbles into their face as the finebook comes out.

Meanwhile, I stayed in doing the usual writing and scrolling, watching the Reef as respite. I say that theoretically, as this Aussie flick is one true nailbiter, and the second best shark movie to date. It’s not relaxing. Using real footage rather than CGI, and throwing actors in the deep of it is quite something. Apparently it’s based (very loosely) on real events, when a boat capsized and three people decided to swim the smorgasbord to another island. A tiger shark (in the film replaced by a Great White) subsequently stalked them with only one surviving. Tiger sharks though smaller, are considered more dangerous – Great Whites can inflict devastating damage, but are more cautious and will scope neurotically before maybe getting in an investigative nibble and sodding off again. Whereas Tiger sharks are born opportunists, a mindless tube with teeth at one end swimming openly through turtle shells, coconuts and car parts -aka the trash can of the ocean.

In one ridiculously tense scene a man is actually caught in the horror of horrors – a dark room with a shark in it. This is the kind of childhood scenario envisaged by anyone seeing Jaws the first time, where the 20 footer is somehow haunting the stairs at night or hiding in the bathtub, but now believably transported into a human space (an upside-down boat). Just so long as spiders don’t fly and sharks don’t float down corridors I will still be OK with existing in this world.

It does remind us that thank sweet St Flippers we aren’t bobbing in a wine dark sea right now, fin-spotting the direction of our nemesis. There’s something inordinately vulnerable about swimming with an unknown -connected by a selfsame medium with unseen danger from any angle. Meanwhile disabled into a fraction of your speed, defence and reactions. And not too dissimilar to going out and lying on those verdant lawns right now, where threat floats just as invisibly. Just not the type weighing a tonne and brandishing teeth. If we had tallman ICU’s jumping from darkened alleyways, complete with tentacle tubing and suffocating shocks, maybe people would pay heed. Or maybe, still not. A monster, it appears, needs to be grotesque.

We fear nature because we cannot predict it, unbound by our societal constraints, nor impulses. Even the dog scares the hitman, as it can’t be controlled.

Talking about perspective, 980 people died in UK hospitals yesterday, a record so far, while the US will likely break 2,000 from tomorrow, which is meant to be their peak day. France, Spain and Italy are now showing decreasing figures thankfully.

Israel is currently having problems with its Ultra Orthodox Jewish communities, who make up 14% of the population. Due to their adherence against modernity, which often includes TV and the internet, the message for lockdown and social distancing is harder to disseminate, not helped by a disregard for rule of law (replaced by religious teaching). Weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs have been observed, gathering up to 150. Religious schools and synagogues still operate subversively and their districts remain crowded and unmasked.

I did a little research, as one can be inclined from sheer boredom. And found they prefer the term Haledi Jewish, and are some of the most vocal supporters of a free Palestine. That many are anti-Zionist and against the State of Israel itself, even while living there. This is due to the ‘political quietude’ they are meant to adopt according to the Torah, with a respect for free states, unconcerned with politicking today when preparing for an afterlife overrides. Well, who knew?

I think we could perhaps take a leaf from that book, to be politically quiet for a bit. On that note…

Today’s bike ride was similar to all the others. How quickly beauty obscures pain, and how quickly we get used to that beauty, then bored of it. They say alpine Switzerland, land of majestic vistas, crystal lakes, and outstanding quality of life is either a vision of heaven or hell. Too perfect, too ordered, and perhaps a reason why the country suffered some of the highest rates of drug abuse back in the day (when Needle Park in Zurich was filled with thousands of users in the 80s), before they started facilitating the victims rather than criminalising them.

To deal with all that perfection -and upkeep -you’ll need a civically focused mindset (conscription into the army /social service helps in your youth), and a steadfast following of the rules. Is Switzerland boring? Well no, not more than anywhere else, just a bit of a stickler. But it does end up as the happiest (or second happiest) country each year. Societal constraint and a warm fluffy blanket of predictability appears to play some part, though I’m sure so does an inordinate shower of cash from being the world’s tax parasite.

Oh shoot just went down the political bridge again. Wtf else can I write about? I brush my teeth up to 5x a day. My nails need cutting. Saw Drag Race. Front door keeps juddering with the breeze. The station has a fire alarm, that sounds uncannily like the end of days.

Had a bit of a night with cider and J, dissecting his friendscape and our pasts. Drunken bitching. EOD. Another one under the belt.

Yesterday

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A Journal of the Plague Year Week 5

Sunday 12th April 2020

Okay, something slightly jarring to offer today.

Away from my little wanderings in the immediate locale, I came across some map porn via my daily armchair travels, showing the true size of places you see on an atlas, but that you don’t compare or gets willfully distorted by political projection.

Oh my wibbley god. For a geographer it’s pure wet dream territory.

For example, Peru. Just look at it! Phwoar…

Transposed onto Europe, which Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg can fit into. Literally am dying about this.

So yes folks! It’s time again for geography lesson number 132.8c. Please turn to page 37.

Japan

Colombia

Saudi Arabia:

South Africa

Algeria

Indonesia

Chile. This is geography jizz right here.

Thus started making my own. I will, as ambassador’s wife, politely introduce each country with delightful quips and talking points so you can all get acquainted:

OK, I’ll use Germany as the size queen. Handy as arguably the most important, most central country in Europe, and deceptively large or small dependent on how you look at it. For us it’s large, but for much of the rest of the world, nah. My mum could beat it up innit.

First off, Ghana, the rising star of West Africa this ‘small’ (well on the map it looks tiny of course), gold and petrol-rich kingdom, already diversifying into tech and biotech, is estimated to climb from a population of 30 million today to 80 million by the turn of the century. I’ll add a map of the continent each time, to see if you can spot the following country (you’ll get a gold star point and teacher will fondle you), nestled among other teensy states:

Uganda -another supposedly small country on the banks of Lake Victoria. However it will become the nexus of one of the world’s great population centres alongside eastern China, northern India and West Africa. A state that features little in many minds but by 2100 its nondescript capital, Kampala (present population 3.3 million) will hold 40 million, more than twice NYC. Further along the lakeshores will be Malawi, a thin thread of a country, but which will also transmogrify its sleepy towns of Lilongwe and Blantyre to similar sizes each.

From a glance at an atlas the Central African Republic looks like a small nondescript territory in the middle of the continent. It is literally the heart of darkness to many mindsets -the world’s poorest, unhealthiest nation, and worst place to be young, largely thanks to its civil war. Despite its true size shown below, only 5 million call it home, though typical of Africa they consist of 80 ethnic groups each speaking their own language. Fun fact the country is the best place in the world to view stars with the least light pollution, as well being bounded by the Bangui Magnetic Anomaly. So named after its capital that stands at the heart of this displacement in the Earth’s magnetic field, possibly caused by a meteor impact.

The world’s newest country South Sudan broke from Sudan in 2011 after years of civil war (Sudan has been under 6 continuous conflicts since independence in the 1960s), but has recently entered its own civil wars now. In the south the country holds what may be the biggest movement of large animals on Earth, in the annual migration of savannah grazers that rivals the Serengeti, only recently spotted by naturalists as a cloud on the horizon 50km (30 miles) wide and ongoing for 80km (50 miles).

So now, onto Asia and the rest of the world. Welcome to Afghanistan, one of the world’s most mineral-rich (and suffering for it), mountainous and beautiful countries, and a former jewel of the Silk Route, whose populace is a sensual mix of the Middle Eastern, East Asian, Central Asian, Caucasoid and Indian peoples. A place remarked by invaders as a totally epic place to stage a war, with beauty in every direction, and crosshair.

This ancient version of Arabia, Yemen is redolent of a medieval world where ancient mud-brick skyscrapers and exotic oases now share airspace with the current whizz of Saudi bombs and insurgent missiles. One of the poorest, most indentured, and most beautiful nations on the planet, like Afghanistan paying the price for its isolation.

Sulawesi, the fourth largest of Indonesia‘s islands is a range of peninsulars isolated from each other by a mountainous centre. A full 60% of its species are endemic (found nowhere else), and its range of ethnic groups, tribes and religions, each with their own cultures, architecture, languages and cuisines -like errant arms on a starfish -also owe their existence to the varying levels of geographical isolation. Indonesia at large holds 388 ethnic groups, whose national motto is ‘unity through diversity’.

The Philippines is made up of 120 million people, 175 ethnolinguistic groups and nearly 8,000 islands (of which 5,000 haven’t even been officially named yet), spanning the equivalent distance from Norway to the Sahara. That’s a lot of ferries and a lot of timetables. Sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire it is perhaps the world’s most disaster prone country (including the bi-annual typhoons and flooding), but also benefits from the vast natural resources that location endows, alongside one of the world’s greatest hotspots for biodiversity.

The world’s sparsest populated country, or territory outside the poles Mongolia counts 2 people per sq km. Imagine a rolling grassland from London to Russia and you’ll get the idea of the empty expanses that have made it even hard to invade, though helped the other way round, whose inhabitants were used to trekking across vast territories. In the past nomads would keep track by building cairns just before the last one went out of sight in the distance.

Mawr:

Australia needs no introduction -it’s also a continent in all but name

Precolonial

This is not Argentina – it is the southernmost tip of Argentina. Patagonia was once populated by the world’s tallest people, many of whom were taken into human zoos and circuses round the world -now extinct. The men were said to average 6.5ft -7ft.

As mentioned before, Russia’s population is 145 million, Bangladesh 165 million:

Chile is not a thin country, just a neverending one.

The Moon displayed below is actually just splayed out. As a three dimensional ball it would look about the size of Australia.

My aim tonight has been to expand one’s horizons. Thankyou, thankyou kind guests (curtsy, bow).

Yes, I am that bored.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 24

Friday 10th April 2020

Another schizo day. Trying to relax yet structure it, while trying to work yet play. Swear I need to do a rota, like I did at weerk.

Spent far too long doing the forum surfing, and checking news bites (a delicious hour seeing the presented evidence on the Great Orange Dolphin’s behaviour -that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder alongside growing senility), before launching into some book writing. Then a spot of gaming (Skyrim where I murdered a giant spider, Streetfighter where I spinning-bird-kicked E Honda in the head), which raised the guilt again, enough for me to embark on another round of book editing.

Which in turn led to a spell on TikTok, which A is now getting seriously hooked into also. This is not good. I am feeling guilty for working too long, then relaxing too much. Like every addict who knows they’ve been busted.

J has been similarly at odds with what to do with himself today, finally settling on working on his antiques (writing up, researching their worth and stories, and selling them online). While A has done a bike ride, some cooking and not much else. I’m trying to inveigle everyone into sitting down to watch a film, which I may put on and hope they’re lured in.

I perhaps need this psychotic break. Like Trump at Christmas, who forgets what he’s saying mid-sentence. I almost pity him.

And let me begin by wishing you a beautifewel… Look. you remember this. Do you remember, they were trying to take Christmas out of…’

Below is pictured the actual turning point (indeed) of that sentence, exhibiting the behavioural tics of dementia, closed eyes, forward lean, open mouth, grasping/ flappy limbs.

Yesterday’s showing was The Invisible Man, the kind of film that does genuinely suck you into the storyline -but heavily flummoxed by the internet slowing on the streaming site, creating new cliffhangers and ridiculously paused scenes, mid-gurn. Every 20 mins we had to load/ reload, a reminder of the golden days of terrestrial when adverts interrupted everything. The same again for Underwater, the laughable Kristen Stewart creature feature, where you can’t really make out the cast, dialogue or creatures through the murk, exacerbated by the infernal stop-start. This is Trump’s life at the mo, despite being at the helm, and someone needs to take those controls out of his flippers.

Throughout, despite the cider and cake, J and I were non-committal to the point of monosyllabic malaise -I even mentioned it, how I was spending the day like a sleepwalker. Apparently, the lack of vitamin D does that to you, and at our latitude we have to wait a bit longer before we can get enough out of the sun, until mid-April at least.

980 died in UK hospitals today, for France 1,400, including those who died in care homes. The BBC new site has degraded into telling village notices despite the conspicuously unmentioned disaster – how Joe Wicks is doing PE classes, how schoolkids are writing emails to an old folks home, a skipping Sikh guy is entertaining his community and a woman is using her parent’s campervan as an office. Stop the fucking press. Oh and Kenny Dalglish has it, whoever he is. What next? Newsflash! How to spruce up your day by playing microwave bingo! The Warrington boy writing to Santa about a mask for his proud, nurse-mum. The new TikTok kitten sensation, jumping to the words: Social Distancing! How to spell zoonotic! It appears Kevin and Marjorie from the local church in Kippershyt village have taken over the BBC.

There’s a fine line between honest reportage and propaganda methinks, between buoying the wartime spirit and censorship. And treating a nation as people entrusted with truths, or downplayed into sycophancy. Or maybe people just aren’t clicking anymore, and have had their fill of doomsaying, especially now the sun’s out.

CNN has for some time also started to stray into the tabloid news category, dangling other stories lasciviously that look little different from This One Trick clicks a rung removed. They tend to show a lurid pic, coupled with a half headline, coyly doing up its laces.

This nurse demonstrates how fast germs spread even if you’re…

(armless? breeding Pomeranians? Dave?)

The doctor in the viral photo with his son behind glass has lost his…

(other son? will to IG anymore? will?)

Jake Gyllenhaal crushed Tom Hollands handstand challenge…

(by doing a handstand? by doing it cowboy? by doing his laces?)

NASA astronauts estranged wife charged with lying about claim…

(on the moon? of Catholicism? over 2004 parking ticket?)

A Florida man dies days after hundreds exposed to…

(radiation? Trump briefing? his TikTok vid?)

A fire at a Florida airport destroys more than 3,500…

(mice? Floridians? photo ops?)

Oh CNN, how far ye’ve changed with the times. Fast forward a few years and we’ll be forced into playing a round of flappy bird to access any article, as if an advert for the latest season of Marie Kondo’s Sock Drawer isn’t enough. If you’ve so caved into a landscape of sensationalism and sponsorship for clicks, as opposed to journalistic integrity, or dissemination of insight, your leveling of any field will be forever changed. As if the lobbying already wasn’t the most decisive factor. Like art being measured by how garish, or sullied the paint is.

Good news (we hope) in the US, as infections seem to be leveling off and the lockdown starting to see results, though hopefully all that’s not in the vein of the BBC’s current picture painting. Tomorrow will be the worst day for fatalities according to the projections, with mass graves already dug in NYC.

The US does enjoy a certain serendipity in terms of its low density suburban setup for much of the land -detached housing and car culture ensuring people never had much physical contact with each other anyway. Part of the cultural handwringing, pointing toward how isolationist, untrusting and unempathetic the people can turn, but now reaping the benefits in terms of limiting the infection – albeit should they get it their higher rates of obesity, heart disease, asthma and diabetes will increase the chance of dying.

A similarly low infection rate has occurred in Australia, the only country with larger average homes than the US, whilst NYC bucks the trend for obvious reasons, notably its high density landscape. Almost serendipitous for the nation, but tragic for the city. It is as if being social and societal has finally been punished, but such is the gamut that is life.

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