Sudden Mad Optimism

Sunday 26th April 2020

I’ve been seized with sudden mad optimism. It’s been carrying on for several days now. So maybe there’s something in it. Professor Johan Giesecke can be seen on Lockdown TV being interviewed for 30 minutes by a hot bird. He is the retired Head of Public Health in Sweden, who appointed the present one – so might be thought to have some idea of what he’s talking about. But v. controversial, all the same. His most telling words: ‘You can’t stop it.’ So maybe I was right about Dame Lettie. That’s Muriel Spark’s Dame Lettie who fought with such ferocity to keep out death with all her locks and security grilles. In that way, she successfully aroused the interest of nearby murderous burglars and so she met her end. If we were a bit nicer to the corona… it doesn’t mean to kill. If it kills it can’t reproduce. All this fighting and battling and staying safe might make it worse. It will fight back.

Besides, as Royston King said this week, humans only can worry about something for so long. Just this morning I took a Dorset Cereal packet (Spelt Dorset Cereal) from where it had been in quarantine for only just under two days rather than three as should be. The problem was I wanted to eat some Spelt Dorset Cereal, astonishing as it may seem. A flake dropped on the table and my urge for tidiness got the better of my hygiene drive. I picked it up and ate it – even though my fingers might have touched the outside of the box while opening it. I couldn’t face washing my hands before eating the flake, even though it was early in the day and I’ll easily have washed them 35 times by the end of the day. As for the viral condition of the table on which the flake lay – it doesn’t bear thinking about.

But as the Gay Mother is always saying, the Government haven’t told us we’ve got to burn all our shopping when we bring it back into the house. And our clothes, hair and bodies… They never said… what about coriander that’s been open on the shelf in the greengrocer? What if someone’s coughed all over it? You can’t boil or bleach or hand sanitise it if you want to have it raw. But they never told us we can’t have a fresh coriander garnish.

Robert Nevil was telling me yesterday that the Nizim showers upon returning from the shops. But I’d be worried about washing virus into one’s mouth or nose though…

Can we really go on like this indefinitely?

There was supposed to be a plan for a pandemic. I wonder if it involved shutting down the entire country at a cost of £500 billion or whatever and leaving the population to invent the science. I think they just copied China and hoped for the best.

In another two months, once proper data begins to emerge, I’m sure our situation will be very different. Something else that Poor Little Rich Gays in particular are least likely to have in mind – remember we are animals. What do our instincts tell us, as if we were a fox or polar bear?  The present incarceration may have been unavoidable as a temporary measure. But we know it’s not right really, don’t we? We feel that strain and uphill effort and unnatural struggle. A squirrel would know better. You can’t stop it. Within is our best anti-viral machinery. There’s nothing like it. It’s built-in and it’s free.

Posted Sunday, April 26, 2020 under Adrian Edge day by day.

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