Well friends I’m back and not from the future. Did you know we were friends? Well we are, but that doesn’t mean I will be lending you money anytime soon; or ever.
How have you all been doing? It’s been a while. Don’t you just hate it when people do that? Start with small talk. You just know there’s a hidden agenda. Like those phone calls when they start with ‘How are you today Mr Nevin?’ I reply, ‘What do you want?’ I’m friendly and welcoming like that.
Back to the question, how have you all been doing? If you are anything like me you don’t know if you are locked in or let out or shaking it all about… oooo the hokey cokey, knees bend, arms stretch rah rah rah! It’s all very confusing. I am not going to get into the ins and outs of the current situation because I am no expert. I know, when has that stopped me before. But this time I won’t. I will just say I am confused. Ironically, we are in a similar situation with the country at large to our homes locally. We don’t know where the border will be or how much we will be paying for our basics on a national level and we don’t know if we will be shut in again and how we will pay for basics on a household level. The in/out of Europe is as confusing as the in/out of the virus. If I was reading a novel about this, I would be talking about the author creating a deliberate echo in the storyline. Large scale and small scale. Family and state echoing each other. But this is reality, however much it might feel like a bad drama or crazy dream.
I really wish sometimes that it was a phone call I could hang up on or a film I could turn off. Better still a book that I could stop reading or just study and discuss rather than live through. When life becomes crazier than fiction, we have a problem. Have you seen Apollo 13? Maybe you remember the real events, that famous line, ‘Houston we have a problem.’ Boy did they have a problem, I know how they felt, ‘Houston we have a problem.’ I wonder if we will make it back to Earth?
The last few blogs I wrote were designed to look real but were farce. It surprised me that some people took them so seriously. But in a world where so much around us seems unreal, maybe I should not have been surprised. Will Morpheus turn up and offer to wake me up to reality. If that doesn’t make sense, look up the film ‘The Matrix.’
I have a Fitbit watch; I know hilarious as I can’t stand or walk. But you will find it less funny if you have one. Because I am told by it I do at least 1000 steps a day! That is even on days I don’t leave my bed; no, I don’t jiggle my left arm all day. So, deduct 1000 steps each day from your totals. Now whose laughing. The watch also tracks my sleep and tells me how much rem sleep I get. That should be my dream sleep. I wish it could do the same in the day, surely most of the day is rem sleep; isn’t it? In fact, this morning it shows that I am still in deep sleep, normally the last thing shown is waking. Perhaps it’s working.
There is much talk of the new normal. I find that when I watch films and TV programmes made before the current situation, I can’t help but feel people are too close or taking a big risk shaking hands, hugging, touching surfaces that others have touched. I want to shout at the telly, ‘put a mask on you fools,’ no, not really. But you see where I am coming from? The new normal affects our perceptions. Will we ever feel safe touching a stranger’s hand again? I keep wondering if in many years’ time we will be telling stories of this time to incredulous youngsters and they will reply:
‘You were actually able to walk around without full body protection; wow!’
‘You could touch each other? Amazing!’
‘Only two meters apart? What was that like?’
‘What’s public transport?’
Of course things might get better…
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Shall We Get Dressed Now? 