Trying to Be Normal in British Covidia: Diary

Before Covid we had a small business. Travelled all over Britain caretaking for clients with valuable properties and complex animal groups. Such people are fond of international travel and need trustworthy, experienced sorts to run things in their absence. After a decade of practice, my partner and I had -in March of 2019- many months of bookings, working seven days a week. On March 23rd, however, Boris Johnson came on television, and with a short speech about a flu virus, killed our business, threw us out of work and gradually ground us into bankruptcy.    

Let's not dwell on the miseries of that ghastly year and a half. Plenty of people fared worse than us and we all have war stories to tell. Let's talk about the future - about "getting back to normal." 

January 30th 2022

Four previous clients have been in touch -are we still available for work? Well, the chance would be a fine thing. Eight times last year we were booked in optimism and cancelled in haste when SAGE yanked our collective chains. But all these four have returned, and booked dates between February and September. One couple just north of London needs immediate help (a common challenge for us in pre-covidian times) starting the day after tomorrow for 16 days. Details and fees are agreed and we start packing.

January 31st 2022

But having lost our home in Wales to the predations of the Covidian regime, we now live on a faraway  island off the coast of Scotland, where Storm Corrie is poised to lash the shores. All ferry-boats to the mainland have been suspended. We decided to follow the ferry company on Twitter to recieve updates, which appear at irregular intervals and are suspiciously non-specific. We turn to the net and the Met. Metoffice weather forecasts are, of course, just random speculations attached to swirly-whirly cartoons and satellite pics which I can interpret pretty much as well as the Met warlocks. It's a rare day on the island when what I see through the window agrees with their prognosis. Today, they are not optimistic.

But the ferry company acts like Metoffice guesswork is gospel truth, signed by Moses himself on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. So, come 2 p.m. we stand at the Ferry terminal spectating on a calm sea in a stiff breeze that does not come close to "bracing" let alone "gale force gusts" (a term beloved of the indoor, office-based weather gurus). But the boats ain't running. We trudge to the car, drive home and unpack the stuff we use every day (clothes, dressing gowns, laptops, guitar, medications, alcohol, books, smartphones, the snake-charmer's flute I still haven't mastered...) and settle down to wait.

February 1st 2022

We informed the clients of our predicament yesterday, promising to begin our trek south at the first opportunity. The  clients sympathise, but have news of their own: their holiday arrangements have been snagged in the testing dragnet. They have completed the compulsury PCR tests required to get a temporary release from British Covidian internment. Nasal rape being the new compulsory add-on to a holiday in the sun, I gather. 

Husband and daughter (negative and gritting their teeth) are flying out as planned but wife/mother (who is in excellent health) has been pronounced "infected" and is condemned to a brief self-isolation. Self-isolation being easy enough to arrange on their expansive private estate. She will hopefully be negative by Friday 4th when we arrive to take over, assuming we can get off the island by Thursday 3rd. I'm tempted to tell our much-loved clients what I have learned about the absurd inadequacies of the PCR test. Like its inability to tell the difference between Covid and an atom of cat-mucus. But you just don't know who's in the Cult and who's not, do you? So I said nothing.

February 2nd 2022

The sea looks pretty similar as before -to me- but the ferries are running today. We repack and get rolling, a day earlier than needed, but we're getting while the getting's good.  Tomorrow's forecast, we have learned, is a typical Met threat-fest complete with colour-coded extreme weather warnings and vague promises of potential death scenarios. 

With the car safe in the belly of the ferry, we sit in the passenger lounge for the crossing, among a crowd of about forty. We are the only two unmasked people, Scotland being an unyielding stronghold of Covidian Faith. Our glorious leader, Queen Nicola of Sturgeon, says no surrender to the forces of common sense.

Queen Nicola of Sturgeon

She has announced that henceforth, Scottish schools will have the bottom sawn off their classroom doors to improve ventilation, thus defeating Covid. Not a joke, she is serious.

 

There will be no backsliding into hated normalcy while there is breath in her lungs. (Heavily filtered breath, drawn in gulps through a triple-thick, tartan face-muzzle). 

I'm considering applying for a Cabinet post in the SNP's independent-thinking Scottish government. My plan is to build a giant deep-water city in a water-tight dome under the North sea, to which the entire population of Scotland will relocate, to avoid covid.

As the voyage progresses, five or six other passengers move their dribble-bags to half-mask -the below-chin position that always puzzles me. Surely pasting your throat with your own saliva and snot can't be very healthy? I console myself that perhaps they are at least a little inspired to see two openly defiant, naked faces in their midst. 

As the boat cuts majestically across the teeny-weeny waves, the Voice of Ferryboat Covidia barks holy orders to the Faithful from invisible speakers: ...pandemic...restrictions...requirements...be careful...do everything possible... prevent the spread... virus...necessary precautions...wash your hands and face frequently...minimise skin contact... masks to be worn in all public areas of the ship...maintain social distancing...think virus, think covid, Covid, COVEEED!!!

We roll off onto the mainland and head straight for Glasgow where my brother will put us up for the night. Tomorrow we'll drive south to our first real job in months. The streets of Glasgow look typically grey and eerily familiar in that home-town way. We park outside a Lidl supermarket to shop for supper. 

I'm pleased to see the Scottish supermarket mask-mandate is -in Glasgow at least- meeting  opposition; a good half-dozen others are face-nappyless. The maskateers sneak looks at the refuseniks: you can see their eyes flicker. (Is this how nudists feel when the normies come to visit?)  But I'm appalled at the dozens still shuffling in their blue and black snouts, the faceless and the mindless ones. For the thousandth time I wonder how on earth did they ever get away with commanding such depths of self-humiliation?     

As we return to the car-park a marching mob of 200-plus football hooligans come stomping past heading for Parkhead football stadium, shouting, cursing, chanting, throwing bottles and cans. the sound of glass shattering. Celtic are playing Rangers tonight. A solitary police car follows them at a discreet distance, like a shark with low self-esteem. 

The lads themselves are faceless, anonymous yobs, features swathed in scarves, mouthless balaclavas, hats, caps and dark glasses. It's amazing they manage to drink at all through  the wool and nylon layers, but the sour stench in the air says they really, really can. We hurry to the car and drive in the opposite direction.

February 3rd 2022

We're on the road by ten a.m. The highways out of Scotland are busier than last year but just as determined to keep you focussed on the Fear. Every few miles, Words of Authority are spelled out overhead in amber capitals, directing us towards Those Things That Matter...

WARNING. 

ICE FORECAST.

Well thanks, Gods of the A74. That's about as useful as a paper hat in a typhoon. Ice is forecast, is it? Where? Orkney or Cornwall? We're travelling about 300 miles total - any particular bits of road getting the ice? And without pushing the limits of informational possibility in the cyber-rich metaverse of 2022, would it be too much too ask WHEN this effing ice as forecast as well as WHERE? These people should apply for work at the Met Office. Or maybe the Metoffice already operates the electronic highway notifications - who knew? Only the other day I found out the Natural History Museum is actually leading the fight against catastrophic climate change. Why shouldn't the Met Office run the roads? Maybe one day the Post Office will take over the NHS. We drive another few miles...

COVID 19 VACCINES. 

GET THE BOOSTER. 

FOLLOW ADVICE.

That one took the biscuit. Follow advice. Advice from who? The anonymous road-Pope who writes the overhead signs? The Croatian guy serving pastries in the petrol station? Anyone on Instagram with over a million followers? And since when did roads offer medical advice anyway? If this is the "Internet of Things" they can bloody well keep it. In the last 48 hours we've been threatened with a watery grave, a killer virus and nomadic mysterious ice. It's a wonder anyone's left alive.

We break the journey in a small market-town, and make our first visit to a mainland cafe together in two years. It's sad and weird. The town square is stark, deserted, only six shops left alive -all of them enormous chainstores, Sainsburys, Boots etc.

 CAFE IN COVIDIA

 

Giant colour photographs have been inserted to fill the huge, empty display windows on every side in a desperate bid to cheer up the spectacle. Everything is TO LET. The one functioning cafe seems to have been open about a week, not a picture or sign any any wall, just a handful of customers. 

We get to our destination at nine p.m. Viewed and buzzed through the security gates, we drive up the long, winding drive past the riding stables to park in the shadow of the Big House. Our hostess/employer greets us outside, from a distance resembling two metres, in honour of the Fear, or PCR or something. A gang of labradors prance joyfully into the darkness under the chestnut trees.

She has tested again and the result was..."inconclusive" (no jet planes for you, unclean one). Directed to our distant suite in the east wing, we say goodnight and part gloomily. She will test again in a day or so. We will remain to see what happens. If anything. The likelihood is the job will be cancelled and the 600 mile round trip will have been a waste of time, effort and money for everyone involved.

At midnight I stand by the bedroom window and watch a dog-fox loping across the vast landscaped gardens towards the swimming pool. A mile way on the horizon, beyond the walls of the estate, the late and the early haulage trucks leave trails of glittering lights as they thunder down the M1 towards London. I wonder how it must feel to be healthy, rich and privileged -and forbidden to go on holiday with your family, bcause a hastily-trained punk shoved a swab up your nose and told you some bullshit that came up on a screen.

Hunting for normal in 2022.

Ian Andrew Patrick

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