Diary with an underlying condition
According to the Google doodle, spring is coming. It doesn’t feel like it. Usually, when spring is coming, the warmth, the heat, the bugs, all these annoying things make me rather unhappy. Not today though. Doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything. Tube is shutting down, 40 stations closed, mine is running but for how long? The trains are really getting empty but this is how it should run in this period, get people to work without infecting them.
I always resented shopping, used to get drowsy the minute I stepped into a store, now a great chunk of my time is spent doing it and speculating about it. Where to go, how much I have, for how long will it last, will there still be food in stores in a week’s time? Or, more importantly in a month’s time? Authorities and stores say there will be but they also claimed that we have enough now and that doesn’t seem to be the case so it will presumably be worse once more people fall out of the supply chain. Should I hoard, should a listen to reason? Ahh, to hell with it. I’ll just procrastinate.
Just realized that I hardly ever think of actually getting sick. Would have thought that that is the main concern during an epidemic but it looks that the effects of the virus on society, on the collective human mind are far more damaging and disturbing.
And clearly, I don’t understand the upheaval about social distancing, avoid contact with others, avoid pubs, cinemas and the likes, stay home most of the time. I live like this all the time, welcome to my life. What sort of virus I have that I lived this way? My whole life was a quarantine. Quaranta means 40, I’m 40, it all adds up.
A butterfly with a broken wing is struggling on the platform, nobody notices but me. I know she’s doomed and I feel sorry for her. Can’t blame other’s indifference on the virus though, nobody would care anyway.
Are we all doomed too?
Certainly not. Only in a royal pickle.
Understanding is bigger but patience is shorter. This sentence, even in these times, is a contradiction and a cliché.
Why did I start this diary? And why now? Never appreciated the prospect of having a diary. Maybe because it seems now that even the mundane is worth documenting? Or maybe because I’m alone. Perhaps I suspect that by recording my thoughts I might visualize it better, might understand myself better somehow? I usually suppress my thoughts, not just from everybody else but myself too. Shout and swear when I have a thought I don’t wish to conscientize. Sometimes I feel this process is the root of the Tourette syndrome. But anyhow, don’t know why I’m doing it, but lately I let myself write or create things on the spur of the moment, without analyzing the shit out of it. Trust my instincts. Let them take over. Let’s see where that takes me. Us, if you’re up for it.
Trouble is, I don’t really have anything to jot down. Only one thing worth recounting. Today on the tube I listened to Fire by The Jimi Hendrix Experience about seven times, back to back. This song really got me today. And it’s not just the guitar playing of Hendrix, it’s also the terrific bass lines and the frantic drumming of Mitch Mitchel. The whole experience. You should listen to it too. At least once. Come on, if you’re self-isolating you’ve got the time. I’ve let Jimi take over, you should too.
With all the home offices being set up now some of them could be called “oddice”. Ok, I stumbled upon this word by chance and now I’m trying to find a meaning for it somehow. Maybe I’m manifesting symptoms, fever whatnot. Lack of talent and/or inspiration, is this a coronavirus symptom? Plus my work commute is getting longer, time for my brain to wonder.
What is happening with the charities? Are they still functioning? Do people still give to charity? Or to quote Hank Evans (munching on a stolen ice-cream) “It’s survival at this point!”. This image from “Me, Myself & Irene” comes to mind often nowadays, with all the panic buying and just plain old hysteria. A schizophrenic chomping an ice-cream: It’s survival at this point.
Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories abound, somebody organized this, someone is behind this, for good ole’ fashioned money and power. I love that people believe that they can uncover top secrets by watching videos on YouTube. Strictly hypothetically speaking though, in an Agatha Christie’s ABC murders – spoiler alert – a few murders happen only to disguise one, to make that one part of a greater trend. Maybe this whole pandemic is taking place to hide a single assassination somewhere in the world. But who is that single person? Maybe they are after me? Who is “they”? More importantly, who am I? Gnōthi seauton. Evidently, the only conspiracy here is the one between human stupidity, incompetence, and greed. The consensus about a pandemic of this type for the last 20 years was “when”, not “if”, yet the authorities are thoroughly surprised and unprepared.
Just caught the conclusion of an avengers movie, but it could have been any disaster film and the moral is: those who panic early live, those who panic late die. Those who panic much too early or way too late are lampooned.
This week I’ve been out shopping about 6 times. I couldn’t find much but am not prepared to get up at dawn for a Boxing day/Black Friday routine with the morons that hoard. My secret plan is: crisps. Last Sunday had to fly out somewhere and then fly back to London the same day, spent a lot of time on airports. I sustained myself with a tube of crisps. So it’s a scientifically tried and tested method. There still are a lot of crisps in the shops so I bought some, every time I went into a store, so if I run out of everything else I reckon I can survive a day or two on a tube of crisps. Shipwrecked on the second floor.
Watching less and less news.
It’s past midnight I presume. I have to admit that I feel awkward. Desperate would be a more accurate description. Disoriented. Feel like running away. Just run like Forrest, coast to coast. Or hide. Take a break from all this. But life goes on and you can’t fall behind, no matter how much you want to. Only if you die. Then you’re in the news as a statistic. And my death shouldn’t make the news.
Went through what I wrote last week. It seems that not even a global catastrophe can make a great writer out of me.
Not many people out and about, braving the virus, you could say. But are we braving it? Maybe THEY are, but I’m scared. I’m afraid to show that I’m a coward so I put on a brave face. And I’m fooling everyone. Even myself.
Warning! A coughing man around.
Little obscure interchange station in London. The driver of the train in the station knows that if he waits 30 seconds all of us from the other train just pulling in can board his train. He knows it, he’s looking at us, he sniggers and he closes the doors and drives off. He knows there are 15-minute gaps between trains, it’s cold out here, he doesn’t have a schedule to respect. In fact, he will linger at the next station, which is not an interchange station, to even out the gaps. As I am writing this, on the next train, we are waiting at this very tube station. It seems to me that random acts of cruelty give people much more joy than the tattered random acts of kindness. Kindness is shared more readily on social media, that’s all. We want to believe that it is an essential human trait. But it’s not. Only the need for kindness is.
Plants are cropping up in every inconceivable place, flowers and weeds, and stinging nettles. This one tore through the soil next to a hospital. It’s spring, for the plants it’s business as usual.
I sought to avoid discussing it as there are so many private issues nowadays but will still throw it in here. Just to make everyone aware of the context. I’m living on my own at the moment in London because my wife is back in our home country preparing to give birth to our baby girl in two months’ time. We were hacked apart in a ghastly manner a week ago by authorities at an airport and we don’t know if I can be there for the birth. There, I said it. Nothing is sure now, not for us, not for anybody else. Well, not entirely nothing. There are some certain facts still. We know that she’s going to be there for the birth. We also know that our baby is going to be there too. So two-thirds of our family will definitely be there. That’s something, isn’t it?
New, “strict” rules from the UK government. Advising infrequent trips to shops for food or medicine. After advising against hoarding for weeks. It looks like idiots profit again. Those who piled their trolley with pasta and toilet paper leaving shelves bare and people in despair are the ones giggling now. Sitting on a pile of food braced by barrels of hand soap, they know that they were right and everybody with common sense was wrong. Who’s the moron again?
About 2.5 weeks ago the scientific guidance for the government was that since every person infects about 2.5 other people there is no reason to stop games with tens of thousands of people attending as they will only infect 2.5 people anyway. Plus some people will make 2.5 million pounds in the process. Now they say that this nailed down 2.5 can be halved with social distancing, drastically reducing the number of infected cases. Some might argue that the science was wrong, but in fact, it was the wrong kind of science. That was economy, this is medicine.
No exit strategy anywhere in the world. So naturally, I take it on myself to think of one. If you have a big building to clean you clean it room by room. And won’t go back with muddy shoes in a room that you already cleaned. Something similar should happen here too. Think of the rooms as a country. And almost every country is in some sort of a lockdown, hopefully, this will slow and eventually stop the virus in that country. Once a country is clean the infection can only come from abroad, as we see in the case of China now since they cleared the internal cases. And everybody coming from abroad should be tested. At the border, at the airport, at every entrance point. Quarantine is such an outdated way of dealing with a virus. And keeping them outright is wrong. Plus testing individuals yourself is much safer than relying on them to distance themselves for a fortnight. And much cheaper than placing them in forced quarantine for two weeks. Come to think of it, if every country clears itself then the whole world would be clean of the virus.
By the end of May testing should be so widespread that quarantining people should be finished. Yes, the end of May, you heard me right.
Ran out of hand soap a while ago and there’s none in the shops either. So I added shower gel in the soap dispenser and use that. Analyzed the ingredients, the active ingredients – I call them active ingredients, don’t know what that actually is – looks to be the same. Mostly the flavoring, coloring differs. Funnily enough, there is plenty of shower gel left in the shops. Seems the hoarders didn’t recognize the similarity of the two products. This does say something about the caliber of the hoarders though.
The image of the virus is creeping up in more and more places. Plastered on huge billboards, on the trains and in tube stations, replacing holidays in the sun or favorable odds on games. It has a neat shape, like a ball with feet. Perpetuum mobile. I can almost hear it rolling around, with the sound of tiny feet pattering on the floor. Will they create little toys shaped like covid-19 when all this is over? When my daughter’s tiny feet will be pattering on the floor? Maybe chasing this grim toy. ‘See little one, this is what mommy and daddy worried about while you were chilling, feet up – literally – in mommy’s belly?’ And she would giggle and pick it up, chew on it a bit and throw the pesky virus behind a wardrobe. Kids nowadays.
Or you could break those prongs off, one by one. She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.
Though I claim I don’t think about the sickness that much I just realized that I scrutinize every oddity in my body. Monday I had a negligible discomfort in my chest, something that I ordinarily wouldn’t even notice but this one made me wonder. Frequently drew deep breaths to determine if it feels peculiar. Is it my lung? Is it my own personalized Covid-19? Went to Capri, brought a fridge magnet, went through an epidemic, got a virus. Now I feel a twinge in my chest, on the right side, can’t blame it on the heart. And something aches a bit lower too. Must be my spleen. I don’t even know where that is, but I blame it for this pain.
Apparently two-thirds of victims describe a loss of smell and taste so I am frantically sniffing. So far so good, everything stinks.
I was waiting for an opportune moment since New Year’s Day to crack a joke with “my hindsight is 20/20”. Authorities have given me plenty of chances to say this in only three months, but it doesn’t seem funny anymore.
Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few. Oh, hang on, this was said before. Still, it looks like most people are at home, in self-isolation, and lament about how dreadful it is. Radio stations, websites, virtually the whole virtual world acts like everybody is like that, except the health workers. But that’s not true. There are still a lot of people who need to leave the relative safety of their home and go out to factories, warehouses, stores and whatnot. I am one of those people. In London for the last three days, we’ve been vilified for daring to use the tube. How rude of us that we cram ourselves in the infrequently running trains. The mayor advised people to avoid the early rush hour. Like anybody wants to go to work, on a packed train in the early hours of the morning.
Occasionally I find myself wondering about what will be in a month’s time. Or six months’ time. A year. What will happen with the virus? With society? With the whole world? Like a truly gripping movie, when you’re dying to see the next episode. This time last year it was Game of Thrones, now it’s Game of Crowns. The conclusion of Game of Thrones was disappointing, what about this? If this virus would disappear overnight would that count as a disappointing ending? And undoubtedly I have my eye on a private showing too, our little bundle of joy is making an appearance soon. And that will be a whole new movie. Game of Toddlers.
Just heard on the news, Trump wants to eliminate the virus by Easter. Now, I appreciate that there is an Easter next year too but I suspect he meant this year. Sometimes I think that these populist buffoons like Boris and Trump would fast track the illness through the population in two weeks. Fantastic rate Boris would call this, tremendous speed in the Donald lingo. Yeah, sure, some people would die, a few hundred thousand on the small island and a few million in the land of the free but that is a price they are willing to pay. I mean, only the week and the feeble would die and they are so terrific leaders that they deserve nothing but the best. A nation of superhumans. Wait, where did I hear this before? Keine ahnung. They are looking for herd immunity and, at the moment, without immunity, all they have is a heard. Somethings got to change.
The pressure from TfL (Transport for London) is building on those unruly individuals who dare crowd the trains at 6 o’clock in the morning. How come they don’t realize why are people out and about at that hour? And they are cramming the trains in the afternoon too, but the other way. TfL sent me an email now; they are asking me if my journey was essential this week as they can see from my travel card that I used the trains. The government’s advice is clear, everybody should go to work if they can’t work from home. So we are, and TfL is bullying us for it. And by the way, their limited 15-minute service isn’t happening either. This morning, on the Piccadilly line my train was followed by another in 2 minutes and a third one in 8. They can’t even shut down properly, how can they explain this oversight? Three trains in eight minutes when they claim to run one in fifteen? Do drivers just show up and take the trains out for a spin? Drivers, who are allegedly self-isolating or sick? Monday and Wednesday the Piccadilly line was running a normal service, on Tuesday a limited one. According to TfL’s website, all lines are running only a 15 minutes service. Go figure.
There are rumors that an antibody test will be released soon, in a matter of weeks. Another rumor is that half the UK’s population is or was infected with Covid-19 already. I presume this could be an exit strategy. Check the population, maybe most people already had it. That would be convenient for the government: while they were fooling around, losing time and looking out for their mates’ financial interests the community quietly did the job. And if it turns out you already had it you could buy a T-shirt “I had coronavirus” and you could parade wherever you craved. Or fly whenever you want to.
Funny thing this Tesco on the corner. I recall when it was opened about 5 years ago. Walked past it almost every day since. I seldom went in, only to pick up the odd bread or milk. Never knew where anything was, had to go round and round to find what I was looking around. Now I could guide shoppers myself, indeed, I could draw a map of the store with a detailed list of what is where. First on the left: doughnuts. Been in there every afternoon on my way home for the last couple of weeks. Feel like an antiquities dealer, popping in there to uncover hidden gems. Yes, maybe even a jam jar. Today, as a stroll past the pasta shelf (on the right on the second shelf in the middle) I can’t believe my eyes; there are three packs of spaghetti there! I take one and an outrageous thought occurs to me. Surely not. Inconceivable. Still, I promptly make my way to the shelf in the back. I challenge my senses, have to read the packaging several times to believe it. Even more bizarre then what I’m seeing is what I’m feeling. I feel elation, a buzz inside. I feel happy. Shining light, angels singing, dove wings flapping, yee-haw happiness. Three packs of toilet paper on the shelf. I grab one and leave. The joy is still there but shame is queuing closely behind. How could I be so elated at the sight of toilet paper? Can’t really explain it to me either. Maybe I felt like this is over now, or at least the beginning of the end or some other cliché. Try to come up with some complicated equation, incorporating the supply chain, manufacturers, financial resources of the hoarders and this equation is finally returning a positive value. But this is false too. Probably the shelves are filled throughout the day so everybody can find these sought after items and not only the dawn warriors. Still, I’ll have this burden with me for the rest of my life. Toilet paper got me excited.
Popped into Tesco, the scene of yesterday’s euphoria. There was a notice on the door but as I got closer to read it the automatic door opened. Walked in, went to the back, I realized I require something from the front so I spun around to go back. As I’m making my way back I notice a woman give me a really reproachful look, then a man seems furious with me. The security guy darts over, pointing to the floor and shouting “one way, one way”. I look down, notice arrows taped on the floor. Openings between shelves are cordoned too. Like a well-organized exhibit, we are going on a pre-determined route. And my fellow visitors are giving me dressing down glances like I just broke a rule etched in stone by our wise ancestors. Ah well, all is good, at the heavily fortified self-checkout the security guy moves over, pats me on the shoulder, comes inches to my face and smiles. Yeap, nothing to worry about.
And to echo yesterday’s feeling of this not being over I can confirm that there was no toilet paper today. Nor pasta.
The clap for carers just ended. There’s a hospital a mile down the road, I doubt they heard it. Cheer is good, adequate protective equipment would be better. Now the government is hailing the NHS workers as heroes but in a year’s time, when hopefully this virus will be history, if a nurse will dare to ask for a penny raise she won’t be heard. Or if a hospital will ask for a machine to save lives they will be ignored again, just as they have been for a decade now. Would like to think that after a pandemic like this the official attitude towards healthcare will change, but I’m afraid it won’t. Money is immune to the virus.
Police stopping everyone at train stations, bullying them for daring to go to work. They get much closer than the recommended distance and they do this with hundreds of people. A perfect vehicle for the virus to spread. Stay home, save lives is the slogan but those who have to go out to work and risk their lives are harassed and even infected by those who are supposed to support us. Hypocrites! One of them stopped me too, she was – and I’m just spitballing here – way inside the spitballing distance. Anything she had, I have now and vice versa. This might be something to strive for in an ideal world with shared possessions and whatnot but in today’s encounter, we only swapped viruses. If we had any. We don’t know as we’re not getting tested. You have to die to get tested. Or be a prince. And we’re not either at the moment. But at this rate, a day might come when I’ll be a prince. As for today, we get on with our jobs, not too calm but we carry on nevertheless.
Just realized, there is a group of people who is immune to the disease. They are the weasels. They are the ones who hoarded a humongous amount of essential resources, leaving close to none for others. They are the ones who called in sick a long time ago and been skulking behind closed doors ever since. Loitering and laughing at the news of people struggling for basic resources. I know the virus doesn’t discriminate but would it kill it if it were to incriminate a bit? Only one way to find out and this would be a win-win situation.
Done the normal evening routine, wrote a little, edited some, worked out a bit, quick shower, then I dreamt a smidgen. Then slept, as luck would have it. Woke up this morning seeking to forget the nightmare I had. Everything changed, school was suspended, sport was stopped, life was canceled. It’s OK now, this is still my bed, in the same bedroom, with the same wardrobe, the same curtains. It was just a bad dream, nothing else. It feels distant too. Like a suppressed memory. Then it dawns on me.
Normally people are dissing the government, scrutinizing every decision and being suspicious even when they seem to be acting for the greater good. Then a global catastrophe descends on us and takes everybody by surprise and all of a sudden governments are trusted? Most be a deep-seated Freudian need for a mother, a protecting figure who will hold your hand through the storm. Everything they claim now seems to be taken at face value. Take the issue of masks in the western world. Everybody knows that wearing masks only prevents the wearer from spreading the disease, so it’s considered ineffective. Isn’t that half of the job at hand? Stop the disease from spreading? They are dishing out billions to try to keep everything afloat and are indebting everybody under the guise of helping them. They could use a fraction of these funds to make more masks. Millions and millions of those, so everyone could have them. And make the wearing of these masks mandatory. Make the police reinforce that instead of harassing people going to work. Much more effective way of keeping viruses at bay then sneezing in your sleeve, which is the official advice at the moment. In the face of a mammoth task like this, every minimal gain is a small victory. And the goal should be chiseling away this giant thorn, one splinter at a time.
Maybe this will be the solution going forward against this and other viruses that are sure to come. A utopian world, where everybody has to wear a mask under pain of death. Wear it all the time while away from home. This would put dating in a whole new light. Talk about not judging by the cover and looks don’t matter and that sort of school of thought. And these masks wouldn’t be just some piece of cloth, they should be a proper mask with air filters. You could personalize them of course, we are not savages after all. Make your head look like a mosquito or throw in a Bane mask here, a Darth Vader there. A brave new world.
Feels we were in lockdown forever. And social distancing was always a thing. Strictly 2m from everyone. Keeping a distance to others comes so naturally that I find the sight of two people sitting close offending. I saw four people sitting on a bench in a movie and it seemed abnormal to me. Unnatural. Sacrilege! Then I had this melancholic feeling, like watching a six-horse stagecoach drive by.
Looks like I’ll wrap up this here and post it today so I thought I’ll just clarify the title a bit. I don’t have an underlying condition. Well, not one I know of anyway. I just wanted a title that makes it clear that this diary is about this strange coronavirus period and it seemed to me that these four words encompass these weeks and months the best. The underlying condition of my life, of our life, nowadays is the pandemic. The other title I came up with was “How I survived the coronavirus – or not” but I didn’t quite fancy that as it feels like a working title. Not definite enough.
Click here for the next chapter of the diary
Since I can’t compel you to stay as there are laws against it why don’t you do it on your own? Stick around and read more of my short stories. All of them are amazing. Well, most of them are. OK, honestly, some of them are. Why don’t you decide for yourself? Take a look around –> Here’s a map!
Or, if you’re really adventurous, get off the beaten track and read a random story!