Monthly Archives: August 2020

Like many of us, I can only take so much “news” at the moment.   In an interview with Professor Karol Sikora, a noted cancer specialist (The Times 22.08.2020) he says that, as every resource was thrown at Covid, we must expect a terrible falling away ,because people simply haven’t been able to get to their doctors to be examined or diagnosed, to be helped in the maintenance of where their cancer is up to.   And while the subject of cancer is always emotive, it isn’t the only thing that couldn’t happen.

Given that the subject of health is always personal, I couldn’t get eye tests for five months. More frighteningly, a radio friend with several parallel complex conditions went through months of negotiation to be invited to a specialist clinic online, where different aspects of her illnesses would be considered at the same time.  Her medications were changed, a big deal. She abreacted.  Last Friday marked a week since a doctor said he would come back to her and hadn’t.  He can’t feel a thing.

When we began to use email instead of letters and texts (even faster), it might reasonably be assumed that a line of acknowledgement that you were still waiting to hear might not be too much to hope for.  Huh.

With the adoption of those aspects of technological advance came new power games, new manners, new avoidances.  The last time I was approached to contribute to a documentary earlier this year, I knew that I wasn’t what the producer wanted so at the end of the conversation I said “Look: I have no investment in this.  You want me ? You want me.  You don’t ?  You don’t.  Just drop me a line and let me know.”  Not a word.   Nobody wants to say no thank you in case it sounds like rejection. Oh, tosh.  Let me introduce you to the real world: you get rejected.  We all have levels of it we can stand, and those that are too much to bear.  Some of us have choice in the matter.   But the lack of communication has grown exponentially in parallel with the means of communication.  I am sure the doctor my friend was waiting to hear from is busy.  How busy, that you can’t find five minutes ?

I don’t have much hope of the present government.  They have a majority but that’s all they have.  It is held that “nobody” could have anticipated Covid-19.  I think this is inaccurate but give them the benefit of the doubt.   I want to take them all and teach them how better to speak in public.   Most of their pronouncements blend the sloganizing of Mr. Cummings with the evasion of  Westminsterism. It is not attractive and it sells large numbers of us desperately short.  They don’t know what they are saying because they try – and often succeed – in saying nothing.  And we suspect they are saying nothing because we don’t understand what they are saying  – and then they change it anyway.

I know it is much easier to complain than to praise and it is much much easier for journalists.  You can have a lot of fun with a knocking piece.   But it is interesting who has begun to complain of the government.   A military historian slightly to the right of Genghis Khan calls this a “lapdog cabinet” because you can only be in it if you agree.  Whatever happened to healthy exchange ?   A respected columnist writes that government confusion has aggravated the despair over Covid.  And then a man further right than either of them has written a “who’s minding the store ?” piece coming to the conclusion that Boris only wanted to be PM in title, “the point of winning the election was to win. When it came to actually governing, he packed his tent.”  He isn’t even there when he’s there.   Oh great.  Governed by virtual reality, a ghost in the machine.

P.S.  I knew it, I knew it.  I knew that as soon as I remarked on 160 “likes”, one would drop off so whoever pushed the figure back up- thank you.

When I read about somebody with millions of followers on Twitter or something, I think it’s just a modern take on public relations – whether it’s Jim the Twister physio or the real Donald Trump if there is such a thing, the Big Orange Nightmare.  So when annalog likes climbed to 100, I was excited.  But the figure now stands at 160 and I have just done a jig in the garden.  Thank you, all of you, all those who have written and all those who have read annalog.

It was agreed from the beginning that annalog would be as it is – no PR, no social media, stand or fall.  The other day, when I was talking to Bunslove (sweet toothed friend) he remarked “there was nowhere for people to talk.” A couple of days later, another quite different person echoed him.  And AZO (All Zoomed Out) appears to a coming indisposition, if not quite a mental problem.  (Am I the only person who finds this terminology oddly dated – like the Victorians covering piano legs with frills in case “nice” women were embarrassed ?)

The need to talk is not met by annalog, well only somewhat, tone rather than talk, aided and abetted by those who want to read something that sounds as if it comes from a person not a committee.   We’d do better on radio but then beggars can’t be choosers.  And no, not podcasts, because that still wouldn’t offer the one thing that is invaluable and that is exchange.

Podcast is like mobile phones, everybody’s doing it, but that doesn’t make it right or good – it just means that’s what is available.  And this morning I read my first “chip” at The Times podcasts (which I have never listened to) but I bet it’s right – the inability to pause and punctuate.

The numbers and the desperate need to mark this up as better or bigger or higher or more fabulous than that get in the way.  What we need is contact and contact at this Covid moment is in short supply.

I don’t think it would fix everything.  I think Covid has frightened the bejasus out of a lot of us in quite a subliminal way which many of us would prefer to deny or dismiss, but significant numbers have just begun to face as evidence of the outcome, as surely as antibodies and not quite tested enough vaccines.  We’ve always said man was a social animal.  It is now increasingly difficult to put together notions of sociability and safety.

Safety is like beauty – it is in the eye of the beholder.  There is currently a big soft dark dry stain in the corner of my bedroom which is under the terrace of the upstairs flat.  It is possible that some moisture has got through the skin between the floor of the terrace and my roof.  It is possible that I have been the recipient of unexpected muck via the airbrick in that corner,  though I do clean, honest I do.   What is sure – rather than possible – is how unsafe this makes me feel.

I imagine the roof falling in, a row with the owner to obtain repair, the expense of redecoration – and then I think of 300,000 people homeless on the streets of Beirut, many more on the streets of the United States – with a desperate lack of basic sanitation which will lead to infection in short order.  I think of migrants trying to cross the Channel from France in the belief that the UK will be better. And how badly that is being dealt with. I think of children separated from parents, I think of the falling away of all that was known in the desperate desire to escape from all that is dangerous. That safety isn’t my safety.  I am shamed.

One of the reasons I so loved Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me is because the writer  sees her job as a teacher to find language again for kids who have been silenced by terrible events.   Language doesn’t feed you or put a roof over your head (even one with a questionable stain) but it does give you some aspects of yourself.  And without a sense of self you can’t fight loneliness,ill health, unemployment, homelessness, loss and the massive change all around us.

picture by Kostya Pazyuk

Here is good news.  When eventually the  extended family plus friends over the back from me  finished  playing music I wouldn’t play and drinking drink I wouldn’t drink, the air cooledand I had a delicious quiet dark hour in which I ate something I enjoyed and watched the best episode of Hetty Winthropp Investigates I have ever seen.   Small pleasures ?  You bet.  Grab them while you can.

Last week after I was told that my right eye has begun to lapse into wet macular degeneration, I was telling a phone friend, an elderly gay man with his own health problems, who likes the telephone as much as I do.  And he spontaneously offered to help out monetarily

if I wanted to stay in the private sector.  I don’t (it’s beyond contemplation) and I wouldn’t take his money because I couldn’t repay it – but oh the thought was lovely.   As good as a reality.

I really cherish my friends – to which too often the stock response is  – “Oh but you must have lots of friends.”  I don’t.  I don’t because I am a pain to all who know and love me, and because friendship is the highest order of relationship.  I don’t call everybody I know a friend.  I am pretty stingy with the term and even in friendship,

it is a matter of degree, and acts of kindness.

In the terribly overrated sweaty heat, I went self consciously into the supermarket with my hair loose where Shirley said “I like you with your hair like that.   You’ve a lot of hair haven’t you – it’s quite thick …” and I told her yes, nearly as thick as the head it’s on, and she laughed as if I had made a good joke.   “I’ve never known you “ she said “when you weren’t cheerful.   You’re always positive, always smiling  …”   She should only know.

This is not a rant.  We can all rant but beyond letting off steam, it gets us nowhere.  There is a lot wrong, I’ll spare you the list.

“Japanese knotweed”

The competition to see who is having the worst time is invidious.

News media – responding to all sorts of pressures including the basic one of keeping your job – promote, investigate, play down and shelve stories.  We are the consumers.   We accept versions of the news – in papers, on radio and tv, via internet, locally nationally globally but always politically.  Which is why the shattering of the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic only made Page 45 in The Times: the paper is owned by Rupert Murdoch who is not in sympathy with the current concept of global warming.   News stories go in and out of focus, depending on who needs what to happen when.  Vested interests, who’s running which bit of the show …

Robert Fiske wrote Pity the Nation but I couldn’t read it with any understanding because of the complexity of the Lebanese situation, summed up in the aftermath of last week’s explosion in Beirut as having to contend with 18 separate recognised groups.  Add consensus as rare as hen’s teeth to galloping corruption, goodnight nurse (one of my father’s phrases).   And when you look at the geographical position of Lebanon, adhering to the eastern end of the Mediterranean, bordered by Israel, Syria and Turkey, you are reminded of those seabirds you see clinging to rock terraces, ready to die.

Every so often, you get tired of being sensible.  I love good bread, hard cheese and red wine but – noticing the inevitable tightness round the waist and general blurring of countenance – it was time for temporary banishment. They can come back later. And by the same token, I tired of wearing the sensible lace up trainers for which I am usually grateful,  so this morning (as my mother would say) I broke out in a fresh place, floating about in a vision of slate blue top, olive linen pants and espadrilles covered with silver sequins.

It’s not an accident that I’ve quoted both parents in this piece.  Both parents did well by me.   They taught me to look for the good and the helpful and the beautiful and to celebrate them, even if they  came in the tiniest and most ordinary package.

As one day rolls into another and we admit as much shamefacedly to one another, we need to be reminded of each other as humans even more.   I was on my way coming back from getting the papers, a neighbour emerged from her flat, frowning and looking puzzled.  I asked what was the matter ?  “Have the bin men been ?” she asked.  I said I didn’t think so.  “But they’ve been there – look – and there” she pointed “but not there.  I don’t understand.”  I said “The bin men come on Wednesday.”  She looked at me and asked what day it was ?  I said Tuesday and she put her hand to her mouth.  I had the great and illicit pleasure of the touch of my hand on her arm. “Is there some gin in that bottle ? “ I asked grinning and she grinned back.

A couple of days later, I went to get a bus and there were three children – a girl about 11, a boy a little younger and a smaller boy who may or may not have been younger – lined up as if to sing – and a pretty woman in black with masses of coppery curls blowing the slight wind.  “Are they all yours ?” I asked – she looked impossibly young – and she folded up with laughter.  Only the taller boy, she explained, the other two were neighbours’ children.  And we launched into a feeling better conversation, about the light and laughter and exchange and the acceptance of death at which point I asked where she was from, and although born here, the family was from Eritrea.  The continent of Africa has much to teach us before the Chinese completely subvert it into a second colonisation.

Acceptance often sounds like the end of everything  but my favourite American saying is “Three sure things in life: birth, death and taxes.”   With all the medical advances of the last 100 years, speeding up exponentially, what the pandemic leaves us facing is who is going to live, who is going to die and what are we going to do with the plastic ?

When I apologised to Beverley in Waitrose this morning for using an M&S bag (the first I have ever bought), she said “I don’t care as long as you don’t buy another one ..”  explaining that she was shocked  (her word) by the number of plastic bags she had amassed, which she might never have investigated except for some home time during lockdown.  “And where are we going to recycle that ?” I asked.  She nodded vehemently.  Disposable masks are already being dropped in the street, watch any programme about Covid treatment or prevention and you’ll see the level of discard – and what are we going to do with it all ?

Whether it is the PM’s own idea or that of doppelganger Dominic Cummings, I am less concerned about being polite to cyclists (what I want to know is when they are going to be polite to me – let alone to the rest of the travelling public ?) than I am about the plastic.   Couldn’t Carrie Symonds put her baby on her hip and start an initiative for the new world  – the world her child will inherit – because if somebody doesn’t  do something  practical soon, Covid will just become an excuse to give up.  And that much trumpeted normality an excuse for not very much.

I can no longer watch the endless home made stories of what’s right and what’s wrong in the response to/treatment of/survival from Covid-19.   I want to be told where to put the plastic, how it is going to be broken down and dispersed to keep it away from the fragile beleaguered environment which serves us all and needs all the help it can get.   I want to be told how much can be reused.  Not in an interesting hour’s documentary which won’t be watched by enough people to make a difference but in a series of public health announcements, short and sharp, judgemental and directional.    If I thought he’d read it, I’d write to the Prime Minister, as he bounces up and down pompously with yet another ineffectual slogan.

For, yes Prime Minister, we are indeed all in this together.

*PC = post Covid