This Thorny Crown

Uneasy, like Sunday morning

I t’s been over two weeks since my last walk home. The streets were fairly empty with just enough mundane activity to give the feeling of a Sunday morning prior to the bars and terraces opening. It was a Thursday I think but that means very little now. Every day since has the feel of a Sunday morning that goes on all day.

A few remaining tourists whirr past on Segways like post modern tumbleweed. They turn a corner and I follow a short distance behind half expecting to see Schrödinger’s overturned shopping trolley or dog trailing its lead. Relieved to see the tourists making their way up the hill unhindered by the staples of zombie apocalypse films, I traipse onward and upward after them into the unknown.

The repetitious and mundane are by nature unlikely to declare anything as the last time; retrospect is the eyepiece for that kind of clarity.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

The real time advance of the virus picks up speed with every news bulletin and the once distant war waged on distant peoples has marched fleet of foot into our reality. A globalised world paving the way for its own misery, a master of ceremonies enthralled by his own clumsy party tricks as the negligent and complicit all narrowly focused on feeding the machine.  The door was wide open, no wooden horse necessary. It might have come from bats but it took to cruise ships and jet liners in a single stride. Borders close, offices and factories too as we follow suit locking our front doors. What can’t be done online can’t be done and the world without internet seems ever less imaginable.

Within the hollow crown

Safely esconced behind closed doors and the TV news, our refuges are made sturdier and novelty becomes routine. A few days pass before I engage in a desperate search for the ‘off’ setting for mobile notifications; the constant pinging no longer brings any pleasure. The initial delight at hearing from friends is lost as most contact is reduced to forwarded meme after meme after damned meme. Videos; no more please, I’ll confess to almost anything before watching another chick with dick ‘surprise’. Guilty of the initial enthusiasm for Whatsapp memes, I give myself a stern talking to and plead momentary insanity. Not ready to throw in the towel and curl up foetus like in the corner, I resist. ‘Take the power back’ by Rage Against the Machine runs through the mind as my finger floats over a choice of silencing contacts for 1 day, 1 week or 1 year. I select a week; it can always be extended now I’ve mastered this control. This and a bit of mindfulness should keep me on the straight and narrow but then Twitter grabs my attention.

She wins with 254 likes to my paltry 10 at the time of writing. The outcome was never in doubt but my little band of supporters has earned my undying gratitude. Sticking up for the little guy is the time honoured fight against tyranny. Hers on the other hand, appear to dance to any old tune feeding on the titbits thrown their way. I withdraw to the sounds of Twitter notifications insisting it would only take another 746 cuts to finish me.

I retire to a safe distance away from my computer and contemplete the next few weeks. A couple of recent hangovers are evidence, were any needed, that a whole bottle of wine is beyond me these days and it makes isolation seem bleaker; it may mean cheaper wine and perhaps some wastage but no, that’s a bridge too far. I may need this body to fight off the virus and had best take heed. A few years back so much free time spent with a well stocked wine fridge would have been a challenge to relish. Today, it taunts me knowing I will cave in on a semi-regular basis. Some days may be lost.

My kingdom for a horse

Extroverts I read will suffer more in this enforced period of isolation whilst those on a sliding scale of introvertedness may pay a lesser price and feel quite at home at home. I can’t complain but internet dating highlights the open ended nature of this quarantine like an extreme Lent imposed on the unreligious and religious alike. I pine quietly to myself and clean the flat for the third time this week. It gleams.

Crowning glory

The new Kings and Queens of the moment are those of the conditional perfect tense. Experts in retrospectively pointing out everything that has been done wrong, keen to advise on how things should and could have been done otherwise whilst adding what they would have done as the government incomprehensibly mismanages things. It is reassuring to know at any future occurrence of this sort, we can ignore medical, scientific and logistics specialists in favour of that bloke who knows a guy who overheard someone once…

Off with their heads

Among the sweetest of silences to emerge from the past number of weeks is that of the anti-vaxxer movement. Ludicrously ill-informed and dangerous at the best of times, they are conspicuous by their absence. If ever there was a moment for them to shine and prove their made up on the spot nonsense about natural immunity, it is surely now.

Full of vim and strengthened by belief in their own self delusion and a miraculous mix of the right antibodies, they should be setting up and staffing field hospitals across the world. Perhaps they lack the courage of their convictions and fear the Grim Reaper may come scything through their communities. Sense should prevail but it won’t, it never does. Far too much invested in squaring circles to give up now.

Preppers and others banking on some collapse in society and the food supply have probably started to ration out their supplies and getting little ‘I godamm knew it’ stiffies as they fuel up the generator and shop for armaments. The military grade weaponary they pick up is no threat to the persistant dry cough they also picked up shopping that afternoon.

Without the usual destruction attendant with disasters, this one is playing out on every conceivable level.  It promises to be a weird few months followed by some upheaval in how things are done and that may yet be to our advantage if we are clear headed. History is all about survival and it shows a vast array of possibilities. Tread carefully and remember; nobody knows when they do something mundane for the last time that it is the last time.

To be continued if only as a periodic sign of life…