Isolation VII:The Luxury Of Boredom.

"You know me, I'm acting dumb. You know the scene, very humdrum. Boredom. Boredom" - The Buzzcocks, Boredom.

If you're feeling bored now, as many people are, count yourself lucky. Consider yourself to be living in relative luxury. The only real alternatives to being cooped up at home (with only the whole of the Internet, instant and free contact with all of your family and friends, and endless books, records, and television to indulge yourself in) is either being seriously ill, or dying, on a hospital bed or being a doctor, nurse, or other key worker, working painfully long stressful hours while putting your own health on the line.

It's tough for some (it certainly would have been awfully challenging for me in my twenties or thirties) but try and get over it, try and remember how fortunate you are to be well and relatively safe from exposure to the virus. It's April Fool's Day today and it's hardly a surprise that there have been a lot fewer April Fool jokes than normal. Mostly, people wouldn't want to risk appearing insensitive but also, as many have pointed out, life is so bonkers at the moment anyway that any crazy story you'd care to make up couldn't compete.

One guy who's, thankfully, gone quiet on the jokes recently (and not just because he's at home self-isolating) is Boris Johnson. Unfortunately, and I've been giving him the benefit of the doubt so far - against years of evidence, the lies and false promises haven't been filed away with the jokes he uses for less important issues like Brexit and floods.

Two weeks ago, the government promised 25,000 tests a day. You'll not have been surprised that that didn't materialise and that, now, the 25,000 tests a day is scheduled for the end of April. Which will be far too late for many. Johnson and his government are kicking the can down the road (one whose length nobody knows) at just the time urgent action needs taking.

Meaningless catchphrases and slogans, too, are back. Get Brexit Done and Unleash Britain's Potential have been joined by vague promises to send coronavirus packing and a seemingly endless pledge to 'ramp' up testing. The only people who still believe this stuff presumably also hold a firm opinion that Carlsberg is probably the best lager in the world and that you can't fit quicker than a Kwik-Fit fitter.

Tobias Ellwood, the Tory MP for Bournemouth East and far from one of his party's worst, appeared on Newsnight to make the seemingly sensible point that Spain went ahead, too quickly, with a flawed system of testing and is now reaping the lethal consequences. The fact he then launched into some jingoistic Brexity bullshit about 'indigenous capabilities' exposed the fact that Ellwood was, in fact, talking what they call 'fluently expressed bollocks'

Britain's testing record is shameful and our recovery rate, so far, is worryingly low. I'm not sure why that is. It could de down to the way different individual states register what qualifies as a 'recovery' so, as with many things, I shall withhold judgement. Withholding judgement does not mean it's not a worrying statistic though.

Sadly, not the most worrying. That's, always, the death toll. Of course that can only get worse (people don't come back to life despite what you might have read in the bible) but it's getting a lot worse. Yesterday's 393 deaths in the UK (taking the total in the country to 1,808) is the worst, by some margin, so far. I fear, and depressingly expect, it won't remain so for long. Italy now has 12,000 of its citizens dead, Spain over 9,000, and both the US (4,000+) and France (3,500) have overtaken China while The Netherlands has joined the UK in the one thousand club with Belgium and Germany bubbling under with over 800 deaths each.

It's morbid to list figures but, right now, I can't help myself and keep returning to the table. It starts to look like an Olympic medal table and the numbers are so huge it takes on an abstract feel. It's easy to forget that each one of the 43,288 people registered dead of coronavirus globally was a human being with a family and friends and with their own hopes, dreams, passions, fears, and anxieties. Each time a human being dies a library of stories burns down. Entire towns of libraries are now ablaze.

In the US the curve has been particularly steep in the last few days and even Trump has occasionally suggested, much too late, they need to take it seriously. Though not seriously enough. He's still suggesting there aren't enough surgical masks available to medical staff because doctors might be stealing them and using his press conferences for product placement for his sponsors. It looks really bad for America. I saw a recent prediction of an eventual quarter of a million deaths in the US alone. Trump wanted to make America top of the world but surely not in this way.

The huge irony being that the list America looks most likely to top is the list of the countries with the most deaths from coronavirus. In another example of the world being upside down, Mexico is said to have closed the borders to prevent Americans from arriving in the country. Then again, everyone's closing the doors right now and even those of us who normally protest at such things are in full support.

In Britain, joining the Dockland ExCel centre as emergency Nightingale hospitals are the NEC in Birmingham, the Central Convention Complex (formerly the G-Mex) in Manchester, the SEC Centre in Glasgow, and Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. These stories are not the only ones that would dominate the news in normal times.

I dare say we'd have heard a bit more about the Italian restaurant chain Carluccio's collapsing putting two thousand jobs at risk and I'd certainly hope, even in a country as insular as the UK, that there'd be more focus on populist leaders using the coronavirus crisis as a chance to make further and unprecedented, to use a word that has becoming a little overused right now, power grabs.

Viktor Orban has made Hungary, essentially, a dictatorship and it's going to be very interesting to see how the EU deal with that once this crisis is over. Expulsion would be my answer. Vladimir Putin has used the crisis to ban mass gatherings (indefinitely, not temporarily as everyone understands is required) and to change the constitution so that he remains in power until 2036. The year he'll celebrate his 83rd birthday. Although only in a small gathering, presumably.

There are corona cunts all over the world (I'm not including Kunt and the Gang whose nightly live Korona Kunt Klub sessions are a much needed pick me up) and Britain, of course, is no exception. Not wanting to be left behind by the likes of Richard Branson, Tim Martin, Ann Widdecombe, and Mike Ashley, Toby Young has stepped, unasked as usual, into the debate.

Unlike with Brexit, as my friend Tony pointed out, Young is worried about the economy and wrote a long piece about how we shouldn't be extending the lives of people who may be old and close to death anyway if it damages the economy. He's on record as saying he believes it's worth the economy taking a hit for Brexit so we can only conclude that Toby Young's priorities are in this order:- (1) blue passports (2) the economy (3) human life.

Maybe when you're such a waste of human life yourself you find it hard to realise some people put a value on keeping their loved ones alive. When he's not writing vile abuse to women online or calling working class students 'stains' he's campaigning to get rid of wheelchair ramps ("ghastly"), telling teachers they have an easy job, and advocating for eugenics. Which is odd. Because it would mean he would probably have never been born.

I'd rather be poor and unsuccessful than have controversial and hurtful opinions for money like Toby Young. At least I can sleep at night. Usually. The last couple of weeks (since the isolation began) I've been sleeping very well, surprising myself even. But last night was the first (relatively) bad night of sleep. I had a persistent cough that kept me awake (no other symptoms but these things worry you in the dead of the night) and eventually was at my desk writing by 6am (although I did have a mid-morning nap, another luxury to go along with that blissful boredom).

I'm feeling better now, physically. Mentally, I'm still bearing up. I'll miss not being able to attend the now cancelled Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub talk about Harry Houdini and magic tonight and not being able to go to the Balham Bowls Club for the Cunning Folk Film Club's showing of Andrew Kotting's Gallivant tomorrow night but Ian has lined up another Zoom/Kahoot! quiz and lots of new people are joining us for it so that should be fun. Do I risk going out to get 'essential' beers in? I do need toilet roll as well because I'm using kitchen towel now and everyone keeps telling me that blogs the bog up.

The quiz and, more so, the online get together with friends will perk my spirits up even more but, for now, I'd like to thank Mum and Dad for checking in on me via the landline (old school) on a daily basis, Michelle for her all lovely video calls, and Jason who rang me from Ho Chi Minh City yesterday to arrange a much longer call on Friday. We've got a lot to catch up on before we even get to the coronavirus but, no doubt, that subject will dominate. As I write Vietnam is the second most populous country on Earth (behind Ethiopia) to not register a single coronavirus death.

Jason, Michelle, Mum, Dad, and countless others (on WhatsApp, Words with Friends, text, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger) are making these long days fly by remarkably quickly and I'm so touched I am constantly reminding myself to be eternally grateful. Outside the birds are singing, foxes and squirrels are out during the day. Nature lives on even as the human race, or much of it, pauses. Not all humans will survive this but humanity will and, I hope, become stronger, and more caring, for having done so.

I will, however, die one day and spending this amount of time considering mortality has made me want to tell you what songs I want at my funeral. It's no longer Farewell Farewell by  Fairport Convention (great though that is). It's, in this order (you get 3 I think):-

Sparklehorse - More Yellow Birds
Robert Wyatt - At Last I Am Free
SL2 - On A Ragga Tip

Oh, and no religious bullshit please. If I do die of this, of course, it won't matter what music they play at my funeral because there will be next to nobody there and to think tens of thousands, and maybe more, funerals across the world will be played out that way adds a cruelty to an already unbearably heartbreaking tragedy.

But, as ever, I shall try to end on a positive note - and one I hope is more than a bromide. It certainly comes from the heart. I was thinking about how the virus is spread, how one person can spread it to several others and then those people spread it to more before, in no time, it's all over the planet. It got me thinking that that is exactly the way love is spread. Or at least should be. Now, and when this ends, if someone shows you love then pass that love on to at least two or more people. If everyone does that we start to create a better world. Because there will be future challenges, they may be more or less deadly than this - we can't know, and if we love each other more and more we'll look after each other more and more. The alternative, offered up by the likes of Toby Young, doesn't bear thinking about.