Tag: covid-19

Covid incarceration, Day 2

A postcard from Covidland

Having spent yesterday coming to terms with my new status as a citizen of Covidland, with the help of a little whisky and a little more wine, I’m more at ease with the whole thing now.

I’m spending my confinement in a little house about 100 metres from my sister’s, which works out very well so far. Indeed it’s actually quite pleasant, since it’s only when I go and sit outside the big house to have a socially distanced coffee that I realise there are only a couple of days before Christmas and everyone else is getting stressed. In my own little part of Covidland things are calm and serene.

And I’d like to offer a word of thanks for the movie streaming services. Obviously their algorithms mystify me – the things they recommend for me are nothing like anything I will ever want to watch – but they are a great way of wasting time. I find I’m categorising films by runtime. This is the most important feature of a film in Covidland.

Today’s objectives: get back to the novel, and try to stay off the whisky until 7pm.

Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you some lies

£5.00

Covid on a rock

The guilt of the infected, and Tuareg blues

It seems Omicron is the variety of Covid-19 that finally has my name on it. Yes reader, I am stricken. Well, not so much stricken – I feel absolutely fine – as condemned, having had a positive PCR test.

And I feel guilty, like I must have contravened the rules in some way. I must have let the side down. I’ve always taken the risk of infection seriously, indeed my friends will tell you I have no compunction in telling them when I think they’re not being careful enough, but despite copious testing and the usual precautions, here I am; in quarantine on a tropical island.

In the grand scheme of things it could be worse. I’m being looked after (in a socially distanced and responsible manner) by my sister and her daughters, I want for nothing, the sky is bright and sunny, the temperature is consistently in the low 20s Celsius (it is a bit windy though – could someone do something about that please?), and I have a good supply of booze which I can still taste.

I’m also discovering some different music, thanks to a piece in The Economist. I believe the genre is sometimes called ‘desert blues’, in this case personified by Mdou Moctar on his album ‘Afrique Victime‘ which I recommend.

Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you some lies

£5.00

Absolution

Three years, the blink of an eye, and a return to blogging.

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. It appears it’s been precisely three years since my last confession. Believe it or not the fact that I stumbled upon Toadstool today was purely accidental; if thought provoking. Precisely three years. Astonishing. 

Reading what I wrote three years ago, the person I was then, what interested me, is fascinating. I wonder what it will mean to people in, say, thirty years? Not much I suspect. It’s unlikely to concern me anyhow, since I’ll be worm food long before then.

But what three years they’ve been. One year into my little holiday from this blog there was a sweet little baby virus detected that the World Health Organisation became concerned enough about to name: COronaVIrus Disease 2019. It would be fair to say that COVID-19 has dominated our lives ever since.

Some people have taken exception to this domination, and have responded by simply pretending that it doesn’t exist. It’s the invention of, oh, I don’t know — an international cabal of pedophiles I think. Or Boris Johnson. Or the liberal elite. Whatever.

Anyway, these folk have decided that, since it’s a fake virus, we need not take precautions against it. We need not lock-down, or restrict travel, or wear face masks — and we certainly shouldn’t vaccinate ourselves.

We’ve all learned more that we cared to about viruses in the last few years, but the element of the situation that has struck me is how a virus can only be combatted through concerted community action. Whether an individual gets vaccinated or not is not just of importance to them, but to all of us. To be anti-vac is to be anti-social. Criminally so.

Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you some lies

£5.00

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