Three, three

Apparently a third of the population is self isolating right around the world.  An extraordinary thought.     Meanwhile three most conspicuous people in the country right now have also had to go into self isolation as they have the virus (or symptoms) , Boris Johnson,  Matt Hancock, Health Minister! and the Chief Medical Officer,  Chris Whitty.

Yet, weirdly my normal little isolated world goes on, lots of TV, lots of Netflix, cooking, knitting, gardening, tidying, singing, dancing.  Just now so many other people are doing it too and there are whole magazine TV programmes about them doing it and how they are doing it.  My signal though when teaching is definitely worse than it was, as so many people are online,  so work being impacted.  I have several students from Italy,  where the heart break goes on, in China people are much more optimistic, children might go back to school in April, and students in Russia are self isolating, but they tell me that there is no virus in their country.   More worryingly, and perhaps not surprisingly in Hong Kong where people have been returning to a more normal life, the virus has begun to return too.

Meanwhile although some of the actions of the government have been questionable,  e.g. not stocking up on the resources that it would be clear that we would need,  however, they have achieved something I had not thought that they could achieve,  they are creating extra beds in exhibition centres around the country and they have managed to recruit back many old doctors and nurses and this week they launched through an app,  a volunteer scheme to run through the whole country.     The potential for change is so there,  I hope some of it is lasting.    I can see a scenario where there might be social unrest if this thing goes on for long, but things like the volunteer scheme also suggest an opposite trend, towards a  more inclusive society.    Apparently in South Africa there have been riots, but we also know in the UK it took us a bit of time to adjust, we still are, but we are getting there. And yet,  in this world where I fear to almost go out, there are a legion of people going to work. Hard to get one's head around all this.

Getting ready  to face the outisde world in my Austen model face mask!

The grim reaper

I taught a student the expression the grim reaper today.   I talk to students in the eye of the storm in Italy and for months I have engaged with students sitting it out patiently in China. But now this thing is at our door. We thought Brexit and 9/11 were the events that marked out the history of our lives, but perhaps it is this virus brought about by people hacking animals to bit in a market or eating bats, or something horrid, that has unleashed something unknown and it feels like we are at the mercy of it, but also at the mercy of the politicians. We are always at the mercy of others, never the authors of our lives it feels, or we navigate our chunks of being around the things slung at us.  One good thing in some ways is that it feels like a leveller, unlike Brexit we are all going through it but the unexpected consequences good and bad are astonishing.   And maybe none of us will be the same again.

Ironically as someone who spends their life in a little room talking to the world, in some ways it could be argued my life is already so small it could not get smaller.  A friend said when we have a small world sometimes we expand within that world and become bigger than ever and it is true in many ways I am very happy in my house, potter growing with the pleasure of food or cleaning or painting or whatever it is I drift into for a few minutes or ours, but normally this life is peppered with the joy and laugther or the angst of dealing with real people. I pop up to the shops for 10 minutes that is my life,  that is my day, that is my normal day, but now millions of us are doing it to stop something that we cannot see or hear touch us and bring us down.   Yet everything else has already come down, shops, bars, bit by bit closing,  a year ahead planned now in tatters.     How will we stand up to it. Sometimes I feel brave and think this is a moment to do something to help to make a difference and other times I shake with fear.  I wish I could just have the damn thing,  hope I survive it and help everyone move on. They say if enough of us had it that would save us, but that the cost and price of the number of deaths to get to that point is so bad, that we cannot do that, so although people all over the world die of pneumonia in great numbers, this thing has politicians tearing up all the fabric of life, as if they are hunting for something, whilst the rest of us cower, hunker, self isolate, quarantine.  If I felt sad before,  will this bring the exhilaration of danger,  or just more and more sadness. It certainly will for some.  I hope I am well enough to survive.  But I can feel the anxiety gnawing at me. I have started biting my nails again and eating for comfort, at a time when I should be out in the sun, eating the purest of foods to help sustain life.  Funny how we do exactly what we should not do.  I went up to the shops the other day, I saw a man with loo paper in his bag from Waitrose, which is where I was headed, but I got there in time for the person before me just grab the last lot. I almost felt like crying. I cannot get into a car, and roam the streets looking for loo paper. I do not even need loo paper, not yet. I have worked out a big fat book I can piece by piece unwrite, just so I can wipe my arse on paper not too thick to clog up the systems at a time when most people will not be able to sort them out.  Meanwhile the wind still comes in too strongly through my closed windows, the rain seeps in through the cracks in the roof and I have never scrubbed the house so much as if sitting still is beyond me now as I wait for something.  We listen to the news endlessly and then cannot listen any more as it is too scary.     Hey ho as Mr, Man used to say.  First there was the big lie, then there was Brexit and now this.    Historic times and interesting times, provided you survive them.   As they used to say in Hill Street Blues, Stay safe out there, or something like that.