Snake-Eye Taught Me The Mojo Style
It is now exactly two months since I started writing a Covid-19 diary here; I don’t think I originally planned for it to be every day but that’s how it turned out. Now, it’s part of my daily routine and I know I have regular readers, so I’ll keep it going, even if, by the nature of things, the number of subjects to write about dwindles. Looking back, I see that my first mention of the virus was on 6 March.
Over the two months a daily routine has evolved, or, better, continues to evolve depending on, for example, the weather. It’s the little things that disrupt it–such as malfunctioning fridge-freezers. There was a further disruption today; nothing to write home about except in the middle of a pandemic when everything is something to write home about. Aside from not being able to sit outside and read because the weather has turned, my usual alternative of going to the shed and putting a cd or two on is also temporarily unavailable. To get to the shed I have to cross decking, and the decking has been cleaned and oiled today and I’m not supposed to walk on it until tomorrow. It sounds like a small thing, and in the greater scheme of things it is a very small thing indeed, but it’s no less disruptive for all that. It’s not as if I have the alternative of wandering down to the main road and cruising charity shops for interesting vinyl (not so easily found now anyway) or books.
Further, my current ability to write fiction, which I usually do in the shed, is somewhere between erratic and nonexistent. I can jot down notes and make sure I keep material lined up for when the tap opens up again, but the focus isn’t there for putting the work in. For some reason I feel vaguely guilty about that, but only vaguely.
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I realised quite early in the past two months that social media was a problem because of exposure to panicking voices and hyperbole. I don’t criticise the urge to panic but, as I said at the time, I don’t need expose myself to it because it does me no good. I limited the number of voices I saw on Twitter and have continued to do so. Increasingly, though, I just don’t log into Twitter very much. Why do it at all? because there is interesting and entertaining stuff to be found there. It remains a good way of ‘discovering’ longer articles.
Two examples of these articles–both long reads–are the piece by Paul Garner in the next paragraph, and Laura Barton’s moving piece about her IVF treatments in today’s Guardian.
Increasingly, the understanding of the virus and the disease it causes is changing. When I started this, it was reasonably widely understood that Covid-19 was essentially a respiratory disease with typical symptoms of fever and a dry cough, and the rush was on the procure ventilators. Two months later, and the clinical reality is different; many exhibit different symptoms, and for some people it becomes a much more systemic and chronic disease. That’s what Paul Garner, professor of infectious diseases at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who contracted the virus, wrote about in the British Journal of Medicine.
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Music: The Byrds changed their style over the years but, in their 1970 incarnation, with Clarence White on lead guitar, they could rock out with the best of them and better than many. This is from that era. (Incidentally, it is getting difficult now to remember what music I’ve put here over the two months; let me know if I repeat myself).
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