Aiden Zhane

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.

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A Journal of the Plague Year Week 2

Sunday 22nd March 2020

The sun is out. People are on the streets, and in the parks, basking like how you’d expect in a perfectly normal day on Planet Earth in the early 21st century, and in groups too. From the old lady I spied statuesque in the carpark, soaking up her Sunny D, to the gaggles of teenagers manning street corners and park benches, impervious to care and often reason. A who has been going for a normally lonesome walk every day due to anxiety, reported on the sudden herds. No wonder the govt has had to close down pubs and cafes, throwing heed and germs to the wind appears endemic.

In short, it looked like a quiet Sunday morning. The only difference being the distinct lessening of the traffic, and the odd burning barricade littered with heads.

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I do think there is a libertine element still in London, a mix of Britons never ever being slaves (well, except under the Romans, and Picts, and Saxons, and Vikings, and Normans), and the anything-goes culture of a cosmopolis. On the one hand it lifted my spirits, seeing this semblance of normality, and a reminder that perhaps there is a focus beyond the infectious headlines. On another heavily gloved mit I felt uneasy about the varying options in contagion.

A few of the food shops and small supermarkets operated short queues to get in (gone within 5 minutes) akin to exclusive, chichi nightspots albeit dampened by the homeless man sprawled at the entrance, sleeping it off to a sign asking for a hostel room. I’ve heard the homeless will be housed in the emptied hotels, and the Mayor will pay for it. I hope this transpires, that it is For Real, as few people would notice, or care so much right now.

I managed to buy some face masks from a corner store, the owner having a veritable pile of them for £2.10 a pop at the till (highly suspicious, I’m never lucky). I bought 3, vowing to post them to The Fam. Along with the usual smattering of crisps, a tinned curry and packet of mystery milk, possibly camel.

In the small Sainsbury’s opposite it looked normally stocked (read: amazingly stocked), I even got two packets of fresh pasta, which I may build a bidding website for. I can imagine the Die Hard-style trials some army of unsung transporter heroes must’ve made to get it there, involving car chases, gunsights and terse video calls on zoom.

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Just outside our estate there’s an unofficial corner (read: cul-de-sac) where people leave junk to be collected by the council, or just leave junk. Tawdry closets, mangled sofas, desperately dated drawers, that kinda thing. Today’s offerings were a brand new leather and gilt armchair and a spotless new mattress, glinting in the sun.

I’m wondering if anyone will grab them if ever, with the idea of contamination now imbedded as a poo stain, or murder scene. The last time this happened I moved two new chairs to sit them outside the charity shop a whole 20 yards further, but today even I was worried to touch them. I went down again to snap a pic and the chair had been taken, bless. Noticing a bargain is the last stand in functioning society.

There was suddenly something deeply inviting about the bed, in the sun.

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The air feels fresh. I made the mistake of wearing my shoes inside, twice now on the same day, when before I’d warned others about taking them off – the pavements being quite the vector for anything coming out of the human body, and absorbed when wet. I even put it as a Facebook post, like how grannies do the same on some kitten charity or the latest scam you must pass on to all otherwise it means you hate them and want them robbed.

Also sat through an online tutorial, about how the virus is covered in fat, acting a bit like an oil droplet which won’t come off with just water, but needs regular soap or handwash to break it down, and 20 seconds worth. Alongside a vid of how to wash, a short from China showing the bits you’ll likely miss using dye.

I did it properly when coming home from my little sojourn, but popping out just now I halved the time. There’s a lot to be said about my enthusiasm for a cause when having relaxed just the teeniest bit, and the saddening studies on how punishment motivates people more than a prize. Or laziness, just sheer I cannot-be-arsed-right-nowness. Those idiots laughing slow mo in the park, or hugging strangers – that could be me.

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I’ve not looked at the news today, though I did sink to trawling through a news forum. Once again there’s a lot of back and forth about Trump and China being in the sights for global blame. I did get involved, mentioning how China’s localised cover-up was not so much to blame (having informed the World Health Organisation -WHO – a full two weeks before ever castigating Dr Li Wenliang and his private Wechat group).

What we can definitely shake a stick at China for is the fact it hadn’t quarantined the infections believing them only animal > human for nearly a month. The WHO is still haunted by a tweet on Jan 14th maintaining that no evidence had yet to be found of human to human infection. Likely from now on it’ll have to change procedure that any new disease be treated as human > human rather than waiting for a patient to turn up without any contact with wildlife, markets, handlers or farmers (about 3 or 4 new human viruses are discovered every year from animals, but don’t require lockdowns).

Also Trump and his cronies insistence to call it a Chinese disease points towards a political tool, perhaps to dive from the spotlight accusing him of gross mismanagement, perhaps in reply to the equally idiotic Chinese General hinting it’s all a US spy infection, planted during their joint Hubei exercises. This was when both US and China competed together in the countryside outside Wuhan (the World Army Games or something -imagine it being a jizzfest for generals who own re-runs of the 1938 Olympics), just before the infection broke.

Imagine Trump diving. Like a fat dolphin. Squeak-screaming under the table and toppling no end of shit.

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There are other diseases out there with place names such as Spanish Flu – rather unfairly Spain was just the country not under media lockdown during WWI, and had spread the word (it originally came from a pig farm in Kansas). Or West Nile Virus, itself a branch of Japanese Encephalitis. However all these were named from the 1930s backwards, or centuries before, and the practice has died out -we don’t call HIV the African disease, nor the Los Angeles Disease, where it was formally identified. To do again in this day and age is courting xenophobia, as if East Asians or anyone who looks like them don’t have enough to deal with right now in a surge of viral racism.

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This ends today’s public announcement. I’m weaning myself off the pollyticks. Really I am, promise. That was only two paragraphs; It really does help when you avoid the screaming headlines. I have no global update to post today.

Mum rang yesterday, she opted to take leave from work, the proud firm of Keeler Ltd, provider of opthalmic equipment round the world and so far protected by being in the private health sector. They’re doing the honourable thing and keeping her on the payroll till it all blows over. She joked with the HR woman’s noncommital gestures – that if they had suggested a course of action (stay away /don’t stay away) and Mum subsequently popped her clogs they’d become liable. I told her not to be mean, that the nice HR lady was doing her job, but Mum maintains the woman found it funny. I can imagine that pained, whooping laugh and beseeching niceties while they stood metres apart.

But joking aside, they are a fantastic, refreshingly humane company that consciously chose not to outsource to a sweatshop in the Global South back in the day, and I beseech the world to each buy a retinal scanner when all this is over.

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At 77, with multiple health issues, she’s high risk and may have to be cocooned away for quite a sentence – 4 months to next year even according to the official hints. Enough to get cabin fever and drive herself and my sister up the tiny cramped walls of the ’60s terrace, stuffed to the eaves with things hoarders hoard. Before she seemed calm, and was going to keep working until I persuaded her otherwise (there’s a legendary 83 y.o. lady who vows to carry on with the factory floor); she’s now a little more fearful, having seen the numbers in town rise from 2 to 20 almost overnight. That a doctor in the next town over was caught with the disease while treating patients. The fact there may be 20x more infected than officially tested for round the country, it all really hit home, her home.

I felt distant, in every way, and wonder when I’ll next see her.

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My daily structure is becoming less regimented, but still there. Rather than me sitting rod straight on the table tapping away, I’m on the sofa with Netflix in the background. Yesterday  we made the disastrous decision to watch The Leisure Seeker (pronounced Leezhur) starring Helen Mirren (Golden Globe award nominee for the part) and Donald Sutherland as an aged couple kidnapping their own camper van to enjoy a vacay to the umbrage of their kids.

Was kind of expecting a delightful mix of Bad Grandpa and Dukes of Hazzard, but it was of course a timeless study on our slow and inexorable act of dying from a largely Italian arthouse team. Donald is a former arts and lit professor deteriorating with Alzheimer’s, liable to accuse his wife of polygamy as he is to burst into quote on Hemingway. Helen is his long-suffering, perky Southern belle of a wife liable to chat endlessly to strangers as she is to take up shotguns. No spoilers here but turns out, she’s dying too. Oops, may have fudged that a bit.

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Like you were ever gonna see it.

At the end I felt like shooting myself in the gullet. In one scene they enter an old folks home and point an unloaded shotgun around at several members of the bedded community, then get told off about it and offered a price leaflet. If that happened here it’d be ten years just for possession, and the rest of the fucking story would just end there. Fin. And we would not have had to watch them die and pretend everything was absofuckinglutely fine behind those walls.

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The whole thing felt like a demise mere days from now, dripping slowly worries, fondness, memories and saying goodbye to a sacrament of decaying time -rather than an exercise savoured for your twilight years multiple decades in the future. I may have cried for an instant.

Right now America’s Got Talent (AGT!) is playing in the background, by contrast. By very very fucking contrast. So full of cheering and trashy pizzazz I want to reach through the screen and slap everyone of the goobers with a brick. How can people be so whoopingly supportive, so very worshipping of any given status quo? Does the studio director say jump and they fucking imbed their heads in the ceiling? While Nipplepants Cowell lords over them like an arsey, stuck up demigod, hovering from his red buttoned throne. How can people be so willing to submit to hierarchy, to appraise or condemn from their exalted, cup-holding seats? This series will date badly, to the point of becoming historical reference. Culture, society, economy.

I need to get out more. I think rather it was just a reminder of a simpler, freer time that pissed me off so much. History envy may be a thing now.

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What is happening out there? What is happening to my friends and family and everyone I’ve ever known, outside of re-run land where what we see is no longer there, and always Has Been? What is reality from a different lens?

A welcome respite is not really one, when that breath of fresh air is deepening a chasm. It’s not so much a list of cliches: living for the moment, putting off the inevitable and all that jazz, but that we can enjoy ourselves, the air, the sun, and others with social distancing. We need to learn now how to do it, not later, not too late. 800 people died today in Italy, and a week or two ago they too were sunning themselves on passegiata. Eight hundred in 24 hours.

J came home shortly after in a huff, wiping down the door handles on everything -a blindsided colleague of his had admitted his wife had the lergy, yet had come in 3x to work, plus met clients. Well I suppose, I’ll swap that guilt for the kitchen fire last night. J’s working again today, apparently before any auction the dept heads have to work an unpaid weekend, to put in the extra time and commitment. Illegal surely, but suddenly acceptable in these current climes.

We wound down with two episodes of Drag Race, all bright colours to bitchiness which J is obsessed by, and is infecting us with. Sakura was kicked out last night, rather unfairly I may add, especially in comparison to that rather uninspired Emo-Minelli, who resembles a pretty slug.

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A car in the lot below has a bookshelf tied to its roof, liberally balancing an assortment of heavy boxes, houseplants, coat stands, bench tools and books on top. Looks like a tenant is moving with his father, back to the country where they can hold out longer, perhaps in a castle. It can’t end well, an opener for Final Destination if ever I saw one. Plus I know how it’ll end for the survivors.

I’m bored. As fuck. I took a picture of the flowers outside, just like little old ladies on social media are wont to do. We can pleasure ourselves for hours over this: I think it’s Spring.

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