Morons
By Sam Jordison.
Now is not the time for negativity. Now is the time to pull together. Now is the time to put aside old enmities. To forget the past, to forge through this thing and to think about how we can make a better future together.
We may be socially distanced, but I’ve never felt closer to my fellow UK citizens than when we all went out a few nights ago and cheered the heroes from the NHS who have been putting their lives on the line to save ours. I’ve never felt closer to the people of Italy, Spain, China, Nigeria, New York State — everywhere — who are experiencing the same fear, the same frustration and the same strange feeling of getting to 3pm and realising that where you’ve been all day is where you’re going to stay for the rest of the day, week, month, maybe longer, who knows, oh please don’t let my loved ones die, or Tom Hanks, and don’t — you evil shitting disease — touch Bruce Springsteen or Dolly Parton and when will things get back to normal, am I going to run out of money?
Welcome to my inner monologue. Such things run through my head as I walk the dog in the morning, while I walk round the lake at UEA, near my house in Norwich, and I tell myself to be positive and don’t quite manage.
There, I see my fellow walkers carefully swerving around each other. And I feel another glow of fellowship with my fellow humans. We might just beat this awful thing, if we all work together.
But of course, the cruel nature of this virus is that it only takes one person to disobey the rules. If only one person gets too close to too many people, coronavirus will continue its relentless spread.
It only takes one moron.
And, yes, there she is, running up behind an old couple and brushing past them so close that I can see their clothes move in her miasmic wind. There she is sweating, spitting, shedding. I can almost see the cloud of poisonous vapours she’s now bringing up behind the next person. He jumps a mile and shouts. For all the good it will do. I know this jogger won’t learn because I was also yelling at this same jogger two days ago. I’ve got into a bad habit, because of my fear and frustration. I’m not the kind of person who would shout at strangers normally — I hope. But now I’m doing it all the time. Yesterday, it was a cyclist, coming right up behind me, and I was swearing incoherently as he pedalled away, even before I’d thought about what I was doing.
It only takes one moron, I’m reminded again — and that’s a real problem here in the UK, because we’ve got millions of them…
You can probably guess where my thoughts go next. They start off with the thousands of people going to climb Snowdon just after the lockdown started here. The crowds who thronged to Skegness on the same day. I mean. Skegness? You risked all those lives to go to Skegness? In March? Isn’t the joke supposed to be that we’d rather die than go there? What the hell?
Soon, my mind is also ranging back over the images we all saw on Twitter of the 20,000 plus people singing along to the Stereophonics concert in Cardiff on 14 March 2020. How many people has that gathering killed by now? Who’d have predicted they’d commit an even worse crime than their music.
Next, my fevered brain — (Is it fevered? What’s my temperature? God this thing is stressful) — my fevered brain has climbed up the ladder to the government who didn’t ban the concert or anything else, early enough. Who failed to plan. Who didn’t get hold of enough testing kits. Who didn’t get basic protective equipment for those heroes in the NHS in the two months we had after the initial outbreak in China. Who have spent the last decade running down the NHS. Who wouldn’t join an EU procurement scheme to buy the ventilators the country desperately needs, because, you suspect, that’s how bonkers they are and how much they hate Europe. Thousands more people will die because of their negligence. It’s Brexit made lethal. Can you die of stupidity? Well, maybe we’re finding out…
So. Turns out my internal monologue is pretty bitter and twisted. And, of course, you already know who the real moron is.
Yes: me.
Sorry about that.
Sorry about shouting at strangers in the street. Sorry for allowing myself the sweet luxury of righteous indignation. Sorry for getting all het up about a few seconds’ potential contact when plenty of people say it takes minutes. Sorry for not understanding the science at all, in all honesty. Sorry for assuming I’d have done a better job than the government when what the absolute chuff do I know? Sorry for projecting all my anger and fear onto strangers, because it’s easier to blame them than a microscopic parasite that could be in me as I type these words. That might be nowhere near me. That could be goddam anywhere the tossing, fucking, bastard thing.
Sorry about my stupid thoughts.
I really should get out more. Except, of course, I shouldn’t.
@samjordison
Galley Beggar Press
