Post Covid peak

I've not blogged for a while, as I've been busy creating something amazing. More on that another time. But a lot has happened in the world since early last month. For one, Covid is on the decline (yay) despite Britain having the highest number of deaths behind America. 40,000 and counting. If only we'd started Lockdown sooner, eh?

I feel a lot happier at the moment. My previous job is now behind me and I am moving on. I'm still shielding, but I have been out of the building a few times now, for walks around the area. I wish I could move down to Sussex now, where there is more space. Hopefully that will happen in time for the main part of summer.

Job searching is actually not really progressing, but if I am honest I am not too worried. I'm not spending much money right now and I have plenty to fall back on for now.

I've been browsing the internet a lot, especially on Instagram. I love flicking through that. It's kept me sane over the past few weeks. I've found a number of cool sites, one of which is Billington Pix, which is one of the only websites I know that sells photographic greeting cards that aren't boring. Normally if you put a Google search in you just get cliche shots of trees or hills, or some flowers. Billington Pix sells much edgier photo cards. It also has an accompanying philosophy about them. It's existentialist mostly, which I am drawn to of course!

I do miss going to restaurants though. That is my biggest regret of Lockdown. I'm not sure when that will happen. It's not like there's much opportunity in the UK to eat outside and it will probably be the end of the year before even that happens. I suppose pubs are serving takeaways, but it's not the same.

In the meantime I have time to eat, relax, watch tv, read, get fat, and now go for the occasional walk, making sure to cross the road every time I am about to pass someone.

Forever Covid-19

Beautiful creation, you have taken us in your play.

Taste our energy to live like it’s a drug for you to tend.

Random pickings for a beautiful media to seize.

Yet you control it, unlike the powers that beat

The roll call of destruction. They amuse us with daily talk,

Like you never knew what you might one day achieve.

Tease us now, but let us breathe, more so the insular ones.

They know the power you seize from right thinkers.

Make the ridiculous ridiculous and expose those who spin the wheels

Of power and mighty media limelight.

Forever Covid-19.

L'enfer, c'est les autres

I've been meaning to return to Camus. I first read La Peste in 1987. It changed my life. How a people could be so aware of their own existence haunted me. And that existence, under threat from an invisible enemy, challenged their very reason for living; made them look deep into their souls to see what the true meaning of it all really was.

I remember walking on Brighton beach one evening around 1988 with S, my very best friend. I asked her what she made of all the pebbles, shining from the surf, all pretty much identical. For they were as plentiful as all of mankind. So many pebbles, so many humans. And we, some of those poor humans, crunching our way along the moonlit expanse, were as insignificant as each of they were. Our life is meaningless. For what reason are we here? We are without reason, devoid of meaning. Each a pebble.

You can obviously draw parallels between the plague that descends upon the town of Oran, for which there is no meaning, those pebbles on the beach, and the current Covid experience. Why are we here, is the obvious question. If it is to suffer a painful end of breathlessness. Why would any god put us through that, or the fear of that?

So I ask myself, what is the meaning of my existence now, confined to my apartment, listening to free Jazz via Alexa, listening to lying politicians who tell us they have miraculously reached 100,000 tests a day, when they haven't, to the Brexit lies about the utopia that awaits those who remain alive? What is the reason for all of this? Why do I have to put up with this?

It is truly Hell that is these other people. They torment me with their deceit. I don't need these people. I prefer to enjoy my confinement like it will always be like this. The jazz is a bit monotonous but I can always pause it to listen to the silence. Except there is no silence. I must endure the heavy stomper upstairs, or the drug dealer across the hallway who bangs his door when he rushes downstairs to deal a hit, or the crazies in the building across the road who wake me at 5am every morning, tapping on the front door to be let in. They are my current Hell. Brexit and Covid are my external Hell. I won't let them in to my space, but they are lurking outside.

I'm happy to watch my Netflix documentaries or the occasional mini series, not withstanding my increasing lack of attention, or my audio issues. Drink my wine. Eat pasta. Observe my Monstera deliciosa, or my attempt to grow avocado from a jam jar.

I might light my scented candle, peer out at the blue Shard top, watch the masked folk pass below in the street. I've stopped clapping the NHS every Thursday. It seems artificial now. I'm obviously grateful for what they do, given my history, but I resent the fact that those deplorables at Number Ten join in with their fake virtual signalling whilst over 50,000 people have died through the choices made by the Tufton Street cabal. 

I'm quite happy. I've been paid. I can sit her in my own company for the next year or so. Who cares if I am not able to leave the building. We all know that will be the lot of "the vulnerables". And soon, the elite will be those who hold the immunity card in their back pocket. But that is fine, I can live with that. I can observe from afar, without having to mingle in the madness that is current affairs.

This is the edge of my world. It indeed is an affair to remember. We will all remember. But some won't really care, so long as they can parade in their exceptional Britishness and crow about how wonderful the UK really is. 

This is my Hell.

Lord Tennyson vibes

I had so much to say the other night, although after a few glasses of wine it is all now forgotten. My memory is shockingly bad of late. I forget things almost instantaneously. I think it has been getting gradually worse over time, so gradually that I don't notice.

It might also be due to the confinement. It doesn't really matter what day it is anymore. I wake up, look for work, nap, look at social media, might watch some tv, look for more work, eat, sleep. That is pretty much all there is to my routine of late.

Last night I picked up my copy of Lord Tennyson's lyrical poems. It has been in my bookcase for years. It's a lovely small, blue leather bound book, embossed in gold with a flute playing classical boy on the front. Inside it is inscribed to Toodie, with love from Nancy, 25th July 1940. And next to that the "£2.50" price written in pencil, which is when I purchased it from a secondhand bookshop in Harrogate. It would have been around 1989, before I went to university. I remember loving the smell of that bookshop, a smell that I could last night conjure from the pages of the poetry book.

It was quite nice to spend a decent amount of time last night reading. I have not been able to focus for some time. I have quite a number of uncompleted Netflix films on the go. Everybody has been watching Tiger King, so I did watch that all the way through. I enjoy documentaries more than fiction of late. And biographies, although Michelle Obama and David Cameron both remain unfinished.

I get my fix from politics during the day. Either by the Guardian live updates on Coronavirus, or by Twitter. After last year's election disaster I was unable to go to Twitter for a long time. And I stopped listening to Radio 4 Today. I retreated into a parallel world where reality didn't need to exist. But now I have returned to those things, and it is right to understand where we are in the world right now. But I still feel myself seething inside when I read or hear what some people say.

In other news the cheese plant has gained a second new leaf growth. The first one looks fairly large. I'd like to get more plants into my flat. I planted a mango seed the other day in the pot on my balcony. I don't know if it will grow but I'm watering it every day. And I have an avocado pip suspended in water on my windowsill. Let's see what happens next.

I'll leave the final words to Lord Tennyson.

I envy not the beast that takes

   His licence in the field of time,

   Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

 

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

   The heart that never plighted troth

   But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

Nor any want-begotten rest.

 

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

   I feel it, when I sorrow most;

   'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

(In Memoriam A. H. H.)

Friday night thoughts

Friday night, stuck alone in the flat. Nowhere to go; no-one to talk to. R has gone to bed early, not feeling well. Not that he was here of course, but alone too, feeling the same frustrations as me.

And the fact that he went to the supermarket yesterday and was concerned how close he came to other shoppers. That has of course made me worry somewhat that he might have caught it. And a future version of ourselves came hovering over me like an infestation of locusts. How it would suit my destiny that I might be deprived of him when I need him the most.

As I am writing this I consider how much I am missing his company. Just the fact of hanging out together. Our phone calls are a second best. I cherish them to but it's not the same. The sooner this plague is over the better. I dream of the time I can join him at the house. Just to share a glass of wine on the grass, watching the sunset, in the warm summer evening.

It's been a tough few days. I just cannot seem to focus on anything. I'm aiming to do some sort of technical study that might help me with my career, but just can't seem to set my mind to it. I took just one call today, advising that the role I had applied for would not be suitable. Others have just not called back.

I worry that I became institutionalised in my last role, and didn't adapt enough to the next generation. I have stalled. My career has stalled. And now my life is stalled.

The neighbours are driving me mad. Either from the halfway house across the road, or the ones living above me, or the ones living across the corridor from me. They are all equally irritating. And sometimes  I just stand at my balcony and try to breathe in the evening air, wondering how it might be quite soon.

It might be but perhaps not quite soon. This thing is going to take a while, I am sure. I will be stranded here for months and unable to go outside. This is what confinement means. How little did we consider what these months would bring when we toasted in the the new year. The curve is flattening, the sombrero is squashed, but not dented. The status quo persists, and for how long?

I look at Instagram or Twitter and can see that most other people are in a similar situation. And thankfully we do have social media in order to take a view out on to the world. They didn't have that in 1918. When my great grandfather was recovering in hospital he must have had no idea on the condition of his daughter, my grandma. And we also understand the disease a lot better than back then. Is that a consolation though, to know our terrible destiny before it comes to us?

Let's see what tomorrow brings. I have food in my fridge, television, internet, and R on the end of the line or on Whatsapp. We will get through this.

Lockdown - Day 36

I had to check how long I had been at home under lockdown. It's become a blur. I've actually been here for 36 days, or just over 7 weeks.

I've had some contact with the outside world, mainly when I visited Guys for my monthly checkup. That is now on hold and I am waiting for an appointment date to be provided. Other than that I have ventured downstairs to check my post, put the rubbish out or to collect my food parcel. As a kidney transplant patient it seems that I am eligible for them.

It's actually good to be receiving food parcels. I had been using Sainsbury's to deliver my food, in anticipation of the all the panic buying. Now with limited slots available I am becoming reliant on receiving the basics from Southwark Council. And how welcome they are too!

It's actually quite interesting when someone compiles your shopping for you. My regular purchases are not there but instead I have a chance to try all sorts of different foods that I would never normally buy. Even down to the pineapple that I cut up into cubes earlier and partly froze. I do, however, need to think about what to do with 3 tubs of double cream...

The hunt for work continues. I did originally believe that the market was quite buoyant, but now it seems to be shutting down. Twice I have received news that companies are suspending their hiring. Still, I can live quite cheaply for the time being. I only really need to get out of bed for the potential recruitment agent calls (they aren't calling).

And Johnson, is recuperating at Chequers. How wonderful for him. He's had the most miraculous comeback from death ever seen. After spending a few nights in intensive care he was, upon leaving St Thomas's Hospital, able to quite fluently speak to the nation in his full suited attire. And from his rested abode, he continues to push the line that the UK will complete trade negotiations with the EU by the end of the year. How convenient that he now has an excuse when it all fails. With the price of some foods already rising in value as they are in short supply, let's just think about what might happen if we don't get a deal, shall we?

I am still done with the whole thing to be honest. In a way it is quite nice to escape from it all by means of my isolation, but sooner or later I will have to emerge and face whatever reality greets me, whether it be later in this year, or the next.

And as people continue to die (nearly 13,000 at the last count), I wonder how different this country might be when it is all over. Will we be poorer? Will we be kinder? Will we be more welcoming to our neighbours? Will the High Street never recover? Will Jeff Bezos be even richer? Will I see R any time soon? Will my cheese plant ever grow another leaf?

For the interim, I continue to eat, sleep, hunt for work, watch Netflix, study the digital cloud and Adobe, and peer down at my strange neighbours below in the street.

Contract received

Today I received my voluntary severance contract to review and sign. It immediately threw up some questions that I am pursuing, although I have been asked to return by Friday, which is in 3 days time.

It also made the fact that I am leaving my company all the more real. After 11 years at one place I have been feeling quite institutionalised. That said, there are plenty of jobs around right now. The economy is strong, or at least it was. And recruiters are telling me that they are carrying out virtual interviews and onboarding via webex. I am optimistic.

But the state of the world just gets worse and worse. Today a 13 year old boy died, with no underlying medical conditions. This disease seems to be going for younger and younger people. This was never something that I thought I would live through. The Excel Centre, where I might have gone in May for the annual Adobe Summit conference is now transformed into a hospital. There are field hospitals being erected in Central Park. The next two weeks are going to be hideous.

So tonight I applied for more jobs on LinkedIn. It's a fairly easy process. And this morning I re-worked my CV. Just as hundreds of people are dying, young as well as old.