A Journal of the Plague Year 2020

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 69

Wednesday 27th May 2020

I have just witnessed one of the most disturbing things caught on camera. The slow death of a person, pleading for help, occasionally screaming. At some stage he calls out for his dead mother.

He is being kneeled on the neck by a sociopath till suffocated and wets himself, while people all around plead for the man to get off. After the victim passes out the perpetrator continues, in broad daylight, in full eyes of the law as they tell him he’s unconscious, not moving, not breathing, with blood from his nose. Another assailant keeps watch, standing ground against the gathering, both being armed.

The onlookers ask him to just check for a pulse, which the men ignore, along with the fact they are being filmed the entire time, and their badge numbers recorded and still they do not budge. It is the arrogance of killing, of complete power.

How dangerous can an unarmed man be, handcuffed behind, another man on his back, another on his neck for 8 minutes and passed out, no longer moving?

After the killing, with the lifeless body hauled onto an ambulance, the police officer gets off, head held high as the crowd yell he just killed a man. He briefly talks to the ambulance workers, another police officer, then calmly gets into the squad car and drives off without another glance.

George Floyd wasn’t even formally charged. Reports of a fake banknote had sent the police down, who then claim he got belligerent, that when they arrested him they then noticed he was in need of medical aid. From the video that does appear to be true – because two police officers are sitting on him and slowly suffocating him.

He called out that he couldn’t breathe, an echo of the 2014 case of Eric Garner, another unarmed Black man arrested for illegally selling single cigarettes in NYC, and choked to death in an arm hold, who said the same words eleven times as he was suddenly slammed to the ground by several police officers. In that instance no one was ever prosecuted, not even for manslaughter, and the one officer using the illegal hold only sacked four years later.

George Floyd also asked them: ‘Please don’t kill me’. What were his thoughts as he could hear the people pleading, and it being ignored? No longer able to move, just lying there. This is what being buried alive is like, as people watch helplessly. The police and news have subsequently reported he died shortly after arrival in hospital, the video shows him dying in front of our eyes, or at the very least inculcating everything that led to his death.

*edit*^ the emergency crew transcript has since shown that when they turned up his body was pulseless and not breathing. He was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. In short George Floyd is killed on screen, in real time.

************WARNING ******* DISTURBING VIEWING **************

Jacob Frey, the Mayor of Minneapolis where the killing took place, was visibly moved. He mentioned: “Being Black in America should not be a death sentence.” It comes fast on the heels of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, shotgunned three times as he was jogging, and condemned to death for peeking into a house under construction -cameras record several visits that day by passersby, though all were White and thus did not incur the tresspass of the local Neighbourhood Lynchmob, armed with guns and pickups.

Protests have taken over Minneapolis, one of America’s most progressive and livable cities on par with the Nordic qualities and equalities of life. Outside the house of the officer in question, now sacked, a small crowd gathered, peaceful, with the local head of police joining them. They blocked all food deliveries being sent to the property.

A larger gathering (expanded by social distancing) met at the crossroads where George Floyd died then marched to the 3rd Precinct where the officers are stationed. Police confronted the so-far peaceful march with tear gas and foaming bullets (used to identify people after), which was replied with a barrage of plastic water bottles anyone was carrying. As dusk came harder missiles began to be thrown, police vehicles spray painted and in the streets running battles with vigilantes.

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Four Minneapolis police officers fired after man dies in police custody

'I Can't Breathe' Protest Held After Man Dies In Police Custody In Minneapolis

There is something very wrong with our world when an innocent man can be murdered in public, for a horror-stricken world to watch. How many times has this happened before? Before the advent of cameras and filming on our phones? That still happens when crowds are not around to see it? The fact that when police had to adopt body cameras themselves, police complaints fell by 93%, showing they not only protected the police but the public from them.

George Floyd, remember his name.

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Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 68

Tuesday 26th May 2020

So today is all about getting my arse back into gear, notably getting off it and doing shit. Went food shopping (what else kind of shopping is there these days?), stocking up on a range of things we’d long run out of, having been chained to the bed and screen this past week. But am revived to go on a diet, my face getting saggy and spotty from an increase in weight and lack of fresh air. I am starting to resemble my food choices.

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Got home then de-iced the fridge. It has a shitty habit of berging up to incinerate anything that touches the back, like a carrot version of the Silver Surfer. Then cleaned the kitchen, cut my hair and fried some rice. I’m off meat, packaged foods, sweets, fizzy drinks, bread, dairy and sugar and promise to cut down on the salt. Life fucking OVER, but at least I’ll look slim and coquettish when I die, having jumped out a window by day 3.

Seriously who even likes veg???

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Apparently the Chinese diet has skyrocketed in salt content, with a dash or three too many in soya sauce, so I’m looking to cut down. It’s mostly the northern Chinese cuisines, hearty for the cold. Although there’s a lot of salt, it doesn’t actually end up tasting so salty (people wouldn’t partake otherwise).

Rather it gets offset by the flavour balance that is the raison d’être for Chinese cuisine, saltiness watered down by sweet or ‘clear’ notes, and all of it further diluted by copious amounts of rice -it’s just that rice portions are shrinking as the mains grow, inline with what was once reserved for banquet extravagance.

However, although northern salt intakes are lowering they’re rising in the south, who are increasingly featuring packaged/ processed food in meals and snacks. The popularity of pickled foods is another feature, also a major contributor to the increased cancer levels in the region.

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My creation today was chilli fried rice, with lots of veg. Tried my best not to just fling any available item in, and actually plan the flavours. Carrots, beans, garlic, chilli (forgot the turmeric), peas, egg. Passable but nothing to er, blog about.

I left the big window open in the kitchen, as the sun was basking -came back to two pigeons literally shitting on the tabletops. I shooed them back out and cleaned the mess, like three times over with anti-bac, then again for every flat surface. Didn’t tell A, he’d freak.

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J is back, appearing in better spirits though his back is playing up and like many folk, won’t take painkillers unless they’ve lost a limb. We watched a film together (Dracula Unearthed/ Unplugged or summat). Then followed up with a dinner bowl of no-added-crap muesli they possibly sell in petshops (OMG miss sugar already, would have drizzled honey, cream and chocolate bars over dat shit).

We listened to opera, A being an ardent fan as of late, and myself starting to get used to bits, like how they say you get used to prison. I think listening to music and doing nothing else, while with one’s partner is one of the best things you can do in life.

We compared Maria Callas’s voice, which apparently even she hated (unable to listen to a recording since bursting into tears and swearing to give up back in the day) and that the salons initially dismissed. It is very slightly dry, hoarse yet nasal – it isn’t mellifluous, fattened with feminine grace and gentle at the edges. Rather it is the stretched string of a wavering soul, with a bunged up nose, expressing humanity in the same way drugged up singers do these days. Think Lykke Li with gravitas and a snail pace.

Can’t really describe it any better than an elegant screech -it’s probably referenced in opera-speak as La Scremma Electrocutia. However, somewhere in her drawn out high notes, there is a rousing inner sound, that is a wavering spout – all vulnerability and yearning which a perfected version misses. This female anguish and abandon, no longer designed to be pretty for the male gaze, you’ll hear at the end -the fine line between weakness and power:

I remember seeing Madame Butterfly back when I worked in the Castle, and we’d get free tickets to the Queen’s Box (erm, that’s a private balcony seat in the Albert Hall). I managed to bag an event but -like all stage productions with me -could never suspend disbelief (seriously, who walks around shouting all the time?). **SPOILERS***While she -and the audience -were crying on her abandonment at the end, I couldn’t fail to notice how the terracotta in the background was badly painted. Fast forward to now and I’d be in tears, possibly bringing some spyglasses and a lace hanky.

Well who’d a thought. Finally fucking grown up.

Listened to some Bloodhound Gang of noughties infamy to offset all that culture. Ba-limey, you wouldn’t get away with that nowadays. In my day…

Some pics from yesterday, when I went to the park with J to meet the boys from across the green, D and A. It’s been the sunniest month on record.

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It was quite obvious people weren’t doing their daily hour’s exercise. Fat drunk fucks.

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No one’s been mowing the grass.

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Sunset is at 9pm these days.

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And it takes ages.

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Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 67

Monday 25th May 2020

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

It’s all still kicking off on top aide and resident genius to the PM (read: the de facto leader of our country) Dominic Cummings, now under siege from the groundlings on ( I mean off) the streets, the Opposition, his fellow MPs and even the Church. He sneaked 260 miles into County Durham during the lockdown he helped create, and now JK Rowling’s entered the fray, armed with quite some humour. If ever there was a delicious scandal to pass the time between Eastenders and Hollyoaks re-runs, this is it. Even the Daily Mail screamed outrage, with every broadsheet exposing the PM as dependent. And following his decision to back Cummings against the uproar of the nation, through the reworking of what a lockdown should engender, someone released an official Tweet from the Home Office.

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After it was hastily removed, she offered a year’s salary to the sleuth:

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One can imagine the scene in the government offices right now, the Prime Minister’s door slamming, the roaring, the staff running round the corridors -or at least their living rooms, where they’ve been WFH, zooming back and forth between walls in a show of urgency. The wrenched phones, the papers fluttering in the air as a bespectacled secretary scrambles to pick them off the floor. The whodunnit perpetrator, possibly holed up in a photocopying room, making surreptitious folders, or downloading data while a wingman fakes a seizure.

The mood of the nation is just as brazen as Cummings has been, both in his crime and his response to getting caught.

Well, what an epic spectacle, with #BooforBoris or #Booris (and er, #CumGate) trending for the day, planned for an 8pm Tuesday. We should order popcorn. The Twitterstorm is also full of supportive tweets for the government, that runs into the new Dominic Cummings show, and subsequent investigations as to how many copy-pasted messages have aligned, by accounts inactive for years, sometimes decades, before recent revival.

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The copy-paste of Tory MPs to their constituents also appeared sourced from some handed-down directive:

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In other words support bots still at large, run by the Conservatives, and another of Cummings’ tricks from up his algorithmic sleeves. This new arsenal is hot on his act with Cambridge Analytica that swerved the tide for Brexit (by targetting over a billion ads at swing voters). This a sign of the times, the future of democracy under attack by partisanship, AI, populism and media wars.

Coronavirus - Mon May 25, 2020

His public announcement, to a gathering of the press in his lush £1.6 million Islington garden, showed he was unrepentant, claiming his circumstances exceptional, and that the law apparently allows for. JK, who appears to be tweeting hourly through lockdown (new book too she just announced, free online, that’s setting every HP fan near to self immolation with expectation), had something to say on that:

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The fact there is obviously two systems at play, one set of laws and restrictions for the spivs, and the other for an elite to openly dismiss. People (including fellow politicians) who’ve been unable to say goodbye to dying relatives due to obeying the lockdown are furious, with some MPs already tendering resignations in protest.

Cummings also admitted to having driven to Castle Barnard where he was spotted, a 60 mile excursion, but only to ‘check his eyesight’ with wife and child in tow, a practice Michael Gove now echoes that he himself has done in the past, possibly near baby-killing ceremonies in Masonic Temples. The castle happens to be large HQ for big pharma company Glaxo-SmithKline, that also announced a deal to supply vaccines and meds to France on the same day. His wife can drive -a 2012 Spectator article dug out about her roadtrips in the US -so why did she not take the wheel so concerned were they about his eyesight? Ever more holes are appearing not just in the story but his Party support, now bitterly divided.

Another Tory twit following suit didn’t help things. The party seems doomed:

Well, all in all quite a schadenfreuden showdown. But in other more sobering news, Trump was spotted playing golf as America’s death toll breached 100,000 on the Memorial Day weekend. It’s crazy to say, I know… leader of the free world, president of these great United States… but it’s… almost as if he doesn’t actually care.

Biden, who was out for the first time in 2 months, released an advert:

I mean look at him, just LOOK AT HIM.

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PHHHWWWWOOOAAARRRRRR!

Pretty sure the Maganiacs had a frenzied wank over that in the stalls. Beetroot red, face pressed into the corner, imagining their G.O.D happy-slapping behind.

Meanwhile the crowds continued to pack it in Stateside, with some of the usual scenes of protest, such as two stalwart Karens wearing facemasks but with a big hole in the visors cut out (gimp-like) so they could fully partake in Germfest ’20.

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Another meme doing the rounds has been the nurse protesting against lockdown alongside the rest of the circus, until it was noticed she had on a fake badge (handwritten fer Chrissakes) and a dodgy costume.

Plus the Republicans’ chairwoman for Arizona urging protesters to fake it:

“Planning protest to #Reopen America? EVERYONE wear scrubs and masks -the media doesn’t care if you are really in healthcare or not -it’s the “message” that matters!”

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Meanwhile China has quietly taken away Hong Kong’s rights not to stay bidden to the thumb of the Party.  While everyone’s too busy with the pandemic, and many Hong Kongers too fearful of infection to gather, as they so valiantly do normally, the regime’s slipped in a fast one. All after months of fighting off the extradition laws, which would have made everyone submissable to Chinese legislation- and treatment -as any Mainlander. It fully undermines the special status of the One Country Two Systems policy, and a democracy enshrined for 50 years after Handover.

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Well now all that protesting appears for nothing. China’s quietly taken the initiative, with the appointed HK leader, Carrie Lam telling the world they ‘have no place’ to protest and denying the law will curtail citizen rights. Hmmmmm. I do kinda feel for her sometimes, dubbed ‘Beijing’s Puppet’ and jeered wherever she goes, despite her redemption in a winning handling of the C-19 crisis. But she is evidently lying imo.

This comes hot after China decided to give every adult Hong Konger a no-strings $1200 for being “overwhelmed by a heavy atmosphere” back in February, alongside a wave of freebies in the new budget. It appeared to be part fiscal handout for a struggling economy, part bribe to not keep protesting by the millions, for months on end. The new laws will ban treason, secession, sedition and subversion -everything the Hong Kongers have been doing for years, starting an entire generation culturally used to mass protest and rebellion.

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The border is slowly being erased, and for Hong Kongers that’s an erosion of their freedom-wheeling protectorate under Chinese law. It says a lot about our times, and our governments who will make use of the pandemic to sneak in their wishlist. From Victor Oban’s dissolution of democracy in Hungary to the US vowing only to ease sanctions against Venezuela (the socialist regime sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves) in so pressing times as long as they replace their anti-American leader.

When denied, Trump swiftly followed up with a failed US invasion earlier this month, that’s been barely reported. A coup so botched and abandoned by its backers, the plan was even reported in the press BEFOREHAND. When the handful of mercenaries arrived they were only lightly armed and seasick already, bless. Though dutifully wearing face masks:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-luke-denman-airan-berry-arrest-coup-plot-confession-a9503336.html.

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If Big Bird and his auntie tried to stage la revolución it would look a bit like this butter-fingered rout (Selmaaa!!! Where’d ya put the ammo? Whaddya mean you left it in the cookie jar??? SEEEELMMMMAA!!!!).

The two surviving American mercenaries (8 were killed), hired by a security firm in Florida are now prisoners, paraded in front of the media and forced to confess. The regime is absolutely loving it. Yet the lack of furor? Sheer embarrassment on Trump’s behalf, and a media complicit with a script that the heroic West never fails at anything (nor so laughably), and doesn’t do cackling, villainous things, even to other cackling villains.

It’s not so much being caught red-handed in the brazen attempt at an illegal coup -one of 76 the US has so far funded abroad -but the circus of absurdity they called a military operation. That by far, would be the more damaging to the demagoguery, that American heroes are not how Hollywood portrays.

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I ended the day watching Disney’s nature films. Childish commentary (and completely devoid of science, positively avoiding it) but with jawdropping photography. An unlimited budget surely helps. Insanely cute too, from baby pandas tumbling down a slope to leopard cubs chewing on mom’s ear, to shivering little monkeys.

We need this in our lives right now, a nice reminder that there is a world beyond our people, our politics, that’s still turning.

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Yesterday

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A Journal of the Plague Year Week 11

Sunday 24th May 2020

Wake scroll eat repeat.

Another grey day, another wasted one. Has everyone reached the stage of lying in bed all day yet? That thing we swore not to do at the start of lockdown is now requisite. Not bothering to change, curling up with a screen for hours.

I’m entering the dragon, where even the phone’s getting neglected. I don’t care for social media anymore, what anyone ever is doing out there, the few messages increasingly unanswered and increasingly infrequent. The TV too, with Netflix just blaring out a side of Amerika that’s not timely right now, too full of bullshit and pizzazz that disgusts you rather than sucks you in. I’m not watching films, I’m not reading. While that one worry, whatever it is becomes like a rock sentinel in some desert, the only thing on the horizon you try and work around or blot out. But no matter how vast the plain is, how distant that monolith, it’s always fucking visible.

I have to chase up a refund, Cockhands Carlton Leisure, a company to always avoid if ever there was one, who’ve been promising it for a month now. UUURG. J is still absent, the silver clock in the living room ticks infernally so I’ve hidden it in the corner, where it can annoy the pillows.

There’s just so little to say.

 

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A Journal of the Plague Year Day 65

Saturday 23rd May 2020

We’d planned to go cycling this morning, all the way into Central London to see the ghost town, but it was blustery all day and whistling through the windows. A maintains it’s hard to ride when the wind’s against you, making it difficult to enjoy things, notably any scenery you pant your way past like Mutterly.

I imagine the place as dystopian, akin to the opening to 28 Days Later, where a fallen double-decker blocks Westminster Bridge. Apparently the scene was made on low budget by shooting at the height of a Sunday summer morning (dawn at 4am) and begging any drivers to wait a few minutes. I kinda just want to say I saw it, I was there, for history. A pretty ghoulish intent, but for a committed urbanist just too compelling.

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I expect the streets will be populated somewhat, with quite a few cars too compared to the start of lockdown, now that the sun’s out and the rules have been eased. A big furore’s kicking up about Dominic Cummings, chief Tory aide and mastermind of the Leave Campaign who was caught driving 260 miles to Durham after getting C-19 symptoms (apparently to have his kids looked after by his elderly parents). There’s also a lot trending on social media as to why media outlets initially refused to cover the story in a hope it would all blow over, notably ITV news. And how the govt is now desperate to reinterpret the wording of what staying lockdowned entails.

Downing St issued a statement saying it was going to ignore the story because papers such as The Guardian and The Mirror published reports that he’d been seen twice on other outings from Durham, and that they were false allegations. It’s since been forced to face up after Tory backbenchers have come forward to ask for Cummings’ resignation, seeing the party reputation and resources damaged otherwise. The PM maintains he’s backing Cumming’s position to stay in place as an advisor. Ah such farce.

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The day has been surprisingly health-moan free- no headaches, though a big achey arm by nightfall, perhaps from playfighting in bed as one is wont to do when bored. Other domestic newsflashes include thinking about cutting and dyeing the hair again (growing out), feeling old (seeing bad photos of me), feeding on a giant watermelon for days (paired with feta, as is traditional for Greek country cooking), and bickering about whose turn it is to do the cleaning this weekend (we’d been getting the order wrong and expecting each other to do it).

Apparently the trick is to not add the mint, onions, rocket, walnuts or olive oil as many recipes ask, but just the purist melon and cheese, nothing else, the Greek farmers way of taking a block of cheese while working  the fields, and for once ignoring the herbs around. That way the flavours combine into something new, rather than layer themselves distinctly. Also the seeds can be cooked after – they’re literally amazing with salt and pepper.

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I am also getting exhausted from the racism online. One of my favourite websites now overrun with it, as it has been for some years. Skyscraperpage is racist, oozes it -and that’s just a random architecture and urbanity site, who you’d think was populated by progressive IMBY’s. I’m increasingly resorting to watching Youtube vids on a range of algorithmic topics that are my own personal echo chamber, perhaps to cheer myself up that the world does support my way of thinking everywhere I look. But knowing inside that it’s just a damn foil I’m surrounding myself with every click.

It kept me up last night. The end to a good day scuppered by seeing the insults online, and the avid acceptance and support of them as an institutional reminder. I am yearning for history to fast forward, and just deal with the results rather than this limbo. My intended holiday to NYC, planned over a lifetime, will always be marred as to what to expect, sure -but it’s getting increasingly shadowy. I get that Americans are not all neo-Nazis and there are hundreds of millions of normal people, but the White supremacism -underhand, subconscious or overt -appears saturating in every public arena online, that currently rules its politics and laws. The country is battling for its soul, and the democratic rights of ignorance that now supersede facts.

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I cannot bring myself to watch the lurid videos of the racism, from neighbours shouting insults for hours, to demonstrators attacking, to the public diatribes. It’s hard to watch hate without feeling it yourself.

J has been getting down recently, the lockdown is getting him lonely -and we’re not helping by being holed up in our rooms for most of the day. I gave him a hug or three, but that’s not exactly a miracle cure. I try to have lunch with him on the sofa, and fixed the TV that’s been on the blink (goddamn Sony Bravia, planned obsolescence kicking in after 7 years), recalibrating every setting for half an hour, but all to little effect. He’s headed off to his partner’s place for a day or two to cheer himself up.

I got to remember things can be a lot worse, like skyline-burning worse, just like how we imagined it at the start. As America’s death toll climbs past the 100,000 mark the Great Orange Wotsit (thank you to my sister for the moniker -an item just as tainted and puffed up with hot air) going golfing on the occasion, a sign as to how mundane the disaster’s become. In better news New York state is significantly lowering in deaths, but the other states are starting to climb, notably North Carolina and California. A part of me wants to say fuck it, bring it on, goading on the end of the world order, another part knows it’s playing into the same role.

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A Journal of the Plague Year Day 64

Friday 22nd May

Headache all day, soon becoming a right-side migraine. Spending too long on the net, and doesn’t help the affliction though it’s better than just lying there unable to sleep. A keeps me company most of the time, teasing me through the pain. Sweet thing.

The highlight of the day has been a friend’s performance art, streamed over social media live. He’s a sound artist, and uses a beatbox and his beautiful ethereal voice, singing as he goes along. Gregorian-Turkish chant to a beat is how I’d package it. We write in what we feel about lockdown, what we miss and he sings some of our replies out. Hugging family, cream cakes, stroking cats. Also quite the comic (part of the art), and pretty tongue n cheek, diving into a spell of miaowing halfway through. The number of viewers climbed to 22 at the start, fell, then climbed again to 24 over the hour. I said I missed lost children, bandicoots, bats and he sang none of that.

A got up to dance midway, like dry skiing at me until I had to tie him to the bed. J has been out most of the day so we can’t lock the front door. This means it judders constantly, a sound that travels and gives no peace. Fucking postwar prefabs, doors as flimsy as ironing boards. There’s a nimbus blowy sky despite the occasional, flaring heat (29C in Brighton I hear), and the wind’s an unceasing reminder of the outside. What we’re missing, or what we’re saving ourselves from.

I forgot to call fam again. My phone sits mostly unused these days; I wish I could just throw it away and hope no one would mind -something about isolation demands it. The few convos I’ve had are reluctant, recalcitrant. There’s only so many howareyou’s you can ping back as fine; I do try to penetrate into the second type of conversation (as opposed to formalities), but it’s such an effort. Peeps I feel are running out of things to do, others to talk to and I’m near the bottom of the list I bet. Friends invited me out yesterday but declined, just not in the mood to rejoin the world; as cold and scudding as the clouds.

I applied for a job yesterday at Holland & Barrett, which included ticking all the availability boxes between 5am and 10pm; hopefully that’ll make a difference. I hid my roots, ticking mixed race, and using the name Zed. You just never know these days.

A has gone for a walk, dusk when he set out and now much deeper into night, silly boy. Found a pic he sent before he left, which was a nice reminder of a better day.

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A Journal of the Plague Year Day 63

Thursday 21st May 2020

26C Mad dogs.

This is the climbing attraction in Battersea Park, called Go Wild or Go Die or summat. A is convinced he wants to do it, despite a fear of heights, and vertigo. He’ll likely pay the hefty fee to get in and on the first rung go: ‘Don’t like it’ like in Little Britain, then have to crawl back down again.

It’s got three levels of walkways crisscrossing a corner or the woods near the kiddies playgrounds, apparently a 3hr ride if you do all of it. Would absolutely love to.

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Hayfever season, but this year I’m not stricken. Second time since ever. Maybe I have corona.

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Sun was glorious. Being a Wednesday it wasn’t too jammed. All the hot bods are out, one stretch of the lawn’s becoming like Muscle Beach. I bet all those cross-fitters just come here for the chance to show off again once out the hermit cave that is lockdown, and why not? I mean what’s the point in getting yourself a six-pack when you can’t show it off? Especially when it’s gettin so hot so hot I wanna take my clothes off. Imagine being a doctor you’ve studied to be for years, and someone has a heart attack in the crowd. That’s what being hot and hot is like. Yes, you tell yourself, you’re practically a public service.

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Big silent killers. Damn things everywhere. There were about 4 in all the lakes. A nerdy teenager spent his trip feeding the wildfowl, deep in concentration, thought it very sweet -it’s normally tourists or grannies.

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Seven.

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Some parts of London you really don’t notice until stopping to look at your everyday. The sheer size of some of the trees, that must be centuries old we take for granted.

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This inverted tripod of a London plane struck me as perfect for a treehouse.

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Evidence of someone having a shitty day:

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Lots of banana trees had broken out of their sacking -not sure if the lack of gardeners these days resulted in the mesh not being removed. Looking Dalek-like in many corners -pub quiz fact, bananas have the largest leaves in the plant kingdom, up to 18m/ 60ft given the optimal conditions. There’s a big thing though with many banana species having gotten extinct, and the ones we eat only ever being able to reproduce with cuttings these days.

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The sun being out meant me stopping to take snaps so often, faced with opps every few feet. A getting annoyed but he’s Mediterranean and used to this weather. Everything suddenly looks so much improved, and epic.

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The architecture certainly looks better, once again you stop to notice your everyday.

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Didn’t realise we had turtles. Biggest carp I’ve ever seen, nearly a metre long.

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Reddest thing I’ve ever seen. Literally hard to look at it in the sun. Have actually had to tone down the colour in the snap to make out the petals.

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Urban jungle -this area has canopy layers.

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Beautiful day.

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A Journal of the Plague Year Day 62

Tuesday 19th May 2020

Having exhausted all possibilities on a Netflix blocked by algorithms, I resorted to watch one of its latest offerings, Extraction. Starring Thor Chris Hemsworth, getting ever more typecast into the action hero role of the Great White Hunter, it’s set in Bangladesh -what a welcome surprise! No Hollywood film would ever think that as a film location, with few even knowing the difference between India or where, what and who it is on a map. Ask your average Joe and Josette on that side of the pond what they think of Bangladesh and the likely answer will be ‘what?’ and if lucky, followed up by ‘poor’ (this side we have enough Bangladeshis, notably running most of our ‘Indian’ restaurants, to know what their food tastes like, and that insofar, they exist) .

So what a refreshing take to think hundreds of millions round the world would now be introduced to the country, inevitably exposed to the culture, the backgrounds, the characters.

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The opening shot however was not encouraging.

There is a certain mustardy filter that has become a meme among US films, actively promoted by Hollywood and almost every Netflix production. That whenever setting a scene in the Global South (read: poor and hot) you cast a yellow glaze on all things -redolent of a dusty, dirty atmosphere. Dhaka, the capital of 21 million, was seething with it, as if a sudden sand storm had just blown in over the jungles of the world’s largest river delta, that sees in 4x the annual rainfall of London. Welcome to a giant broiling city of mass poverty, open drains and endless grit, like a Star Wars or Dune location (incidentally all scenes were actually filmed in India).

This should be called as to what it really is, a poverty filter, and racist projection.

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Mexico is particularly prone to this same cast, the minute one steps over the border from a sunny California, and just as avoidant of the glittering city centres in favour of seamy bordellos, desert ranches and shantytowns.

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This has its roots in the US Army office in Hollywood. When hiring out its weapons, fatigues and aircraft carriers it operates a PR scheme alongside which one has to agree to. This is understandable, who’s gonna lend out work if the crew in question is seeking to take down your establishment? Akin to gearing up a production and helping in all advice, while they advertise how shit and baby-killing you are.

This office has guidelines to toe, and Hollywood has fallen into step. Note how Western (read: White) locales have a certain blue tinge that psychologists put as making audiences alert, whilst promoting a sense of cleanliness and calm. However you’ll have to up this tint if dealing with Eastern Europe (notably Russia) to make it uncomfortable -overtly cold, calculating and emotionless, rife with degradation and akin to any horror flick. Meanwhile, we’re getting conditioned to warm colours equated to dirt, as any non-Western, poverty stricken nation is assumed to embody.

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The seminal film that influenced a lot of this was Saving Private Ryan, whose use of desaturated colours became iconic. This in turn led to Black Hawk Down, a film notable in the fact it had to run past an Army and White House committee for approval. Directed by Ridley Scott, its beautiful cinematography and gritty realism at battle proved to be an operatic groundbreaker. Telling the true story of the chopper crew attacked by a mob in Mogadishu, and the ensuing gunfight that killed 19 American soldiers (and led to the withdrawal of the US from Somalia), it showed harrowing shots of firsthand experience.

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One scene shows a Somali woman yelling angrily at the soldiers amidst the bullets. The soldier gallantly tries to avoid hitting her, hissing repeatedly at her to scram, but in the end he’s forced to shoot and she goes down, mad robes flailing. That snapshot employs the gritty realism the film was noted for, portraying the true-to-life decisions of every soldier, and winning the audience over in droves. -Or did it truly portray things? The reality was not that a few civilians were caught in the crossfire, and that the soldiers ummed and arred about taking one or two belligerent, bloodthirsty innocents down. It does play a bit like Zulu, the civilians shown dancing and gibbering like animals even as they’re fired at.

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Journalist Mark Bowder who wrote the book on the Battle of Mogadishu even complained about the fake ‘realism’ in their translation. In reality over 1,000 Somalis died in the battle, not just soldiers but hundreds of civilians callously mown down -albeit posthumously portrayed as armed with AK47s and rocket launchers, or women and children employed as human shields by their own militia. The mob mentality against the US ‘peacekeeping’ presence in the conflict had long been united by the highest rate of collateral deaths since the Vietnam War, with 500-600 killed (inc. militia) and 2,000 wounded in that short time, plus high profile murders, torture and assaults on civilians committed by US soldiers.

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Anyhoo, I digress. This isn’t so much an anti-US diatribe (all warring countries commit the same acts of violence and crime abroad – in Somalia Canadian soldiers were also caught torturing civilians), but a stab at the complicit narrative that democracy installs. As philosopher Jacques Ellul points out, democracies have just as extant a use of propaganda as autocracies, exacerbated by the fact just five right-wing families control most of the world’s ‘free’ media.

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Anyhooooooo, back to the film. Yes. Great for the acrobatics of camera, with some almost seamless shots following the violence from room to room to window to falling to bouncing to the landing crash below, or out one windscreen into another as the explosion hits. One pounding shot lasts 12 minutes. Directed by Sam Hargrave, the stuntman double for Captain America, these are fight scenes as memorable as the Matrix trilogy, though not as groundbreaking. However, it does fall into a pit of the dated action movie, the formula being the Great White Straight Man/ White savour meme rescuing darkies and mostly shooting them down too. It is a different time these days, and Rambo is no longer as poignant or searingly poetic.

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It is the kind of cliché where the American Aussie hero is repeatedly bulletproof even from machine guns a few feet away, is lone in his rescue of the locals, with superior strength and skillsets to be in foreign awe of, and is heartbreakingly haunted by the past. The foreign roles are extras, the one woman (immaculate, ball-breakingly ruthless) hinting at a love history and nothing more, the villains (cackling, hand-rubbing, sadistic) as single-faceted as a stage demon allows.

As farce it’s delicious for the ride, though it does repeatedly, weakly try to pretend it’s Jane Austen, with guns. You’d easily enjoy it if you forgot the attachments. But fuck you, too late. Nazi baby killers.

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As mentioned, Bangladeshis watching this film will be offended for sure. Why Bangladesh? Well, no other country would have their police force mown down as the forgettable baddies, populating each bloodied action shot as unit after unit is gunned, stabbed, run over and er raked multiple times in every available body part as they bumble onto screen. The action starts off in India, but decamps to Bangladesh to portray the entire police as corrupt and in league with the venomous, casually torturing drug lords.

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Imagine this, let’s take the NYPD. The head honcho of the force gets in league with the cities local mafia don, and orders the arrest of the hero and his rescued kidnap victim. Does Hollywood then wordlessly allow every policeman turning up to become bullet bait, making up the majority of a body count of 183? There would be outrage. No reviewer’s picked up on that, despite castigating the film for its plot and ridiculous scenarios, yet missing the disconnect with respect in a portrayal of a people.

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This is why the film had to be set in a forgotten, forgettable small country and shot outside it -not India (too large, too important), not Mexico (too close), not the Middle East (too sensitive, plus a nasty reminder gunning down the civilians is what we do), not Eastern Europe (too White, the audience might notice/ identify that those being mullered are actually humans). Africa? NO, don’t even think abouddit, that just wouldn’t look good for er, historical reasons. Despite having a population of 165 million, none of these Bangladeshis matter, none of their voices deserve to be heard, slinking onto screen to be unworthy and fully deserving of their coming demise.

To finish off, some images of the city. We’re not going to pretend it isn’t poor, it isn’t sweatshoppy, it isn’t hot and steamy. But there’s more to it than a vast, festering crime-slum. Welcome to Dhaka.

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Garment workers protest for higher wages in Dhaka

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A Journal of the Plague Year Day 61

Monday 18th May 2020

I lie. The body becomes a map, landscape to sensation. The room limits for a universe.

The main focus floats above, the slowly rotating lamp that is the sun, moon and stars through this time. Bought from Ikea, who J regards as a boil on the face of history. He believes the cheapness of furniture is encouraging a throwaway society, and that we should treasure the items we have. He would say that, being into antiques. He always mentions the design (Killå?) that keels over and dispatches people, a chest of drawers that was recalled across the world, but is still extant in hundreds of thousands of uninformed homes, hiding, waiting.

When we saw it in the lighting section we knew that was gonna be our choice -made up of several sheets of fireproof, snow-white material. You crumple each sheet and create a flower; it spins now like a giant meringue, UFO-like as we sleep.

One side is a grey, sheer drop that is the curtain, space-y and shimmering. Found at discount, long forgotten in a corner of TK Maxx, and creased with fault lines that have never ironed out, despite gravity upon the heavy cloth. The wall is blank, a tall, narrow mirror leans as an adjunct before the door, an amaryllis that takes all year to flower punctuates the expanse of dove white, elevated by a shoerack. It’s the only colour, a veridian noteworthy of beauty were it not reminiscent of a double-pronged leek. The mirror reflects the wardrobe, which is really a stack of shelving in an alcove with another of the grey curtains to obliterate the complexity. That’s it for the room, everything else out of scope when positioned on the bed.

The window view, rarely revealed is of the world’s busiest train station where we can see straight onto the waiting, windblown commuters on platform 1. Blocking the occasional eye contact (awkward, unwarranted) are a clutch of wavering trees and a modernist church, now abandoned and awaiting some fate. It employs into its architecture ‘CHRIST IS THE WORD’ in stark black and white, encircling as a walkway to the witch’s hat steeple. Should they ever convert it I wonder if they’ll recarve the letters, perhaps replace it with some kind of family-friendly diorama, just as contrived, or the usual collection of unassuming shapes -saved by the inoffense of geometry.

Sometimes the clothes rack gallops unannounced into the room (I wake to it waiting by my side), source of annoyance as a barricade against reaching the wardrobe, or reflection. It is here today, marring the simplicity of the space with its desultory drape of mismatched socks, t-shirts and underwear.

There’s a chenille rug in front of the mirror, reminiscent of the 80s in a big round dot. Cream and deep pile, like a spotlight made flesh. Probably my favourite seat. A framed photo of A and I sits on the bedside table, dressed in morning suits, all tails and no hat, for a picnic at Buckingham Palace. The sun is in our eyes; it’s framed by fake baroque.

Behind, where I cannot see, are two portraits, one of A (kneeling, eyes cast downwards) and one of myself (backdrop of telegraph poles in the snow). I made the colours wrong, to look ethereal.

My legs ache, feeling vast like leviathan blocks. They’re shells, ceramicised over pulsating, gentle pain. The rest of me flattened and pharaonic; I’ve half a mind to lie with arms crossed, were I not balancing the laptop on my chest. My chin tucked into neck to look downward, generating a crick and ridiculousness should you stand at the bottom of the bed. The light’s grey, pigeon grey, and dampening into dusk.

Later I’ll take a walk round the block in pink light, brewing beneath more scullery skies. It’ll be chilly, we’ll talk about the world, wash our hands once inside, then more of the same, these four walls that are continents.

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A Journal of the Plague Year Week 10

Sunday 17th May 2020

Battersea, the coming dusk at 8pm.

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The crowds headed home but for the animals reclaiming.

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Mandarin ducks are so called as a pair are traditionally given to newlyweds in China as they mate for life.  -No, we do not subsequently eat them.

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The place has become overgrown, as it was always meant to be, making new dells.

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Dying of the light, people heading home, the new commute.

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This year this pen laid her eggs quite openly, and close to the path. An old lady waylaid anyone taking a look and entrapped them in convo. She was worried the foxes might nab the eggs, but as someone always says when you see a swan, they can break your leg. Pub Quiz fact, they, along with the Great Bustard, are the heaviest flying birds known to man.

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Once home, it’s back to domesticity. I’ve noticed a thing, a health thing. My legs get tired and achey every morning. Also after every meal it’s straight to snooze time, the gradual dying of the fight. Just so cannot be arsed. A says it’s sugar sensitivity, J that it’s lying down too much. Everything I eat is packaged and carby and salty, I am apparently in need of salad forever. Life over.

Literally cannot list more than 5 veg that I will actually, actively like. Onions, potatoes, rocket. Er think that’s it. Is garlic a veg?

If it is some kind of congealing of blood, the fatigue makes me lie down more, and get cosy with a screen. Life becomes reaching distance. Not so much a vicious circle but a snug, blanketed one.

The hair’s grown out. Like it with a hat and the blonde poking out.

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