C-19

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 44

Friday 1st May 2020

Yesterday was quiz night. It went on for 6hrs. Dear fuckitty. By 3am, quiz over hours ago, we’d swapped tattoos, sharpied each our faces and occasionally undressed. At the end we argued :(. Alcohol is perhaps not the best wingman.

We connected via Google Meet. Zoom apparently forces you to log out and in after 40 mins, whereas GM was unlimited. But the audio was terrible, only really allowing one person to talk at any one time, and a delay for quite a few seconds. Don’t expect punchline responses.

Overall, don’t do GM, go for Zoom, the fuckers have enough money anyway.

Pretty much my highlight of the day.

Have had a migraine every day for a week, I’m wondering if it’s my hair, seems I’m allergic to blonde, despite the compliments. Maybe due to residue from the bleach -the fumes were definitely a trigger at the time, akin to eau de chemical pain.

Meanwhile a select few countries appear to be rolling out plans for opening up again from lockdowns. However the several states that have started in the US are subsequently dealing with outbreaks in factories and businesses that force them to close yet again. The Michigan Capitol was also stormed by armed protesters.

On the shopping foray out I noticed a lot of people getting into arguments, myself included -no less than four. First the Asda (of course) ‘helper’ shouting at us to stay behind the line at self service, after silently watching us approach the entire bank of empty checkouts (I yelled back). Then a man at Lidl who castigated the doorman for stopping the line at him before entry, both facing off. Once inside the woman stomping off after crashing baskets, then at a stop the police being called to some shouty women ejected from the bus (it looked like one had dropped a phone under it and the driver refused to back up). The police looked very persevering.

I think people are starting to hit that stage where they’re getting antsy across the board -skin itching, hair-tearing and needing a fag. There’s something about stress, and the need for humans to take it out on others, to relieve the pressure and just generally be in that negative mindset. We all know it, we all do it. Just the world would so much be a better place without it, if we learn to recognise that behaviour in ourselves and curb it /call it out. The kinda shit that stops wars.

On the subject, the US looks like its garnering support to try and bill China for compensation, from both right and left, with the states of Missouri and Mississippi having filed official claims. 2/3 of the population polled now hold strongly negative views on China -with Trump at the helm it looks likely the entire country will follow.

I’m just wondering if it could end in all out war. Apparently Trump, being a sociopath, repeatedly asked why he couldn’t just nuke North Korea. And when denied then tried to get Seoul to evacuate, as a ruse to scare the North. That’s 25 million people he tried to move out from the world’s 3rd richest city behind Tokyo and New York. Wrecking an economy (half of all South Koreans live there) as a tit-for-tat move for his personal war games.

It’s also reported he’s starting to agitate his relationship with Fix News, who’ve long been bedpartners, sending out texts and burning their Valentine cards. He’s been actively calling for an alternative -and that conveniently looks like the One America News Network (OANN), renowned for pushing conspiracy theories to the nest of the weird that is increasingly Middle America. Word out is he’s also likely to start his own news and entertainment network once out of office. Dear lord. We can imagine what that’s gonna look like, sweeping vistas of his face on Mt Rushmore at every segment, perhaps obliterating Lincoln or Washington -or both given how round it is. The sound of choppers and rockets, the billowing flag, the bimbofied newsreaders, fireworks and lurid graphics. Everything in gold.

It remains where Fox will go with this, blindly, arse-rimmingly loyal, but now running anti-Trump ads. Ah, those golden years…

Today has also been International Workers Day or Mayday, when workers of the world unite, parade or protest, especially on the continent. They have of course been universally banned due to C-19, thus fueling even more sentiment that citizen rights are being curbed as an excuse. Some have been sensible about things.

Germany

Athens

Vienna

Rome

Others less so

USA

Istanbul

Ah, back when we could touch each other, comrades in arms. Workers of the world, unite!

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 42

Tuesday 28th April 2020

‘London is so strange and sad’: the sacked hospitality workers sleeping rough

By Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian 28th April 2020

Homelessness charity says it has ‘never witnessed a more distressing situation’ than during coronavirus crisis

Trafalgar Square at night is silent and almost empty, the usual crowds of noisy tourists visiting London replaced by clusters of homeless people, who wait on the steps of the National Gallery for food to be distributed. But these are not all long-term rough sleepers: central London is seeing a surge of newly unemployed restaurant and pub workers forced to sleep on the streets because they can no longer afford to pay rent.

Rough sleepers like Martin, a recently-sacked chef from Poland, are finding life under lockdown increasingly difficult and dangerous. “London has become so strange and sad. The only people who are out look like they are looking for drugs. There are a lot of crazy people with knives,” he said.

The government says it has housed 90% of those who were sleeping rough nationally by paying for hotel rooms, in an unprecedented drive over the past month to stop the spread of Covid-19, with 5,400 housed including 1,800 in 10 hotels across London. But in the capital, hundreds of tents and cardboard box encampments remain and conditions are getting much harsher for those still – or newly – on the streets.

The city’s day centres have been closed to prevent the transmission of the virus, leaving the homeless with no place to shower or wash their clothes, no toilets and nowhere to access regular food supplies.

The disappearance of commuters means that no one is offering money to the destitute, at a time when most soup kitchens and food banks are not operating, and when the closure of cafes has meant the homeless no longer receive unsold sandwiches at the end of the day. It has been left to a few small groups of volunteers to provide thousands of meals a week.

Although a minority of those who remain sleeping rough are there by choice and have rejected offers of hotel rooms, most of the newly homeless are still hoping for help, and feeling very vulnerable in the deserted backstreets of central London at night.

Martin, 27, worked his way up through London’s kitchens, starting as a porter when he arrived in the UK eight years ago to his most recent job as chef de partie at a fashionable restaurant in east London. He was abruptly sacked shortly before the lockdown began, and had to leave the room he was renting because he had no savings. He has been sleeping on a bit of pavement near Charing Cross station for six weeks. Advertisement

He said he has been told five or six times by outreach workers that someone will call him to organise a room in a hotel. “I waited for a call. I’m still waiting. Maybe the hotels are full,” he said. In the last couple of days his phone battery has in any case gone dead, and with cafes closed there is nowhere to charge it. He finds sleeping on the street unsafe and alarming.

Brian Whiting, a volunteer with the organisation Under One Sky, which started nightly food deliveries at the end of March, said he was disturbed by the number of newly homeless ex-hotel and restaurant staff. “One of the really distressing new things is the hospitality homeless. We’re seeing so many people who were working in kitchens, hotels and pubs until a few weeks ago. They’re so obviously ill-equipped to be out there. The long-term rough sleepers know how it works, but for them it’s very new. They look shell-shocked.”

“I’m still hanging on to my sanity, just,” a man from South Africa, who had been working for five years as a waiter in London, said from the office doorstep where he has slept for the past three weeks since losing his job. He laughed when the volunteer asked him if he was eligible for furlough payments, and said the job came through an agency, and there had been no mention of financial support. Most of those pushed into homelessness had insecure jobs and precarious living arrangements, and no ability to navigate the benefits system or wait for payments.

On the other side of the street, Whiting was dismayed to see Katarina, 34, a recently-sacked waitress from Italy, preparing to sleep again in the doorway of a cocktail bar. “It’s nice to see you, but I wish you weren’t here,” he said, giving food to her. He was concerned about her deteriorating mental health, and suspected she had started taking class A drugs. He has reported her to Streetlink, a charity that connects rough sleepers to support services, a few times, but she remains in the same spot. “She wants to be helped. I don’t understand why she hasn’t been picked up.” https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Aside from the practical difficulties, everyone remarks on the disconcerting silence of the capital.

All the normal sounds and smells are absent – the salty, greasy smells from fast food restaurants, the wafts of coffee from snack bars, stale beer odours rising up from sticky pavements, the stench of rotting food seeping out from kitchen dustbins, even the trails of diesel fumes, have all gone.

There is no noise of people laughing or shouting, no one bellowing into their mobile phones, no sounds of plates clattering at pavement cafes. Bins are not overflowing with coffee cups and discarded newspapers. Even the pigeons seem hungrier, rushing to peck at food parcels placed on the pavement by volunteers, who are instructed to not to hand them to people in order to maintain a 2-metre distance. A woman picking up cigarette butts has to search harder to find anything worth collecting.

Amrit Maan, the owner of the Punjab restaurant in Covent Garden, who has kept his kitchens open to cook around 2,500 meals a week for Under One Sky and a Sikh charity, Nishkam Swat, to distribute, said he was troubled by the emptiness. “You can hear the wind rushing through the streets. It feels so eerie, like waking up in a post-apocalypse movie.”

A welder from Poland, sleeping in the park behind the Savoy, declined food but wanted information about where he could wash; he said he had been unable to have a shower for the past five weeks since arriving in London speculatively to look for work. Whiting left food for a man asleep beneath the stucco columns of the Lyceum Theatre, where the Lion King is no longer showing. “There’s some human excrement. I’m sorry to point it out, but it’s inevitable. Everything is closed,” he said. Advertisement

Alexander, from Romania, who worked as a cleaner and caretaker at a pizza chain until he says he was sacked just before the lockdown, was more experienced at sleeping rough in central London, since he was already unable to afford to rent a room on his minimum wage earnings even when he was in work, and has been living on the streets near Leicester Square for 18 months.

But finding enough cardboard to build himself a sheltered space to sleep in has become much more problematic since all the businesses closed down and stopped throwing away packaging. He spent the past few weeks recording thousands of videos on his phone of deserted London streets, from different vantage points, and posting them on Twitter – providing fascinating pavement-level footage of a city in lockdown – until his phone was stolen.

Adrian Potcki, 24, from Poland, also had his phone stolen while he slept in a restaurant doorway, in St Martin’s Lane, next to the now-empty Coliseum. He was working as a night cleaner for a bank, an agency job, before being sacked when lockdown was announced. He found himself unable to continue paying for his room in a flatshare in north London. “I think the bank closed, and didn’t need cleaning,” he said, but he is unsure, because the agency simply told him the job was over. “I couldn’t pay the rent for my room. I tried to ask the landlord to give me time, but I couldn’t work it out with him,” he said. He was finding his first exposure to homelessness very difficult. “It’s a really tough time. I don’t feel safe.”

He, like most of the other recently-unemployed new rough sleepers interviewed, said he did not want to have his photograph taken. “I don’t want to become a famous person because I’m homeless. This is something I would like to forget,” he said.

Previously Under One Sky has only organised food handouts in the winter, but began providing food for rough sleepers when it became clear that lockdown was causing unprecedented difficulties. “In the eight years since we have been serving this community, we have never witnessed a more distressing situation for those sleeping rough in London than the one unfolding right now,” said Mikkel Juel Iversen, who set up the organisation in 2012.

“Two days after lockdown we went out on the streets to see what the situation was like and we met people who hadn’t eaten for days. There are now large parts of central London where the only people you see are homeless people, drug dealers and police. There is a growing sense of desperation. We have been ramping up numbers every week.”

The newly-homeless also include people like Robin Clark, released last week from prison, and still trying to get his life together. “I can look after myself but it is hard with no showers or toilets.” Lalji Kanbi has been homeless for a while, and is hoping for a hotel room. “The hotels – it’s like a lottery, if you win, you win. I’ve given them my details twice.”

Within the rough sleeper populations there are hierarchies of destitution. There are those like Colin Reynolds, 47, currently sleeping in a tent near the Thames because he was unable to live with his parents during lockdown, who feel they are just about coping. But there are others who look close to death.

About 10 people are sheltering beneath a scaffolded shop front near Charing Cross station (where the underpasses that used to shelter dozens of homeless have been closed off); volunteers said most had long-term drug and alcohol problems. One man was lying in a foetal position on the cold pavement, passed out, watched over by his girlfriend. No one here was hungry, but they accepted water and biscuits for their dogs.

Tom Copley, London’s deputy mayor for housing, acknowledged that there was more work to be done, noting that a count last week had registered 498 people still sleeping rough. “It’s possible that the actual number will be larger, but we’ve been working at this as fast as we can; we’re trying to get more people in every day.” But he remained optimistic that the government drive to get most rough sleepers in for the duration of the lockdown could have positive long-term consequences. “We could transform the way we deal with rough sleeping and homelessness to make sure that the issue is dealt with in the long term,” he said.

There is caution from others involved in the process. “There is no clear exit strategy from central government. Some councils are working to make sure that no one is returned to the streets, but that is very difficult to sustain unless there is a commitment to funding because the cost of that is so beyond what’s available from central government,” one official, working on the national drive to house rough sleepers centrally, said. Advertisement

Jason Moyer-Lee, the general secretary of the Independent Workers of Great Britain Union, which represents agency staff, said more needed to be done for people made homeless after being sacked. “Low-paid service sector jobs, with zero-hour contracts and agency workers, were extremely precarious before this situation, and the fact that, despite the government schemes, some people are being driven into homelessness demonstrates the inadequacy of these schemes. This needs to be sorted now.”

By Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian, 28th April 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/27/london-coronavirus-sacked-hospitality-workers-sleeping-rough?CMP=share_btn_fb&

^This article that appeared yesterday needs to be heard. These people could be us, they are us.

A has been on bike rides past Trafalgar Square recently, and noted how there were quite some daytrippers seated on the steps, just watching the space. No police were moving them on, they appeared well-dressed, just like you and me. Now we realise who they were, the newly homeless.

Be the change you want to see.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 38

Friday 24th April 2020

PUBLIC DISCLAIMER

DO NOT READ THIS LOOK AWAY NOW

If you’re looking for escape this, today, is not where to find it. For never was a story of more woe. Thus following, reality.

Another day another dollar. Scroll. Brush. Scroll. Sleep. Scrub. Lunch. Netflix. Scroll. Sleep. Film. Sleep.

A Friday so I treated myself to takeaway for lunch, which turned out to be the stodgiest fried calamari in the city, like chewing on bread crust. Our local really is the worst, but beggars can’t be reviewers. The night’s film was the other highlight, a tankard of cider to go with An American Werewolf in London, and a good catch up with J while A is getting ever more islanded, which he may be enjoying. It was Orthodox Easter recently, the equivalent to Greek Xmas (regardless if you’re religious or not) which he’s not celebrated, separated from family all these years. We’ll try and do something later maybe, though he’ll typically veto it.

The C-19 death toll in the UK hit 20,000, which is only counting those from hospitals. It’s significantly higher if they tally up those in care homes and residences, so we may be closer double that. This could yield the world’s highest deaths per capita, over current leader Belgium, who counts live fatalities and not just in healthcare. It all depends whether the UK extra deaths are at the 40% or 100% ends of hospital totals.

I’ve been increasingly worried about the ‘biblical famines’ the UN is warning may transpire within months. They will start in the world’s current war zones where infrastructure is broken and farming majorly disrupted by fighting. DPR Congo, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Niger. It’s also unlikely for people or countries to give aid, such is the situation in their own backyard. DPR Congo is a prime example of what a disruption of infrastructure results in. The Second Congo War ended in 2003, where fighting killed an estimated 20,000. However excess deaths continued well after taking 5.4 million by 2008, due to the complete collapse of food industries, healthcare and transportation networks.

Likewise the UN sanctions before the Gulf War against Iraq, that resulted in an extra million deaths (560,000 of them being children). They targetted the populace not the regime as hostage -banning food, water, medicines, medical equipment, water purifiers, even baby food and milk powder. And lasted for 12 years after the US and UK repeatedly blocked UN attempts to end them, plus three successive UN Generals resigning in protest. When Ambassador Madeleine Albright was told in interview that half a million children had died, she infamously said: “we think the price was worth it”.

But would that even be worthy of a headline in our lifestyles?

This scenario is even keeping me up at night, and becoming one of the things when waking. It’s not normal for me, and I doubt for anyone. When we hear of untold horror and misery abroad we may well shed a tear at the news report, given it’s sufficiently graphic enough. But no one really takes it home with them, into their daily thoughts and fears and dreams. The only time I’ve seen any kind of widely depressionable story has been for the death of a single person, Princess Diana. Forget the 250,000 killed in the 2004 tsunami, or the additional million in Iraq following invasion, it’s the death of a celeb people grew up with, who felt they personally knew that got people crying beyond the screentime. Witness footage of her funeral, as thousands of mourners spontaneously burst into tears as her cortège rolls by (one of them myself). It’s like something out of North Korea.

On that subject Kim Jong Un, rotund dictator of said country is currently MIA on the global stage, with rumours thick and fast that he may be dying after heart surgery. All eyes now on his sister who will likely take the reins if he expires. Now, I’m no fan of an autocratic regime that has in the past kidnapped random South Koreans, taken down passenger planes and operates internment camps, but the South Koreans are just as gung-ho, trigger-happy and belligerent. Just as liable to be the first to shell the opposite side, shoot over a prow, or hold mass army drills on the border, in a giant show of two fingers against the horizon.

The US is also increasingly seen as playing both sides off each other -the situation allows them to keep foreign bases on the peninsular and Japan, thus controlling the north Pacific and hemming in China. Notably George Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech even after NoKo had agreed to dismantle it’s nuclear capabilities, that subsequently made Kim restart them in defence, and defiance. Or the abrupt ending of the 2018 thaw (both sides had even competed as the same country in the Olympics) when the US held mass joint-training exercises, thus restarting the arms race.

South Korea is also quite propagandic and equally dogmatic. All the lurid tabloid tales -on the uncles being thrown to bloodthirsty hounds (in fact he was shot by firing squad, following an assassination attempt he’d commandeered) or execution of former girlfriends for prostitution (she turned up a year later as a newscaster), of the Pyongyang Metro being fake, and that everyone on the streets are actors (thousands of them) -are all sourced from the south, via media agencies citing ‘cross-border sources’.

In fact South Korea is studied by sociologists as a prime example of how propaganda is just as rampant in democracies, fueled by complicit media agencies as well as their avid audiences. One only has to look at the partisan politicking in the US (**cough Fox News /cough**), or the Rupert Murdoch/ AN owned press at large here (**Daily Mail, Sun**).

When Kim Jong-Il died NoKo released its usual dreary propaganda to the world, showcasing endless streams of people distraught at his death (the kind who’d throw themselves on the coffin as it gets lowered), of course the world took this as how very indoctrinated the North Koreans were. Then people started pointing out that in the background, no one was crying, only those in front facing the lens were suddenly found to be apoplectic with grief.

Thus SoKo subsequently followed up with lurid tales of everyone who didn’t cry getting 6 months free stay in a labour camp.

North Koreans Face Six Months Labour Camp for Not Crying at Kim Jong-il’s Death

Thus parroted by the rest of the world:

Punished for not crying: Thousands of North Koreans face labour camps for not being upset enough

At the end of the day North Korea is a study on journalistic integrity and standards. Almost no stories coming from there can be fact-checked or corroborated… but neither can anyone call them out on it if they decide to go to print. Thus much of the world just ends up reporting it anyway, straight from South Korean tabloids, even if you’re a respected broadsheet. Which is telling -it fits with the narrative.

It’s also telling which papers are reporting the dictator’s death (Daily Express, Sun, NY Post), as rumour-milled via a Chinese social network, and which are waiting for official confirmation, or at least putting a question mark in the headline.

The fat twat.

And talking of convenience, where for example is the coverage or navel-gazing (surely one story?) for the current human tragedies of the US/UK-backed sanctions: Iran, Venezuela, and of course North Korea? Despite sitting on vast commodities or one of the leading science powers, they’ve been denied medical equipment and ICU’s they could otherwise have afforded easily. We even cover Iran building mass graves, and tut at their imagined cover up of figures, without nary a mention of our role in it. The latest humanitarian crisis on the now closed Colombian-Venezuelan border likewise ignored, as has been the US calls for the country to hold new elections (read: exit President Maduro) in order to allow the meds in, plus access to the world’s largest oil reserves. Sounds a lot like a ransom, and exploiting a tragedy to do so.

It appears this global crisis is only spewing division and geopolitical rivalry, as opposed to the Bennetton ad we all imagined a shared experience would engender, and cooperation between states. That democracy is really a veil over ignorance, selfishness and prejudice, if not a platform for it. Witness country after country stealing vital equipment before being sent off, or even en route, and ignoring all calls of aid from its neighbours. See the comments following any, ANY news story.

How depressing, but it had to catch up some time. The air weighs heavy so it’s time to take a walk, chew some cud and maybe take in an 80s film, back when it was all so much simpler. Life is but a scroll away.

Oh and the Great Orange Dolphin just suggested we all inject bleach and sunlight into our lives and limbs, to vanquish the plague. His wranglers are now desperately attempting to shut him the fuck up and wind down his daily updates. Perhaps throwing playballs in the other room and bustling him out -today’s was the shortest yet, at 22 mins, rather than the hours he normally courts. This I think would be a mistake.

As a great woman once said, I’m not saying kill all stupid people, just get rid of the Health & Safety signs and let the problem sort itself out.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 37

Thursday 23rd April 2020

Today will be a new day, a new me. Oh yes.

Threw myself and J a picnic on the lawn outside, after having taken the recycling out and noticing the surrounds -the weather nigh on perfect: cool, clear, golden. All the new leaves brilliantly green, creating wavering glades and dells.

However when we ventured out carrying everything unfeasibly, they were watering the lawns, as if nefariously seen our planning. In the end we managed to bag a spot in the corner -ours a rare gated estate, normally banned in London. Then settling down for crudités (which to us non-French mortals means raw veg and dips), followed by a spell lying in the sun, pillowed and reading. Armchair travelling: India and Russia.

All was light and blue skies, and nary a care in the world. A lot of the residents were doing the same, each in small huddles respectfully distant, occupying every patch of grass and nurturing an almost smug relaxation.

Then the call from work.

I’m being furloughed, but on full pay, and due to how crowded the museum gets we’re looking at June, possibly as late as October. A long wait though really can’t complain with so many people out there without the option, nor income. I’m free to find another job for the time being, for my new dependents.

It all coming back. The outside world, battling beyond the gates.

There’s a controversial new meme going round following another Redditt viral vid. A bunch of women castigating a respectful, patient cop for closing a park playground in the US, till he subsequently arrests one of them (she’d offered up her hands), thus birthing a new martyr for the right. Likewise, it all runs in with the militant anti-vaxxers, some of whom are now protesting outside another policeman’s house following the similar arrest of a rebellious ‘playdate party’ organiser.

So the meme is Karen. Karen has a distinctive bob haircut, and is the type of mumsy woman who complains a lot to service staff; she always wants to speak to a manager and is outraged at minor things. It basically screams entitlement and/ or bullying. It started out as a meme quite a few years ago, and was initially nameless.

2017:

However today she’s been updated -the current sideshow for Karen is subtly based on race (as is everything in the US), and age, and income. She’s White and starting out or is in her middle ages (‘right, Karen’ is the new ‘ok, Boomer’ riposte for Generation X). She’s churchgoing, anti-vax and likes to target ethnic minority servers. Also conspicuously middle class, with a predilection to sticking up that Laugh Love Life sign in her living room.

2020:

This comes on a recent rash of women caught hassling other park users (even calling the police or impersonating them) for nothing more than hanging out there and being people of colour. Although it’s happened since time immemorial, this time round people have been filming it and using the hashtags, eg #SwingsetSusan.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woman-dubbed-swing-set-susan-charged-impersonating-officer-chase-hispanic-n1071356

As a lifelong member of service personnel I can definitely attest to the existence of ‘Karens’, that there is a certain ilk of middle-aged woman (more so than other age groups and of men) who will be cause of outstanding drama and revel in it, knowing full well her rights to do so. Often setting traps (I don’t have a receipt -your staff never gave me one!), knowingly committing fraud (well that’s the pricetag right there so you have to honour it!) or demanding special treatment above others (I’m only buying one thing!), all of which are the three most common confrontations. So I do look on with a certain joy that she’s finally been called out. That the starched yet cartoonish Fox-News-presenter-look has been exposed as ridiculous rather than venerated.

However, look a bit closer and the meme is now transforming. The Redditt page is indeed drawing up sub-Redditts on people’s experiences, though it’s obvious many are just dealing with your classic narcissists and sociopaths. So why the gender specifics? It appears this meme is finding fuel from your standard misogyny -it’s not enough that you call out bad people, but increasingly their gender adds to their damnation. There is a long list of contributors who are embittered ex-partners and divorcés, and only a handful who put forward ‘he-Karens’.

Thus Karen is not just entitled, sociopathic, White, middle class and sporting a bob anymore, but also suburban, anti-vax, racist, slutty (but pretending otherwise) and divorced and lying to the judge. Some part of me thinks you gotta laugh, that some people are getting their long-neglected comeuppance. Another part thanks god I’m not called Karen.

Surely there needs to be a male counterpart. Once again from twenty years customer service experience I can also attest -the belligerent, arrogant, dismissive male, also tending towards the upper middle class, middle aged, and a big fan of bullying young women. Who complains hoarsely, talks over anyone and if not getting his way, leaves with a barrage of insults, foiled with swearing or thrown money/ products. Also very liable to change behaviour when ‘escalated’ to another man, and transforming into a vision of studious gentility and grace, often with a quiet aside about the atrocious young girl we employ.

We can call him Jeremy. He wears a suit or Dad jeans, is plump, red in the face (casual alcoholism), greying, balding and posh speaking.

He has a small, kept woman, who is trying to divorce him first chance she gets or at least outlive the bastard (perhaps accidentally, repeatedly, reversing over him in his double garage). He drives a saloon, or tank and has three kids in private schooling, and a dominatrix mistress in Colchester. Likes shooting wildlife, Thatcherite, casually racist and a businessman. Has a cottage in France and a dog called Gravel, or Gavel.

These are perhaps the memes in life we encounter in our everyday, in certain fields. On one hand that public recognition can curb the behaviour, on the other it’s obvious everything ever could become a meme -the chav, the soccer mom, the footballer’s wife, the gangsta, the SJW, the bag lady, the A-Gay, the emo, the Guido, the hipster, the nerd, the geek, the stoner, the trailer park trash, the hillbilly, the Essex girl. The pigeon feeder.

The Chinese tourist, the Brit Abroad, the Florida Man, the WASP, the Chelsea fan, the Sloane Ranger, the Scouser, the trainspotter, the truck driver, the art student, the tree hugger, the banker, the lawyer. It’s basically an acceptable form of social stereotype.

Think of your job title. And add in your name. Now use that as an insult, like you’re in Mean Girls.

“Okay Paul, Accounts Executive.”

“Tara, you… Commercial BID WRITER.”

“Right, Louise, Retail. Manager.”

“Sure Sarah, Multinational Cee. Eee. Oh.”

“Yeah Mo, CHARITY Worker.”

“Fine Praveen, Front. Line. NURSE”

Perhaps there is truth in parts, that a certain look or upbringing follows/ imparts a certain behaviour. When wearing a smart suit and working in finance you do become that much more forward. When feeling indentured or down, those dark clothes suddenly appeal. When feeling empowered / masculated does the bob haircut -halfway between male and female -embody your mindset?

This is what makes a culture, we just got to remember it’s a sum of parts. In the same way we look at our own countries/ schools/ workplaces as having all representative personality types, it applies to every tranche. The same creatives, jokers, rebels, intellectuals, artists, nerds, hipsters, hippies, emos and jocks whether you’re Inuit or Amish. A Black feminist lesbian or a Welsh male rugby player, a tribal hunter in the Congo or a factory worker in Sichuan. Just don’t all get the same haircut.

I think of it distantly now, that other life when we were in proximity.

I am now attempting to watch I Am That Pretty Little Thing That Lives In The House.

It is like a beautiful rendition of my nightmare the other morning, slow, unsettling and domestic, with a carer spending her days in isolation. I’ve only seen the first 20 mins as Netflix has gone kaput yet again, but it’s promising, although J who’s seen it swears nothing’s gonna happen and it’s a bit shit. It is as if life is imitating art.

There perhaps should be a meme about this, us, the stay-at-homers like drones watching Netflixian propaganda, unsullied by wind or sun to give off a cold, screen-like glow. Monosyllabic, licking out jam jars, crisp packets and greasy keyboards, dressed in our all-day finery of underwear or bathrobe

We can call ourselves Dave, and/ or Emma. A heteronormative couple, childless, furloughed, avid readers of the rolling news. Trump-haters, Harry Potter/ GOT fans, iPhone subscribers and pizza lovers. We have an old cat called Tuppence, or Teapot, adore re-runs of Peep Show and The Office and worry about the mortgage, airline vouchers, Waitrose stocks of smoked salmon, our mums and when all this horridness will just blow over so we can go on holiday again. And like all memes, we wear ourselves with pride. Redditt bitches, bring it on.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 36

Wednesday 22nd April 2020

So there was a knocking on the door, and somehow or other I was through it in a blink and into a darkened hall. On the stairs a woman, draped in well, drapey things. All operatically b&w, lightning flashing, then I recognised her from the film I saw last night (the magnetic, bitchy love interest from the party, the one who got vommed on), and suddenly she was no longer The Grey Lady, more goth chick having a chat.

And of course I went through the usual BS imminent victims do in any Hollywood cliché, that of wandering blindly from room to room and trying to ignore the skittering sounds.

Kept seeing reflections that didn’t marry with reality. Till finally it was the long mirror by the bed, in which I caught a glimpse of a figure passing.

The more I looked, approaching, the more it materialised in the image -that of an armchair, and in it seated a figure. When I turned to the seat for real, it only had drapes over it, but in the reflection however, a man staring back, caped in the blankets.

I think a dream is like the nth dimension, where we know without really seeing. As if inhabiting with black fingers the space, projecting in real time, being each whoever speaks. A black hole between planes.

That is of course the essence of a night terror, culminating in the knowing of abject fear -actually being that fear as if falling from height yet never reaching bottom.

I managed to shout ‘holp’, aka HELP -one’s attempt to get woken but numbed by drugged limbs and an implausible paralysis, lying there and just taking it. When I did finally come to, my eyes already open, were staring at the long mirror opposite.

Just as bad: the door open a crack, holding a seething black and emanating another’s presence, even with the light on.

OMG needed to pee so bad, but the corridor lined with antique mirrors thanks to J’s silver dealership. There’s so much mythology associated with one’s reflection, from urban myths /movies such as Candyman (say his name seven times while looking and he’ll appear), to the old tale that if you look into the mirror at night you’ll see the Devil, notably yourself looking back.

Now, I’m not the superstitious type, and neither am I a small child needing a teddy. But dearie me, that place in the brain after dreams does send out raw feelers. To the darkest of memories and weirdest of fears -it makes you believe in all manner of shit. Forget the sleep paralysis/ disorder, the apnea, the hypnea, that perhaps your subconscious is in terror to wake you from the fact you’ve stopped breathing, and is manifesting as a nightmare. That the paralysis is normal, to stop you acting out as you dream. It’s just that everything dark now holds a shape within.

In the end matter overcame mind and just did it, prancing down the hall like a jittery Pan. So that was me done till daylight, and the setting up of my day.

-To become painfully lazified for the rest and pooling into shadow. I promised to just go with the flow. And not to beat myself up about it either. So no writing (just see yesterday’s entry), no cooking, no shopping, or walks, or bike rides, or emails, or worrying about no cooking, no shopping, or walks, or bike rides, or emails. Just lying in bed scrolling, watching TV. I barely made it out the bedroom, the day settling like a miasma, fitting for the time period.

And felt just as shit at the end of the day. I hope that that’s it now, got it out the system.

As night falls I count my worries, as if checking for wounds -26 of them, assigned to tabs that must be closed down slowly in order to sleep. Many of them chasing refunds from the 3 holidays canceled, the furloughing that work will likely instate tomorrow, the family, the flat. These threads of bureaucracy becoming binding, that slowly make you sink. Oh the fucking horror.

Small weights add up, the curtains never open, nor close. And something is always behind, beyond, and festering. I sometimes think there’s a certain pitch between reality and imagination, sleep and awake, looking and not looking that makes everything possible, and what you put into it changes that path on the multiverse.

I feel if I stare into that reflection, at that certain time and pitch, and recognise that kernel as truth… the nightmare will become real. The insanity will become sanity -they say if you don’t wake up in time you go mad.

-What is it that we fear then? That it’s real, or it isn’t? The darkest part of the mind may not be so black and hidden, but grey, inconsistent as any ghost.

There is a horror in realising you’re mad, or unreal. In realising that reality has betrayed you to become surreal. And always had been thus -the new here and now.

The world projects all too often that we are to be warm and safe, with entire societies set up to never reveal what lies beneath. But when that vast masking cracks, or fall entirely we find ourselves lost as to be falling.

J found this the other day in the lawns:

Perhaps we need not fear the unknown -unless we know what’s really out there lurking in our collective subconscious – and that what we find within, in privated moments and dream selves, can manifest darkly in everyone else.

This is why so many share The Shadow, the selfsame one sitting on our chest, or standing by the bed and glowering a presence. This same dream since time immemorial that is merely us, the demon looking back.

In the same ways numbers become meaningless, and stories ever more distant (so long as we’re not experiencing it ourselves), lies the same fear of abandonment by an impervious people who do nothing but watch.

Thus the monstrosity may not be what we do but what we don’t. And through the glass darkly each night, the mollycoddling binds fall away to reveal a truer truth. When we allow ourselves to look at The Presence, that Face and drink it in.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 34

Monday 20th April 2020

I sent the book off today to two agents, feeling myself dandy for doing so too. Then had another long trek, this time into Clapham via the Common. In terms of rating London’s green spaces there’s not a lot to say about it, it would maybe score 2 or 3 out of 10. It’s first and foremost a common, delineating itself from parkland by being relatively open ground and unplanted. No acres of flowerbeds, no landscaping a hill to the right or left, though there are two pretty ponds, and a windswept one. Everything is left as nature intended, kind of, with a few statues here and there and a playground/ outdoor gym/ skatepark. The scraggly collection of woods on one side is pretty scant in terms of biodiversity, being mostly grass and small, young bushes, studded with condoms. It is of course a favoured dogging site, almost legendary, though these days populated by the kind who cannot pull online or via an app (read: old, unsexy and unkempt, possibly murderous).

The rest of the park is plain – large empty spaces of green or gravel, popular for sports aficionados and event staging. It is dare I say it, boring. The Attenborough equivalent of an Asda carpark. Inside the ponds we saw a dead and rotting fish ( a fat, white carp), studiously being ignored by a heron, and two potatoes, possibly jettisoned by fleeing BBQers. The fun police were out in force, cruising ominously along the running paths and stop-searching drivers for evidence of commuting or shopping.

I did spot an interesting tree, as pique among dross. Very Easter. J said it may have been diseased (apt). I’m pretty sure if I draw a 5 pointed star on its arse and lay out a few candles, we could start worshipping it.

Then it was Clapham Old Town, a nondescript part of London tarted up into prettiness. Although every building is not that old it’s been done up as if they are, even the 20th Century additions, complete with flowerboxes and fabric awnings, scrubbed brick and pistachio paint. This is what all of London could look like with a spirited makeover, given this end was also traditionally poor throughout the centuries. Mostly residential but gracing a tiny corner of shops and businesses, almost all closed but for the delis, organic cafes, bakeries and ultra-expensive grocers each with a queue (how very Clapham). Sainsbury’s had a very long line outside, Tesco directly opposite nary a soul, not even a guard. UK has a curious hierarchy of supermarkets/ grocers not always evident abroad, from the department store emporia at one end who deliver in 1920s horse-driven cabs, to the panic buying, zombie-baiting megamalls at the other:

Fortnum & Mason -not as bombastic a building as the one below, but smaller and thus more elite than the Gucci brigade

2. Harrods -formerly top spot but they lost their royal charter ever since Dodi, son of arms dealer Fayed, got into a car with Diana and it went tiddlywinks in tunnel in Paris with a drunken driver and chasing paps and they all died. It’s now owned by the Qatari royals.

3. Harvey Nicks (do they even do food?). Fell a few spots after being bought by a Hong Kong billionaire with ideas on turning it into a global brand. His opening of a second branch ended centuries of exclusivity and backfired, despite all northerners now considering Leeds the ‘Knightsbridge of the North’. Which is like calling Slough the Vatican because it has an RC charity shop.

4. Selfridges -the best imo, far more choice, and surprisingly, deceptively affordable. A big HBO series has elevated it some more, though dangerously, scandalously courting tourism

5. M&S -can be swapped with below. Only does it’s own exclusive lines, and award winning adverts of food in slow-mo.

6. Waitrose -far more choice than above, lovely staff but with brighter, less leafy lighting.

7. Sainsbury’s -can be slightly naff, all the usual brands but pricier for no reason whatsoever.

8. Tesco -naff, but all the usual brands.

9. Morrisons -normally bottom of the pile. Wide use of the cheapest sugar, the offcuts, the sweatshops, despite rebranding.

10. Asda -the new low, having seen the kind of supermarket sweep and panic at the disco behaviour relevant to these climes. Part of the Wal-Mart fam (edit** soon to be sold to Indian billionaires during this pandemic).

Once home I was face-down and asleep, as is usual nowadays whenever popping out, as if the toll of sunshine and fresh air weighs upon the shoulders, along with possible contagion. Out of it for hours. Then cut my hair, and joined a group chat with some buddies via Zoom, the place to be this season. Despite all that had a low mood, surly even. A part of me is constantly worrying, one housemate becoming a hermit, the other needing contact, and myself trying to provide both or neither.

I miss going out to have a meal, going shopping, going on holiday. The NYC trip for May is now a no-go (had that coming) as BA has finally canceled the flights; the supremely dodgy travel company wanting to charge us £150 for an admin fee still and that’s eating me up. Canceled the Airbnb – with now over £400 in vouchers to use. Also found out the museum is looking at July or even as late as October for a reopening, so I’ll likely be furloughed.

Across the US people have been demonstrating to reopen the country, and get rid of lockdown, plus the usual barmy anti-vaxxers. There’s been a counter-demo by two fearless healthcare workers, dressed in their scrubs, standing in the street to block the traffic from joining. In the face of hooting car horns and a woman leaning out and yelling at them to go to China if they wanted communism, and that it wasn’t fair they got to work and she didn’t.

Health care workers stand in the street as a counter-protest to those demanding the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver

Democracy is being given a bad name. This pandemic is showing the flaws in the system, when ignorance is given equal standing as information, when the leader himself goads it as a device to keep himself in power. We kinda forget Nazism was a democratic rise.

This is why we need constitutions, as we the people can’t be trusted, as history has shown. Of course we’re going to vote for ourselves, of course we’ll step over others to get to the top, of course we’re going to lie, cheat and steal to furnish our bigger piece of the pie. I do wonder why giving freedom so often means giving free rein to abject competition.

I’ve looked at the news fora for the first time in a while today, and the comments are starting to die down, less demands for lynching, less arguing, insults and vitriol. It appears we’re getting used to the new normal. C-19 may be on the verge of getting boring.

Another 823 died last night in UK hospitals. Deaths in general have doubled -a 20 year high, added to by unconfirmed virus fatalities and a great deal of people avoiding hospital treatment for fear of cross-contamination, or thinking they’re overloaded (the reality is that beds are now at record vacancies due to this). They’re hoping the worst is over despite the high tallies. The city remains silent to the core.

News of vaccine trials to start next week are encouraging, though we’re still a good year off from being able to medicate it should it succeed. The orders for more tests and PPE are being stymied by bureaucracy, the govt promising new supplies from Turkey for the following day, then realising they’d forgotten to formally request it even. At times like this paperwork fuckups can kill, on a huge scale.

The night’s film was Fantasy Island. I wouldn’t call it run-of-the-mill despite using the usual jump scares and idiot decision-making (let’s split up! Let’s stage an argument now!) from the dwindling arsenal of Hollywood storytelling. The film’s premise is each vacationer gets to live out a fantasy, but of course one that turns sour and increasingly deadly. There’s a refreshing lack of gore and overt sadism, and an interesting landscape of a storyline (SPOILER) in which one finds the disparate scenarios for each guest are related. Large plotholes withstanding it was an interesting enough watch, and a big part of my life for 2 hrs, becoming the highlight of my day.

I need to get out more. Maybe all this was just some numpter wanting a bit of me-time.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 32

Saturday 18th April

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If a Southerner says:

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

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

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

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

“Not bad” = quite good/ very good

“(pause)…lovely” = shit/ ugly

“fine” = shit / ugly

“interesting” = shit /ugly

“I’ll definitely” = I probably won’t

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

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

“How’re you?” = I don’t care

“I’m fine” = I know you don’t care

“I’m fine. No really!” = fuck you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“sorry to hear” = I really don’t care

__(nothing) = I hate you

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

__(nothing) = 42

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

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 30

Thursday 16th April 2020

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

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

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

This is my life at the mo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 28

Tuesday 14th April 2020

The horror movie checklist:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pounding, vomitous migraine from disrupted sleep plus no food.

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

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

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

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

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

In the news.

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

Yesterday

Tomorrow

A Journal of the Plague Year Day 24

Friday 10th April 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(armless? breeding Pomeranians? Dave?)

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

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

Jake Gyllenhaal crushed Tom Hollands handstand challenge…

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

NASA astronauts estranged wife charged with lying about claim…

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

A Florida man dies days after hundreds exposed to…

(radiation? Trump briefing? his TikTok vid?)

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

(mice? Floridians? photo ops?)

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

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

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

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

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