A Journal of the Plague Year 2020

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?ss

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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?)

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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.

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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.

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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.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 23

Thursday 9th April 2020

 

 

Emily Maitliss opened Newsnight yesterday, following 938 new UK deaths, with one of the most prescient statements in a long time:

“The language around Covid-19 has sometimes felt trite and misleading. You do not survive the disease through fortitude and strength of character, whatever the Prime Ministers’ colleagues will tell us. And the disease is not a great leveller, the consequences of which everyone – rich or poor – suffers the same.

This is a myth which needs debunking. Those on the front line right now – bus drivers and shelf stackers, nurses, care home workers, hospital staff and shop keepers – are disproportionately the lowest paid members of our workforce. They are more likely to catch the disease because they are more exposed.

Those who live in tower blocks and small flats will find the lockdown a lot tougher. Those who work in manual jobs will be unable to work from home.”

Her opener made headlines on every broadsheet.

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As mentioned recently the US infections -currently the epicentre of the pandemic -has seen an unfair slanting in Black and African American victims of the disease, Chicago reporting 70% of their cases despite the city only one third Black, with similar skewing in Louisiana, NYC and Detroit, places where race and income level strongly correlate. The BBC today has also turned the lens to our own country:

 

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Once again it appears more of the same. This seems mainly due to London being the epicentre, where 40% of residents are non-White. It also does have that correlation with class to some extent -for example 30% of Bangladeshi and 15% of Black households are classed as overcrowded compared to 2% for the national average, where it’s thus less likely to pass on. As Maitliss mentioned, minorities are also much more likely to be key workers, from the NHS (where one quarter of nurses and almost half of doctors are non-White), to transport staff and supermarket workers.

 

Yesterday’s film was also about exposing social injustice, writ into a daily life thriller. The showing was Bombshell, starring Charlize Theron (with prosthetics, playing news anchor Megan Kelly), Margot Robbie (Kayla, a new intern) and Nicole Kidman (fellow anchor, Gretchen Carlson) as the women embroiled in the sexism and sex-for-promotion scandal that overtook the Fox News network in 2016. Terse, edge-of-the-seat stuff, though lacking the fun and humour of the recent Apple offering, The Morning Show (Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon) that seems based on it. The film does miss out on what could have been some delicious exposées on toxic news avenger Bill O’Reilly, who gets a bit part, but concentrates on the fall from grace of Jabba-like media tycoon and former Nixon-courting politician, Roger Ailes.

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Apparently, the writers and producers from the start had the challenge of making the audience like the victims, or at least identify with them -stalwarts of a right wing, populist and propagandic news empire. They did this using Fleabag-like monologues, confiding with the camera while interacting the entire time still with daily life, a voice in the audience’s head despite it being evil altruistically alternative. Constant reminders of their family lives intersperse the film, complete with blonde, gurning children happily vulnerable to hate mail and reporters, then glossing over the rest, such as Kelly’s open racism or Carlson’s anti-gay rhetoric. A lowdown on what constitutes a Fox News story helps, as relayed by a secret Democrat working as a writer there. It starts off the trailer:

“You have to adopt the mentality of an Irish street cuff. The world is a bad place, people are lazy morons, minorities are criminals, sex is sick but interesting. Ask yourself what would scare my grandmother or piss off my grandfather.”

This is of course the opener near the start, that winks at the viewer to say, yes we know they’re morally corrupted, please play along. From there it introduces the two entirely fictional characters -the secret Hillary-supporting, lesbian staff writer and her one-time fling, Kayla -the generic Bimbo-dressed victim, who help to paint Fox staffers into a softer, more human and inclusive place. The fact they had to make them up entirely speaks volumes (perhaps unable to find anyone that wasn’t into animal sacrifice or KKK weekenders). The film makes for criminally good viewing, though there is no dramatic flourish at the end, or bible-thumping comeuppance to savour -true to life: Fox ended up paying $50 million to the dozens of victims, and $65 million severance to the three men accused.

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Also true to life, an icon for the film trailer on Youtube shows Charlize Theron, mouth open, about to ingest a side-on pizza slice – a screengrab deemed enticing enough to target another demographic it appears, even if it is a tale for the #metoo generation. Not unlike Aisle’s use of short skirts, excessive angles and transparent news desks to draw in the punters. Art mirrors life. And life goes on. Badly.

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This morning A got an allergic reaction. Going bright red, itchy and bumpy, hard to look at. Poor thing. But it is as always, a passing fad -within the hour it was gone, as he is strangely adverse to all sickness ever. Though when he does get sick (once every couple of years) it is very.

Went for a bike ride, the sun winking through foliage and air crisp and cool. People were dressed for summer, admiring the heritage poking above the trees, and placid waters mirroring the strolling, enough to add an atmosphere of convivial relaxation. There are only a few places I’ve been where every direction is beauty -usually in natural format, though humanity does raise a built landscape every now and then. Lauterbrunnen Valley, Symi, Lazise, Ko Phi Phi Leh, May in Virginia Water. The Ringstrasse, Burano, dusk in the Gardens by the Bay.

Well, for a few choice moments Battersea Park yesterday was that coffee table cover, something you spend years looking for. Just the right amount of people not to bespoil it, the perfect weather (cool yet sunny), and the optimal clarity at this time of year. For an everywhere that was crisp, gentle and swaying in the light.

This is the imagery strong enough to obscure the beyond, and deliver that long fought-for moment of peace.

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But of course I can’t really sing of anything nice without subsequently having to stylus-scratch it back into reality, with the looming elephant out of shot. This is the running theme so far, for this blog, for life and how we interpret it.

-We were one of the only few wearing facemasks, it’s still not a thing apparently among the youthful and healthy, who exclusively populated most of the paths. Strange summer.

This weekend will be geared towards heading off the holiday crowds. I like to think on one hand we are enjoying the view from the lifeboats -life’s great promise. On another, we need to remember not to push under the drowning.

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Yesterday

Tomorrow

 

 

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 22

Wednesday 8th April

Have just returned from an evening walk -the Italians call it the passeggiata, where after dinner you put on your Sunday best and go for a stroll. Everyone tends to meet in the town square to have a good old gossip, loiter and flirt in the lilting light. This is a daily ritual played out all over the Mediterranean and Middle East, and I see why. No pressure to spend in order to be happy, to drink to socialise, or be exercising to go out. No plan, no destination, no rendez-vous. You’re just out for a walk, and anything that may come your way, in mind and body.

Also an English tradition to clear one’s head, practiced before mid century. I do remember it in Wind in the Willows, where Mole always swore by going for an evening walk come rain or shine, and that everyone needed to do it. I thought it a splendid idea as a kid, but when faced with a treasure trail of bus stops, coke cans and army estates it proved a bit more shite in reality. I think the timing’s key, when the colours begin to glow.

The place now is a beautiful ghost town.

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We ended up by the river, the Thames Path full of joggers and couples, or lone people on benches, some just leaning on walls and staring mistily at the Danubian waters, beneath the vaulting towers of Vauxhall. The architecture a story writ in stone and steel offsetting each other in style, typical of London. Every street was varied, where centuries-old churchtowers faced off postwar highrises or glass condos, and making perfect photo ops, which I kept annoying A to borrow his phone for. The skies were ethereal.

On the way back we got lost, finding some nice pubs and a French bistrot (for ‘when this is all over’), but then ending up in the concrete wastes that is so much of Battersea, riddled with pre-fabs that look alike. We walked in the entirely wrong direction attempting to head to our own block squatting on the horizon, before realising it just another ugly doppelganger. Brick, concrete, square windows, utterly functional and uninspired, in contrast to the high end views of the Thames, like sentinel ships.

By that stage it had been all hush -emptied streets and a languid summer feel, punctuated with glowing visions of warmth and other lives. But by walking interminably the wrong way then back again I got increasingly frustrated, a switch from an elegant, arm-in-armness. I have a deep-seated intolerance to such a pitch of inefficiency, the kind of bottled up anger that makes you want to scream, punch walls and upend bins. Raking at the blossoms like a madman, stomping on people’s daffodils stupidfuckingword, their picket fences handy javelins into their shitty lives, framed by chintz. We’d spent a good 45 mins plodding a huge loop back to the river, while my dinner sat uncooked and going off.

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At home still furious, made worse by having to simmer it beneath the veneer: that everything’s all right, and no one is to blame, and let’s all have a nice sit down, and not cleaver the TV, or use the wok as a fucking baseball bat. Dinner was veal burgers and rice, wrongly cooked, while film night got ignored until I taped/ stapled everyone into the sofa. I’m going to go to bed with a brick, and will gnaw at it. Piece of shite. I think sometimes things culminate, and I know, know, know I don’t have the right.

Yesterday 850 died in the UK from the C-19. About 60 of them were from outside the hospitals, and there may be more not yet counted in a daily lag. The way things are going, any rumour of a release from lockdown in the next few weeks is now off the menu. Another report came out today, based on the daily figures, that the UK may be in line to have more deaths than France, Italy and Spain combined, at 66,000.

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Meanwhile, The Great Orange Dolphin (G.O.D.) plated up a tumultuous, rambling briefing, following the highest death toll so far on a single day from any country -1,800 – despite many hints of undercounting. The reporters endured his embarrassing diatribe throwing barbs at all sides, in order to deflect their questions on recent leadership (or lack of), then mixing messages, before rounding on the World Health Organisation (WHO). He went on to claim he’d no longer fund the organisation tasked to bring nations, their governments and the science together. To collectively fight infection, mitigate the spread, treat the sick and protect the healthy. His reason to withdraw US contributions (about 1/8 of its $4 billion budget) being that it was too ‘China-centric’, though many see it as a typical sociopath’s deflection of blame by pointing at another. Basically show up at the party for cake, and the G.O.D. who was meant to bring the icing-laced wonder will be empty-handed, but will subsequently deflect. Pointing his harpoon at the birthday girl and squeak-screaming how she prefers pilot whales, and he wants his pressie back.

Despite that withdrawing funds for this global organisation in the middle of a pandemic would be a major attack against domestic and international recovery, this is now being sold as protectionist realignment by the American right, notably Fox News. Ah, the spirit of a just and superior power not to be heckled, and not made a fool of. The WHO is now the sudden posterchild of villain and hero, for both sides, and is desperately  sending out public requests to end the politicisation of a pandemic. That one cannot have your cake and eat it, then kill everyone.

U.S. President Trump leads daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House in Washington

In other news the victims of C-19 in the US appears unfairly slanted to Black and African American groups, in Louisiana for example making up 70% of the deaths. There is a questioning of the different forces at play, from the higher rates of obesity and illness that contribute to the fatality rates, to the lower income thresholds that are more unlikely to seek or receive help. To the fact many Black Americans complain that using bandanas/ cloths during the face mask shortage is tantamount to being classed as criminals -from being turned away from stores to getting shot. The papers are also still full of opinion pieces on how the US got into the position of having to rely on China as its saviour (via providing Personal Protective Equipment and Intensive Care Units), and the Chinese propaganda machine now repainting itself as such. They are of course brimming with rage, both left and right, justified and unjustifiable, at China’s role in its spread in the first place, while receiving millions of donated PPE and ICUs.

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Today I promised not to write so much, limiting it to the morning, then embarking on a sojourn into gaming. Set up the laptop, unpacked the controller, and reloaded Steam. I’m not much of a gamer, though was seriously addicted to Streetfighter II as a kid – but have mostly missed out on a huge round of development, whereby gaming is now overshadowing the film industry itself, and the graphics are no longer cubist, or a floating world. Dear lord, they’ve been busy! It’s awesome, and I happily stared at a circling eagle for whole minutes to see if it was a loop (it wasn’t).

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Skyrim: Elder Scrolls was the choice. Now, I’m not one to know what the fuck I’m doing half the pixelated time, battling with the controls more than on-screen baddies, and occasionally screaming or throwing TVs out the window, so opening up the veritable universe of such a game is a risk. The complexity of it is galling, with a million different functions, controls, options and tasks. For example collecting various shit in various locations to make various spells for various occasions, via an encyclopaedic menu. Or trying to kill that giant flipping spider with shitty little arrows, while nipping in and out of a corner, while the controls freeze up then change. It all sounds too much like hard work.

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There were those early Playstation ads where they basically inferred gaming was akin to a new life, being able to experience unimaginable things, from a conqueror of worlds, to just a platform, or a golf swing. Well, if they did a version of modern life, imagine walking around trying to access menus whenever having a thought or move, carrying round untold baggage like any trolley-pushing, homeless granny, and a good few scrolling options to find out whichever bag it’s in as the queue waits fuming. VR’s gonna be the future, you just reach to your abstract pocket on the side to grab that axe, or ray gun or shrinking potion as that tentacle whips towards you, as opposed to pausing and going through an Excel sheet each time. Ah, life, virtual, imagined or real – still stuck with the same bureaucratic shite.

When computers start simplifying life will be when they actually lift off as useful to humans.

Tomorrow I’ll probably take up Streetfighter again (now on it’s fifth offering), and my days will effectively cease, the lockdown being the rest of my life, when I’ll have starved to death, swaddled in adult nappies. Cold dead joysticky hands.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 21

Tuesday 7th April

Well another forage out has led to stocking up ridiculously on that rarity: meat. Veal mince, pork filet and diced lamb, all exorbitantly priced and exorbitantly reduced, enough to force me into snapping them up, despite whispers of false economy. Yes, I’ve reached the stage where I’m blogging about my shopping. Such is my domestic world. Will maybe make burgers, and a curry.

I will strive to keep up appearances. Trim the goattee, pluck the eyebrows, and keep the short back n sides, long on top. Though there has been quite a trend seen of men shaving their heads on social media and among friends, my idea also on day 1. There’s definitely something to be said about that, how everyone has been having that same instinct, as if we’re all joining the army, or prison, but a virtual version like the Open University of FML. Cold Steel against your own humanity I reckon, into becoming a new you when life changes for the worse.

I’ll use J as my outside, the replacement of social expectation. One’s partner being inadequate, having seen you already at your worst, waking up with your hair like spiders, halitosic, farteous, spotted and a blimp with a limp.

This is what housewives back in the day had to look forward to, trapped in a life where detail becomes your only cerebral outlet. From which cleaning product to use on the shower (Mr Max) to the trick in getting the windows fully open (tweak the ledge up then down), to the organisation of your cupboards (the winter stuff can now go into storage behind the door). Dolling yourself up for your provider, as some semblance of meaning. It does after a spell become a ritual, a new font to immerse yourself.

I mean wtf. Everything I said I never would be. My outlook (clue’s in the word) has always been swiveled to the horizon, a true north being to travel, to experience, to live beyond, with hobbies in people, culture, society, and the things we create. If you’re interested in humans, or life, or nature you’re interested in getting out. I’m determined not to write politics today. Make this diary my own.

Watched Ponyo, and not as good as the first time. Plus a bit AWKWARD how they portray a tsunami as a magical event. Pre-2011 obvs.

Wrote a lot on the book. Ate badly, but healthily.

I think that’s pretty much it. My life in still.

Pretty much got nothing to say if it’s not gossipping about the wider world. Four fucking walls.

Feel a bit crap, all achey on occasion (though it’s not THAT). But I am not to write about what is outside, only what I am experiencing here. And from the look of things, that’s not a lot.

One of them days.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 20

Monday 6th April 2020

The day has been one of the harder ones, where the four walls do feel justifiably prison-like. The light curtailed, and writing for a good 12 hours in front of a TV. I feel stained by crass sensationalism, evoking so much emotion and memory, yet signifying nothing. The day a write off, excuse the pun.

There is a certain art to domesticity, making things feel snug, and that the Danes have trumpeted throughout their culture, making them supposedly the world’s happiest nation. It’s untranslatable, but hygge (rhymes slightly with boogie/ booger) is that sense of the familial and cosy, which can be brought to anything, from workplace meetings to camping trips. J has it down to an art.

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The Queen came on, to tell us about this virus that’s been going round, and to be all stalwart. Many people had reckoned it being on the passing of her 98 year old husband, Prince Phillip, topping Ladbrokes bets every year for the past decade who quietly salivate over his demise (you can imagine the bolly and plumes of coke in the boardroom when that announcement does come). The only other 3x she’s ever had a nationwide address (outside of her Xmas thing) were on the eve of Gulf War 1, the deaths of Princess Di then the Queen Mum, and on her Diamond Jubilee in 2012. 24 million (one third of the nation) tuned in rapt, only to hear her rattle on about everything we already knew about, and to urge people to stay indoors more -which was probably the main aim they wheeled the podium out. Crestfallen we didn’t have anything more to gossip about, or a national funeral to attend it’s life back to normal. Yes, this is normal. And people still out and about, enjoying the weather.

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The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is now stricken with C-19. At first it was him ruling working from home and looking spry, then it was him going to hospital -just as a precaution -and still in good spirits with a lot of media bluster about being out soon, probably within the week. And now it’s worsened and he’s gone into intensive care, though not yet on an ICU. He may be an insufferable fool, but may he get well soon. The papers meanwhile are full of stories about who could replace him, changing their headlines midway through the day from a what happens with a ‘dead’ PM to an ‘incapacitated’ one. Type the word ‘how‘ into Google and it autopredicts instantly into ‘how old is Boris Johnson‘. ‘What ha‘ returns: ‘What happens when a Prime Minister dies in office?‘ Poor sod, he’s mathematically inclined to succumb.

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The evening’s film was My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which turns out is the world’s most successful romcom, made for 4 million bucks but taking in nearly 100x that amount. It wasn’t as funny this time round, and it’s quite weird how you can date a film you enjoyed and was taken by, then watch it again within your lifetime and see it as newly facile, scales fallen. Back then, when it was also so doable, when melodrama was fun, and life was so granted. I’m getting on.

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They revised yesterday’s deaths from 400+ up to 621, after counting post mortem tests and people who’d died outside hospitals, such as in their houses and in old folk’s homes. There’s also always a low count at the weekends for some reason. Hopes for a downturn have been dashed, rather we look to be starting on the high end of the curve, the bit where it’s either climbing stratospherically or plateauing at a high level.

Given that there’ve been no checkpoints, temperature gauging, or app tracking, and most people don’t wear masks it’s likely to climb. And will remain high, given the minimal measures even in lockdown. No checking of behaviour or automatic sanitising of still-functioning vector points, such as warehousing, supermarket baskets/ trolleys/ checkouts (not to mention the products themselves), mail, deliveries, PT, hire bikes, paypoints, cash, cash machines, ticket machines, lifts, lift buttons, public door handles, rails, door buzzers, and the streets themselves.

Unlike most of Asia, which went through the rigmarole beforehand, operating checkpoints every 300m and in every building, enforcing tracking apps and masks across the populace then hosing down every public surface. We need to do the same.

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My legs ached all day, enough for me to get worried. But turns out that had all to do with my first bike ride in a year. J has also been worried, having been stricken by a tummy bug for a good week now, which in a certain percentage of cases is the only sign of C-19, but hopefully it’s just a rotavirus, we’ll see after day 10.

A is planning a cake. Greek milk pie it’s called. He’s a little pie himself.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Week 4

Sunday 5th April 2020

Yesterday we caught up on two episodes of Drag Race. Well, I must admit I go through quite an emotional rollercoaster whenever I watch reality tv, and avoid it each time. I remember one of the first ever broadcast, called Caraway or Castaway or Harringay or summat, whereby a whole bunch of specially selected, convivial people were dumped on a remote, uninhabited island to create a functioning society fresh for the new Millennium, eked from the atmospheric wilds of the Hebrides. Self, sufficient, eco-friendly, communal, inclusive and a template to what could be, cherrypicking city traders, croft farmers, immigrants, family groups, LGBTQ members plus all their kids from across society.

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Classed as the nations biggest ever social experiment, but also a new concept production, hot on the Science Fiction movies from the 90s about how everyone would become a star one day, with everyday life propelling TV into a new and futuristic concept. ‘Real World’ had debuted in that decade on a bunch of trendsters moving into swanky new apartments around American – then European cities, and this was the next step along – how normal people could become celebs.

Well Hi-hi-hideaway overnight became the nation’s raison d’etre, a force propelling change for much more than the happy campers. There was indeed a tiffle between the God crew and the gay guy complaining about their ‘foreign muck’, but they persevered. But then, a terrible development, all going tits up when some cantankerous sea dog got into an argument, isolated, then went mad and sabotaged the stores. The result: pure fucking TV gold, making the headlines on every tabloid -and broadsheet -the next day.

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We’ve not progressed further ever since that fateful day they found out throwing lions in with the zebras makes for great I Like To Watch (and that the Coliseum had a good thing going) -a nation of drama and monstrosity connoisseurs born overnight.

Well I tend to get too invested. I’m unable to watch singing, dancing drag queens parade in failing outfits, or horror-of-horrors have their jokes and improv fall flat, not just to the immediate room (cringe) but the millions watching beyond (scream). My heart beats as if upon that same self-same stage, I perspire. When things go well I’m a little giggling child strangling the pillows, when the tension rachets up I’m biting my knuckles to agonised squealing.

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Well, poor Aiden got kicked out, an outlier from the start -rural, Southern, inexperienced. I’d likened her to a pretty slug in a few posts beforehand, but the rounds of abuse she endured in every episode, as those deemed less befitting were kicked off wasn’t endearing to the complainants. Her increasing isolation, the behind-the-scenes (and to-the-face) bitching, then outright bullying made me hold a candle for her, if not gladly substituted by a flamethrower. When she was finally booted off, and over-dramatically screamed on stage (many truths said in jest), I screamed with her.

Is this normal? Yes there is empathy, but reliving an onscreen representation vis-à-vis as if it was yourself being publicly trammeled by drag queens, or enduring elongated episodes of cringe to the point of self-harm, seems like a projection. I am perhaps taking it all too seriously.

Coming out of hibernation for the first time in a week, we decided to take a bike ride to the local park and back again. And my golly goodness, how sunny and free it all seemed, and unserious. The frolick police nowhere to be seen (perhaps inundated by block parties in Brixton or conga lines in Essex), what with the great UFO finally out from the clouds in what seems like a good 7 months. Temperatures climbing to a whole 22C. This is what I mean about the UK Spring and Autumn being complicit myths, allocated to a handful of days inserted between a tooth rattling, windswept grey and a meadow-filled Watchtower cover. This latter occupies about 2.5 months before more of the wasteland, and is thus a major reason to partay.

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People lazed around as far as the eye could see, chatting openly in circles and collecting in drifts at crossroads, blading, biking, frisbee chasing to their heart’s content. One estate had table tennis in their courtyard and what looked suspiciously like an audience having a giant picnic, while fainting victims were sprawled liberally across the lawns, occasionally reading or texting. Such is life, a strumming, purring rendition of individuality regardless of what’s happening out of eyeshot. This may be why we’ll continue to have a lockdown, and why people continue to get infected and die. But what we can’t see appears unable to hurt us, or at least dampen the itinerary.

One of J’s friends apparently walked into his local police station to report the dozens enjoying the carnival atmosphere on Clapham Common. I’m not sure how that went down.

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There is a great unsaid, stalking the land. And I will hold my wavering hand up to say I am legion, and take that cliff fall down from the moralist soapbox. That – the thousands of deaths aside, the millions to come, the worry for our older loved ones, the income insecurity and panic buying forgotten -this experience is almost enjoyable.

No, in fact, there are times… where. I . Have. Actually. Enjoyed. Myself. There, I said it.

At home, Netflix, a chance to write my book like some wilderness cabin, plus read some, a little dalliance outside each day, and no weerk. Like pretending autumn is all about rollicking through scarlet foliage, and Spring all flowers and lambs, when really it’s a continued spell in Gulag 7.

And outside, beyond my scope another 408 died today in the UK. That scratch back to reality that’s almost tiresome for a blog, but I’m refusing to give up on. I can’t conceivably forget, so we’ll have to get used to the periodic, polite reminders.

Needless to point out, if 400 people died in a plane crash today it’d be front page news for weeks.

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I wonder if this blind-sided lack of empathy will become a thing now? Or is it just a reminder it’s always been a thing? The way we now find lives smaller in these four walls, cooped into our domestic rituals and immediate room-mates, while neighbours die behind the scenes or on our doorstep in their daily hundreds. Is it any different from the way we enjoy our normalised First World lives on the back of a vast underclass of the indentured? Where we each garner about 20-40 unseen slaves as per norm, sewing our clothes, picking our food, making our products, sourcing our oil and returning our astronomical, loan sharky interest repayments, with a light veneer of nail polish and sex. When our fledgling hedge funds began betting on an Asian financial crisis in 1997, 500,000 children died of malnutrition in Indonesia alone. Does that fact even make us pause, as yet another figure bandied about among bleeding heart types, too big, too distant, too gone to take notice of? Oh well.

I am of course just as guilty, enjoying my teenagery that year, while cycling through fellow Aztecan sunworshippers today. But don’t let that distract us now. I, like everyone else, have a godgiven right to be a shit, and not give one.

There appears to be increasing shade being thrown towards Netherlands (and Germany) recently, with its ‘intelligent lockdown’ (which means a half-arsed attempt) and its blocking of a bond-savvy bailout to the Southern EU nations, such as Italy, Spain, France and Portugal, who adversely prop up their northern counterparts.

The Dutch approach seems only plausible in such a libertine (the selfish kind, not to be confused with liberty itself) and individualistic society, whereby a full lockdown would be impossible to police without emergency powers. -In turn impossible to stomach by a populace long held as a vision of democracy.

However, the country once the postergirl of openness, freedom and a founder of the EU idea is becoming more self-centred it appears. A sign of morphing priorities and societal change, influenced by a touch of xenophobic politicking. It’s had a centre right government for some time now, with the far righters now smelling up the second largest amount of seats. The finance minister yesterday admitted mistakes were made, and that they’d lacked the empathy, and ‘did not succeed in conveying what it is we want to do’.

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What they want to do indeed appears the priority, but also seems veiled. The lack of a true lockdown is of course the approach to herd immunity that Britain so abandoned a few weeks ago when faced with a projection of 250,000 dead. The Netherlands is self-policing, with 99% claiming they’re being socially distant (oh yeah, sure) and a bit less that they’re staying home as much as possible, though still popping out occasionally to flood the streets and every business at all times.

However it also implicitly -perhaps complicitly -implies many more deaths. They are indeed higher than the norm, at 1,766 deaths (10% of cases) but for a nation of 17 million (0.1% infected by official count). It remains to be seen, like Sweden, what will play out. And what willingly -and perhaps worse, openly -sacrificing some of their own for the economy greater good will mean to that society.

We may well see the translation of national PRs after this. Whereby the Netherlands, Sweden and Germany transgress from an aura of the enlightened and progressive nations -riding their ecobikes through elegant towns in the blonde, summer sun -into the phantoms of cold and selfish societies, suddenly more prison guard and Aryan, with fake diesel emissions.

Look again at Britain’s favourite artwork, and what do you see?

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On that note we had a fantastic evening, a culmination of lots of hard work from the boys who’ve spent all day shopping, cooking, polishing and ironing doilies (no really) for our evening meal, which we all got dressed up for. It does make a difference living with a silver antiques dealer.

Entrée: Soupe de rocquettes

Plat principal: Saumon en croute avec sauce Marie Rose. Pommes de terres rôties a la Grecques

Dessert: tarte aux prunes avec crème anglaise

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Ah, the bliss! Laughing merrily in our champagne flutes and toasting our health.

For that Scottish island (I’ve since looked it up and it’s called Taransay), the inhabitants ended up dividing themselves, with the ‘Taransay Five’ setting up a new territory apart, complete with flag and a refusal to work with the producers. After end of filming a few families and couples chose to stay. Although it did launch the career of lovely TV presenter and streaking rower, Ben Fogle, some claimed their lives destroyed. -Including a psychotherapist who was edited as throwing a chair at a woman and storming off forever (in fact the scene was cut from an argument with producers, for which he successfully sued for libel). By 2001 the island had been abandoned once again, going up for sale 5 years later. It’s still known as one of the Lonely Isles.

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As we all may have worked out by now, empathy hurts us more. The trick is to spread it out, with everyone sharing the crappy liver starter (who likes that seriously?) to get to the banana split fantabulous dessert. Or to just take it on the chin like a drag queen, whose heart still shines beneath the hisses and boos. Of course the same applies to the lack of empathy, spreading it out among a reduced guest list, so we all enjoy that piece of the pie, while one sucker (or vast amounts of them) fight it out under the table. This is a snapshot of life.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 18

Saturday 4th April 2020

It’s been a long time coming. The sun is out and the temperatures are climbing into whole double digits. After 7 months of Great British winter it’s about feckin time, and normally an excuse for the entire country to have a sickie-induced, unofficial national holiday. Windows open with music blaring, everyone in shades and shorts, sunning themselves on beaches, parks and traffic islands, sinking timetables as trains come to screeching halts from the ‘wrong type of sunshine’ or buckling rails in the heat shimmer. The distant tinkle of ice cream vans as the new morning-to-night chorus, churning out their tinny renditions of Ode to Spring and ice-cream flavoured plastic. Tube carriages becoming searing animal transportation scandals, as the motorways and country lanes choke with daytrippers, in 15 degrees.

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Well, the country’s on high alert to battle this oncoming tide of well-wishers and semi-pagan worshippers. Lines of armed convoys, army escorts, throbbing helicopters and arm-to-arm sweeps of the Picnic police.

A woman and child in Kettering were caught inflagrante with a bucket and spade. A grandfather in Looe with a fishy looking pole. Then that family in Southwark, claiming their children (holding picnic blankets and rackets) weren’t theirs. The three teenagers in Birkenhead, whose burgeoning pregnancy turned out to be a football. Chopper footage of three people in Brixton dancing around a radio, though they said it was epilepsy.

The horror. In all seriousness though, this deceptive kinda shit is killing people. The Health dept is now looking at banning the daily ‘exercise’ that is drifting up the beauty spots and vista points with cars, winnebagos and selfies. The Western govts are increasingly looking at smartphone tech now, that can trace your whereabouts (as if they don’t already do), like they did in Asia to alert others if a newly infected person had recently been in contact or passed nearby. The legendary Spring Breakers who broke US advice to party in Mexico were apparently tracked the whole way, and are now facing the consequences along with their hangovers and teen pregnancies. Likewise the same may soon be happening here, your records of diverting suspiciously through the Peak District, or via your bosses wife or the atmospheric dells of Clapham Common at 4am for all to see.

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Today I got progress on the glowering thing that’s long been in the back of my mind (after the world collapsing and tens of millions dying of course, OF COURSE) these past few weeks. The first coupla pages of my book I’m trying to hack up, with great feedback from some literary aficionados that have seen me re-write them from scratch, but with less description and a change in chronology. When writing it’s like trying to paint a vast picture while hovering only a few inches away, unable to step back and see the unruly splodges that mar it, nor the overall composition. It takes someone else to come in and point out that my portrait has three eyes, or a bird’s shat on the corner, or it looks like an untrammelled disaster and I really should take up plasticine figures again.

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I also missed my sisters’ birthdays; both of them born two years apart but on the same day -C looking chuffed in a family snap over a big double-candled cake, yet strangely missing mum who’d just gone into labour. I look at these bygone pics and wonder if Now marks a turning point between worlds, that of Before and that of After, always after. They say social distancing may last years, and that older folk may have to be shuttered away till the next one, though my civil servant friend who’s not allowed to say, but has conveyed (through the art of mime) that the govt hopes it’ll be over by June.

708 people died today in the UK, overtaking Spain and Italy, where the Midlands has now become the new epicentre with over 200 deaths (almost double London). 5 London bus drivers were among the day’s dead. We’re still an estimated 7-10 days away from peak. And does it even register with us any more? We are growing a shell to the fate of others, beyond our little chalk-drawn, spray-painted, picket fences.

Spain is now seeing a second day of lowering its figures to a ‘healthy’ 674, on the heels of Italy also down to 681, both of whom were recording tallies of up to 950 in the previous week. The US took 1,344 into the highest daily death toll ever. Italy remains the country with the highest deaths so far, over 15,000.

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Meanwhile China is saying it will not limit its production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and ICUs to any country, like a teacher trying to break up bickering students. The kind who are pulling each others hair and stealing phones, to the tune of hundreds of ICU’s appropriated on the way to Spain or Italy, or the US barring factories from sending any equipment to any other country other than them, even if another had already commissioned and paid for it all.

This is a bit like a fun game of catch which everyone had been enjoying by the rules, but then started holding on for too long. Until The Great Orange Dolphin comes along, barges poor Flipper out the way, and eats the damn ball.

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I literally cannot point it out further, like a stuck record. How there are certain ideas in people’s minds projected into societies, in turn becoming governmental policies that are undermining this entire effort to stop the pandemic globally. We need to be united and working as a team, not as a committee, and not as a rival rugby troop. Sometimes you do need that perspective, to not put fences around your own little claims, and sense of righteousness over others.

I realise I am that teacher now, shouting empty words like a stuck record to a roomful of lounging, scrolling, smoking, casually sexting youth. Like a door greeter in the Disney Store churning out those empty niceties, or a production line products to the wrong client.

One day we may look back at all this and be appalled. Or will we? Will these transgressions ever see the light of day again? Or just be portrayed as a lovely staycay with govt support and no, we know nothing of stealing those meds meant for our neighbours who couldn’t afford it, but we could so we deserved it more. Ah, the snapshot of human life, to stand back and appreciate.

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Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 17

Friday 3rd April 2020

Today has drifted by once again, with myself unsure of what happened. As if just woken, recounting what transpired in the dream.

Yes, I did that zoom meeting this morning (washed, changed, did my hair, repainted the walls). Then at some stage nipped out to do some shopping, after lunch.

Then it was a sit-down, and Lion King (‘live’ action version). A phonecall midway through. Then boom, here I am at half eleven at night.

Seriously, wtf have I done? Perhaps this is what slow time is meant to be like. I imagine stuff rural folk still do. Hovis ads with golden light streaming through glass, fields of wheat, smoking cottages and flatcaps. Aye m’lad, you get up, go get tha loaf down t’Ma in them flowers field, then be ‘ome fer supper. Day dun. Good pig.

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Though I’m sure in reality it involves busy dates with threshing machines, stone breaking, seed counting and bestiality. I’ve had none of these today (okay maybe the one) and this throws up the anxiety of not having had a productive day, while neither having that timely satisfaction of a simple task accomplished. But what exactly is the worst that can happen?

There is a time after a gluttonous, glutinous day off when the laziness has set to a level that cannot plateau further, crystallised into a bed. To me, it feels a bit like a headache or lancing of all energy, a sense of a decayed day. And that’s the worst, fossilised into a fabric embrace and smelling of sweat and youtube. While failing in life, having that Pulitzer prizewinner sitting still unwritten under the ticking of clocks.

My hair is currently manky. I put gel in it and it started smelling as it’s the cheap variety, normally a pleasant essence but I think at some stage it got heated by some alien x-ray and now smells like l’eau d’augebrèthe. Also a crow’s nest mess, and I’m savouring the idea of running it under a waterfall with hummingbirds and orchids, scented candles, pachelbel playing.

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In other news facemasks have suddenly become gold, generating a global game of PPE Pokemon. A general consensus is, with the World Health Organisation as usual a step behind, that a barrier to/ against your breath would actually be effective if the fucker’s airborne. Which China has been saying it is for quite some time, and why the whole 2 billion peeps in East Asia are masked to the max.

Last week Slovakia ‘appropriated’ a whole Chinese shipment of them destined for Italy (along with ICUs), then France did the same intercepting those on the way south. Turkey just took 160 ICU’s meant for Spain also, who can’t find a break right now. Meanwhile the US is appropriating all coming from American factories, or outbidding those on runways, taking supplies destined for France, attempting to rob SE Asia’s and now grabbing Germany’s and Canada’s too (the governor of Quebec threatening to cut off electricity to over the border).

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A smouldering Justin Trudeau has come on to plead remind the Great Orange Dolphin that trade treaties need to be complied with, while a call is on to stop the ‘modern day piracy’. The vast ongoings have been likened to a treasure hunt, although it more resembles an All You Can Eat when they bring the prawns out, just the losers gets asphyxiated.

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689 more people died today, though the figure’s hard to spot, and willingly so it appears, coming up only as a bullet point among the live BBC news feed. Intended to stop the malaise of doom and gloom, but perhaps needed now that a sunny weekend is coming. The authorities are gearing up for a nationwide game of British bulldog with people ‘out for a walk’ (while transporting their picnic baskets, blankets, dogs, balls, deckchairs, sun loungers, parasols and volleyball nets). There’s definitely a spirit of gamesmanship in the air, filtered or not.

A Nottingham landlady is also under fire for her lockdown lock-in at a pub she runs, or as she described it: some well-wishers privately popping in to leave greetings for her husband’s birthday. Meanwhile, I’ll be off to practice a bit of armed roleplay, plus a speedy check of cash handling procedures in my local HSBC.

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Argentina has been forced to reopen its banks for face-to-face service as many in the nation are no longer able to access their cash or paychecks, leading to the central streets of the cities suddenly flooded, a carnival atmosphere among the thronging queues. Any excuse really, we are after all, humans. The same species that’s decimated the planet, with untold millions from history murdered beneath our feet, and whose governments are increasingly revealing themselves to be the robber barons they’ve always been beneath the veneer of labels and politesse, liable to steal from one another as to lie, point fingers and poison.

This pandemic will very, very much need a period of yoga matting after all this, and some pro-navel gazing on how such a horrid, horrid, silly thing ever happened. The stealing of medical supplies, the racism, the use of sanctions, the use of the crisis for more political and geopolitical leverage. The calls for war, or at least a rallying cry for one when it’s all over, like a dessert laden afterparty we can all look forward to.

Ah yes, that spirit of human unity and dignity in crisis, hands held out to infect our neighbours and clapping on our balconies to wish it all away.

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In my vid chat to friends last night, one of whom is a civil servant (possibly a spy) I heard crime’s fallen dramatically on all fronts but two – domestic/ child abuse has skyrocketed as people wall themselves in with the enemy, and cybercrime is stratospheric, what with all the main syndicates suddenly finding no punters to wheedle. From online grooming to blackmail porn, money holding scams to the usual alerts that your nonexistent PayPal accounts are being imminently closed for suspicious activity, and couldja please ring this number in Brazil to verify all bank and card deets, passwords, addresses and DNA samples

I’ve also gotten a furtive missive from er, 100 Pennsylvania Avenue to see if I’m interested in ‘informational activity’, as it’s been noted I am an outstanding persona of interest. Whaaat? Do I get to become cool???

Wear designer shades and work alongside Charlize Theron types? Dodging bullets, swapping briefcases, aiming sights on evil businessmen and secretly meeting rivals in places where no invested zoom could possibly train, such as benches on the Washington Mall.  Oh the possibilities! The one night stands in 5* Euro-accommodation, the parkour training and martial arts madness, the cocktails, the tuxedos, the gala balls and casinos! I’ll start doing my hair now. I suppose it’s better than the last time, when Kofi Annan and his briefcase of African cash stood me up outside the UN.

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I seriously think there is a vast and pliant population online that needs to be addressed, a social issue. Old people, like really old. Who’ve just worked out how to use a mouse from 1996, and now ply through cyberspace like a surfboard of kittens in an Orca enclosure, clicking on flashing pop-ups, entreating themselves round the corner for breathless, busty, file-sharing nookie, or to put This One Crazy Trick (snail faced, pebble eating, butter smearing, pee absorbing) to virulent use. That lithe sportswoman (usually a teenage gymnast), legs askew, Who Had No Idea Why Everyone Was Laughing, or that handsome fella born between 1900 and 2030 who is inline To Make Thousands Back From PPI, or claim Free Solar Panels Off The Council. Oh and Gary Lineker’s dead.

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In all seriousness there’s an entire multi-billion $ industry now catering to this army of the befuddled, curiosity clickbait or invitations from Nigerian princes being just some of them. On a more sinister, world-changing note, algorithms are identifying these as the people to call when you need a bit of light canvassing for your presidential campaign, interest lobbying, geostrategic spywork or commercial investments. These people can change the world.

In the US there is no limit on free speech, unlike say Europe, where hate speech is arrestable. Americans like to think hate speech is self-policing, that people soapboxing their diatribes on say how Black slavery was validated and needs to be brought back, that childbirth hurts as it’s God’s punishment to women, or we need to assassinate a 15 year old Swedish schoolgirl for her climate change activism, will only mean they’ll get their comeuppance from being outcast as crazies, and their jobs subsquently lost.

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However, switch that to the echo chamber of Cyberspace, with lonesome retirees who have nothing to lose and you’ll receive a free propaganda dept and labour force, who’ll spend 10 hrs a day sharing Breitbart articles and Rupert Murdoch editorials across social media, chat forums, radio shows, podcasts and blogs while adding, liking and thumbing down millions of related comments. Generally leading to things such as the Tea Party movement (teabaggers), Trumpism and the Gulf War. Instead of crazies with a subsequent sacking, you get a blizzard of millionaire likes and a ‘discussion’ on the table that allows it to actually gain credence, then a vote.

Next time you look at little old neighbour Ruth, clutching her handbag, her pitifully light shopping, smelling of wee and trying to remember her house number, keep in mind she may well be Putin’s premier ground agent, a denizen of international intrigue via her WhatsApp handle, Killblade4U.

Hopefully, there are more discerning voices out there. Those who aren’t inside, out of work, stuck all day, lacking a life, writing politics and ingesting newsfeeds, then starting blogs to parrot their political leanings. Erm, yep.

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Though seriously, in all truth if ever I started a war it would be against kittens (versus pandas) and they’d only work out territorial claims using kisschase.

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Oh and Ukippers, they’ve got to go. Fucking scum.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 15

Wednesday 1st April 2020

 

So A just told me about the coming powercuts next week from 11pm to 5am each night, the planned closure of the BBC and talks about the Internet going down to stop the spread of misinformation, and the fact its workforce is not an essential service. That we’d better start downloading films to watch. I was a bit nonplussed but not that bothered either (have plenty of books) but posited it could be the period when the shit hits the fan, and a crackdown on reportage would mitigate public unrest.

I was just about to fact-check it for the blog, sending feelers out already via WhatsApp, when it hit me what date it is today. The fucker.

Yep, hook, line and sinker.

I had to squash him a bit after that.

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Dark humour, indeed. Some K-pop star (Jaejoong, from Girls L-Owed or ABCDEFG or sommat) got into a lot of trouble along the same lines, drawing quite some telling off from his 1.9 million followers after claiming to be stricken in hospital, from flagrantly ignoring the regulations.  He later claimed it was to draw attention to the rules we should all follow. Now, it’s one thing to be told off by strangers, another by someone who admires you, the scales fallen from their lurid doll-like gaze and replaced with character assassination. And another thing entirely to have it happen again and again and again, for hours of scrolling. Yes, the public spotlight/ social media is brutal, soul wrecking, personality changing, dark. And to lay it even thicker, now the Korean Center for Disease Control (aka KGB) is looking into punishing him. With a name like that you know they’re going to be very dour and formal about all this, like being taken to the principal’s office after filming him on the bog.

Oh you.

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In more sobering news, 563 people died yesterday in the UK, our death toll starting to approach Italian levels -that dark marker all countries are now measuring themselves against, having taken the baton from China. Spain, where over 900 died, is likely to grab it tomorrow, or perhaps the US. For the UK, infections are now plateauing, with a good response thanks to enforced social distancing and lockdown, but the deaths will still climb, whereby the fatality bulge follows a week later. The finishing touches are being put to the vast new, 4,000 bed Nightingale Hospital, appropriated from the ExCel exhibition centre in East London, and built with army labour.

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My German friend linked me to a Swiss conspiracy theory she’s heard, about the fact C-19 is not more deadly than a seasonal flu, just more contagious, but governments are taking the chance to redact our civil rights -and that they won’t be withdrawn after (all eyes on Hungary when this is over). I am however at the stage where whatever happens happens, dangerously apolitical at a time when we might need to be. One day at a time.

I’m now with a new routine. Wake, internet, br/lunch, siesta. Read, internet, shower, Netflix, exercise, write, dinner+film. Sleep. I feel a giant fucking slug. The randomisation of a siesta offsets the afternoon shower, a battle between structure and sloth. Today’s national toll is keeping me indoors, for a time I’d envisaged as a critical infection period. The sun came out today, we planned for a bike ride until I heard the stats, and the sun had gone by then too.

But it did light up this motherclucking feather. How beautiful, this little thing.

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Tonight was Terminator night, the latest edition with Arnie (tick), Linda Hamilton (tick) and everyone else new, with a terrific role for Mackenzie Davis, a semi-termie, who sadly won’t be reprising her role (no spoilers!) due to an er, plot technicality. And ba-limey, does it drag out the nonstop action, plane, trains and automobiles, though Mexico City (and country) still suffers that malignant orange filter and a strong aversion to the swanky city centre, and its skyscrapers, Old City and elegant street cafes. No, what we want is dust. Dust! People smuggling (tick), dodgy cops (tick), desert scrub (tick), guns (tick), legions of the poor/ refugees (tick), oh and a US car plant replacing Mexican labour with robots (tick). But easily backgrounded in the roller coaster ride, and a welcome lesson in losing yourself, even if it is to an oily, shapeshifting robot throwing javelins at your face.

Dust!

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And after all that gunsmoke pizzazz, silence. Like a sudden cliff; I even felt bad to end the credits with the score meandering comfortably to a stop. When night falls, the city is a tomb. There is no longer that murmur of traffic, the endless shunting of trains in the station opposite, the chatter on the street from the local bars, the clip-clopping of the late night commuters, or the planes cruising ever skyward. We look out the window at the lights, and it is in every sense of the word, a deafening silence (I’m not gonna say Dark Fate, but greyish trajectory maybe). I worry about the pigeons, who’s gonna feed them? Are they dying en masse, without our trash, crumbs and vomit to peck at? Maybe we should empty a few bins liberally over the streets, also for the foxes, which I used to see every time I stumbled home late.

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Netflix’s World At Night nature series, narrated by an insanely annoying woman oozing righteousness with every cadence, had an episode on the city today. Notably a section on leopards, the night stalkers of Mumbai, which now happens to be the world’s largest concentration of big cats anywhere in the world, counting no less than 50 in town, along with the 20 million humans. Chillingly the night cameras track them in the shadows, sometimes as they brazenly follow people around, though they’re really out for piglets. Other CCTV footage shows them creeping onto verandahs, balconies and through front doors to grab dogs, of which 1,000 are killed annually. Now that is some other level of exotic I need -other segments showing the elephants in ‘southern Africa’ (they didn’t even bother with the country, as hey, what would that matter) rumbling through a darkened town centre to stunned pedestrians and window peeping kids. Or in Halloween, where huge moose (meese?) invade Alaskan streets that one night to get at the jack o lanterns, before melting away again for the year.

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Then to Singapore, which is the vision of the future, and where animals now frolic openly as part of city life, where even otters have returned to the busy city waterways, sharing pavements with joggers every morning. I look out, and it is another world, another time. And all I see are streetlights with everyone home. Dang, I wish there was a black bear rooting through Recycling; I’d maybe settle for a ferret under some leaves. Or a rat holding a condom. Reality is all a bit too mundane, even in these most surreal of times, and I feel myself too demanding. That I am healthy touch, touch, TOUCH wood.  Though perhaps a fool to want otherwise.

To finish off, the Mexico City we don’t get to see. We really should give the place her moment.

 

Yesterday

Tomorrow