Trumpian Plague notes 1.
NEW NAME Corona is the rarefied gaseous envelope of the sun and other stars. A nice thing, it doesn’t deserve worldwide obloquy. Hence the re-christening.
SPEED OF LIGHT Took Grandson Ian to bus station for journey home to Luton. Pre-seven AM, Hereford’s centre was naturally deserted. But here’s a thing: the traffic-lights change more quickly at this unearthly hour. Were we racing towards something? Could it be good?
BAD TEMPER Recently attached notices at Tesco check-outs: “Please treat our colleagues with respect”. I asked manager: Are customers really squabbling over loo paper? Exactly that, he said. Customer arrives as doors open, wants to clear out all newly stacked rolls. Tesco demurs; says sales are rationed. Customer says she/he wants to distribute rolls to elderly. But Tesco cannot verify this. Unpleasantness ensues.
SYMPTOM Returning to car at bus station I sense a minor headache. This is not one of the official signs for Trumpian Plague (dry cough, feverishness) but one never knows… Then I remember hammering the Armagnac the night before, toasting Ian’s cooking and general assistance.
TV NEWS Watched our Plague’s mastermind on NBC news clip. Could growing inarticulacy be a sign of the illness’s onset? Could we be in for a dose of Pence’s Power of Prayer?
THE GREAT COMFORTER Try Byrd's Mass for Four Voices. His dates (1539/40 or 1543 - July 4 1623) means he had the foresight to get himself born, and to die, well before the Great Plague of London 1665 - 66. My version (Choir of St John's College Cambridge, conducted by George Guest) is both tranquil yet thrilling. How can that be? Because it's music I tell 'ee, blessed music.
My mind is spinning, not because of this post (which is a good one) but because life is so crazy right now. All I can think to comment is "Wash your hands."
ReplyDeleteI love your sense of humor in these times. You made me laugh out loud, and I so appreciate that. Trumpian Plague and Pence's Power of Prayer reminds me that our nation's stupidity is a global nightmare. As Colette wrote, Wash your hands."
ReplyDeleteColette: In times of stress Americans deny themselves one of the world's great relaxations: wallowing in a hot bath. Committed to being clean rather than comfortable they stand under a shower, often for hours at a time, soaping and soaping, risking the removal of their complete epidermis. Baths are thought to be the equivalent of marinading in their own muck. So what? It's their own muck, no one else's, they've lived with it up 'til then. I blame the Pilgrim Fathers.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: If only the Americans had learnt to laugh at Trump instead of raising their hands and going "Woo, woo." He hates being laughed at. Mind you, had it happened he might, in rage, have fingered the Nuclear Button, at least sparing us the legacy of his own special Plague.
I have a neighbour whose wife works on a Tesco delicatessen counter. She has recently experienced an object (I cannot call it a woman) spitting in her face when told she could only have three of an item due to rationing.
ReplyDeleteThe present generations have never experienced the blitz spirit which both you and I (just) remember .
But, on a happier note, my next door neighbour, a jobbing builder with a young family, knocked on my door and asked if we were OK and said he would be happy to collect anything I needed from our local supermarket (Tesco) since their delivery service is overwhelmed and no delivery slots are available.
A kind action. At least some are lighting candles, rather than raging against the dark.
Avus: Good things are emerging and I intend to post about them. But I'd hesitate to invoke "the blitz spirit". Goebbels wasn't the only one doing the lying in WW2; don't forget how contemporary accounts of Dunkirk were sold to the British as a sort of victory. The reason you are able, these days, to be hard on people younger than we are is because you're better informed about them than we were then. Yes many people did behave well during the War but it was also a time of black markets and an associated gangsterism. Later the emergence of "the spiv". The rosier the myths the more it proved people were suffering unheard. And reading Churchill doesn't help; it was his job to fib.
ReplyDeleteNor am I convinced about those supposedly "raging against the dark". The greater failing is ignorance. We are well-informed these days but only if we listen attentively and come to our own conclusions. A capacity to synthesize opposing views is important. Nor is ignorance a direct product of our inferior system of education, of which I was merely one of thousands who were betrayed. You may not read the sports pages of (I presume) The Daily Telegraph or The Times and especially not the football stories; I suspect that you, like me, regard the so-called Beautiful Game as a great dunghill of self-delusion, self-regard and an over-weening mendacity. But if you do read them (I can't for the life of me remember why I did) don't read the lines, read between them. Despite the deaths, the threat of cataclysmic economic disaster and the need to re-examine the way we function as a nation, you will begin to detect an underlying (excellent word) conviction that football is actually too important to be influenced by such ephemera. An unrealistic date is proposed for the resumption of the entertainment. The implication being that we need football more than, let's say, a sympathy for human suffering. This is a very special kind of ignorance, a wilful blindness. Enough, enough.