Isolation XII:Gaslights Out For The Territory.

It's the 14th April 2020 and it's the 31st day of my isolation. One month ago, 14th March, was the last time I saw either friends or family (except on a computer or phone screen) when I joined Shep, Pam, and Kathy (partially) for a walk along the Capital Ring from Eltham to Streatham. Since then the UK's COVID-19 deaths toll has risen from 21 to 11,329, and that's just deaths in hospital. Deaths in care homes haven't been counted up yet and I can't help thinking there will also be those who have died at home, perhaps still undiscovered. Loneliness is an epidemic in Britain that this crisis will shine a very harsh light on.

In that time the global death toll has risen from 5,600 to over 120,000. The Conservative politician and keen agitator for Brexit Daniel Hannan's assertion, on a website called conservativehome in February, that there was "no reason to panic", we should "cheer up" and that coronavirus won't be killing people hasn't aged very well. "I am not an epidemiologist, an immunologist or a pathologist. Indeed, I have no medical qualifications whatever" wrote Hannan and that is both the truest part of it and the only part worth reading.

Add clairvoyancy to the list of things he's no longer respected for doing which includes his actual jobs of politician and journalist. The glib manner and fluently expressed bollocks that Hannan typifies is just as lethal in the public discourse as the more performative denialism exhibited by the man everyone with an ounce of decency loathes with every fibre of their being - Donald Trump.

Trump's continuing to lose his shit (blaming the World Health Organisation, threatening to sack his chief immunologist Dr Antony Fauci, and, and this train's never late, passing the blame on to his favourite old enemy the media, specifically the New York Times). A friend of mine, Daina, in Chicago reports that it's widely suspected in the US that Trump is refusing to adequately supply PPE gear for states that didn't vote for him

His inane, and criminally insane, ramblings are now reported, not just in opinions pieces but in the actual news, as those of a "toddler" throwing a "self-pitying tantrum". The actual real news. Not the fake news he so likes to bang on about to those who've drunk the Kool-Aid. An interesting piece has been doing the rounds over the last couple of days in which it's suggested that the countries who have coped best with the pandemic are the countries who have female leaders.

New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan's Tsai Ing-Wen, Angela Merkel of Germany, Denmark's Mette Frederiksen, and Finland's Sanna Marin have all been praised for their deft handling of the crisis in a way that the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Macron most definitely have not been. The theory being that the female instinct is to treat it as a health issue and care for their country as they would their children while the male leaders, as so many men still do, have seen COVID-19 as an enemy that needs fighting. The need to be seen to be 'strong' outweighing, to a lethal degree, the need to be kind or, more importantly still, the need to be effective.

That hit home on an intellectual level. On an emotional level the story of the two NHS nurses who died after contracting COVID-19 hit home even harder. Melujean Ballesteros, 60, died at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington and Raheemi Sudani (I apologise if I've spelt her name wrong - it was on the BBC News but I can't find the story covered anywhere on the Internet) died aged 68 after fifty years of service as a nurse. She had refused to take retirement during the middle of the crisis and her son described her as "a nurse 'til the end".

Sudani had moved to the UK from Trinidad,  Ballesteros from the Philippines, and the two nurses that a now recovering Boris Johnson singled out for praise (Jenny from Invercargill in New Zealand and Luis from near Porto in Portugal) also show the valuable, critical, role that immigration plays in all spheres of British society. It was good that Johnson thanked them but it was notable there was a lot less talk from him about providing adequate PPE for them, paying them properly, or relaxing intended new immigration laws so that those that should follow in their footsteps are able to.

The British government's response, in line with my last Isolation blog, has been found lacking and it's been revealed that they missed three chances to join an EU scheme to bulk buy PPE. It's suspected that's due to the article of faith that Brexit has become and a desire to play to their base which still means identifying scapegoats via the medium of dogwhistling. Keeping voters angry with perceived enemies and thus onside is still more important to this administration than saving the lives of doctors and nurses. When Johnson said the doctors and nurses do the job for love he didn't mean the score of zero in a tennis match but he may has well have done so. Of course they do the job for the love of it. But they also need to eat, pay their bills, and look after their children.

The relationship between the British people and its elected officials is, at heart, an abusive one and it's as complicated as any abusive relationship. The wronged party, the public, often finds itself defending the abuser as much to convince themselves they've not been wronged as to justify their own disastrous political decisions. 'They used to bring me flowers, they used to love me, they used to promise me wonderful Brexits. Just because they're now letting people die it doesn't mean they're totally bad. They're just under a lot stress.'

Thwack! Pow! Another smack in the face to you, the British public. The British government's wife doesn't understand it and so it's out drinking in a club at 2am, eyeing up women half its age, and pouring its heart out to a bartender who's drying the night's glasses out with a resigned look on his face, wishing he could fuck off home. Priti Patel's apology for government inaction wasn't "we're sorry for what we did" but "we're sorry for what you think we did". The lamest lame arse apology in the whole of fucking Lameland. That's probably why Raab and, you'd imagine, Cummings, sent her up there. She's on thin ice with bullying allegations anyway so if she fucks up they can just kick her out. Which would be ironic considering her views on kicking people out.

It's good that Johnson survived and we don't need to oppose for opposition's sake but we do need to question not just the government's tactics but also its morality and its commitment to (not) telling the truth. Those of us who do oppose, however, need to also be careful we're telling the truth. Spreading the rumour that Boris Johnson faked his illness is at the level of nastiness you'd expect of the administration he heads up and as my friend's brother, Damon, correctly pointed out it also suggests that the doctors and nurses that administered care to Johnson were complicit in some kind of conspiracy.

Johnson's a liar, there's no doubt about that, but badmouthing the NHS, now more than ever, is not a good look. One industry I'm happy to bad mouth, now and always, is the meat industry. We've had bird flu, we've had swine flu, and now we've got a flu that seems to have come from eating bats (or at the least from the hugely unsanitary conditions in which animals are kept in Chinese wet markets like the one in Wuhan). We've never had apple flu, I can't recall a carrot flu, and the great Cadbury's Creme Egg pandemic of 2004 is something I've just made as a joke to amuse myself.

If the cruel and inhumane slaughter of billions of animals each year across the planet isn't enough to stop us eating them (and it clearly isn't - people REALLY like the taste of bacon and steak) perhaps the fact that continuing to do so keeps killing us should at least give us pause for thought. Before, during, and, no doubt, after this crisis people in the West will point fingers at China and South Korea for eating cats and dogs. Many of them while chowing down on a dead pig, sheep, or cow. There's no difference. There's nothing morally superior to nibbling on a chopped up bull's ballbag in a Ginsters pasty than there is to eating Rover or Tibbles. They're both equally disgusting.

While I've been continuing to not eat meat and taking the moral high ground to a degree that I'll have just alienated half of my already minuscule readership, I've also been playing Words with Friends on my phone, watching lots of news and even some TV that's not about COVID-19 (University Challenge remains a favourite and last night I watched Romesh Ranganathan galllivanting around Zimbabwe with cheetahs, elephants, and rhinos), listening to more music than ever, and chatting, every day on the phone with Mum, Dad and Michelle and on occasional days with other friends.

Late at night I've found myself going down musical YouTube wormholes and, for the most part, I'm listening to tunes from my (much) younger days. Ideally performances from Top of the Pops. It's like I'm reaching the end and my life - in a musical form of course - is passing in front of my eyes. Sunday Girl by Blondie, Alone Again Naturally by Gilbert O'Sullivan, The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies, or Oliver's Army by Elvis Costello have all sent me off down memory lane and I cannot tell you how many times I have listened to Passionate Friend by The Teardrop Explodes. Even U2's 11'o'Clock Tick Tock got a run out. Some of those songs would be considered cool. Others much less so. Taste seems a redundant concept in the face of existential despair and emotions, often provoked by critically disdained music, take precedence. My friend Jason reminded me of one of my 'guilty pleasures',Whitesnake's Here I Go Again, and I welcomed the memory as warmly as a mother embraces their lost child.

OK, not that much but you get the idea. Maybe I'm stupid, maybe I'm a complete fucking arsehole who refuses to change how I feel or what I think about anything, but this pandemic, this coronavirus, this crisis has changed little in the way I view the world. I don't feel emboldened, or strengthened, by that as much as I feel that, after a decade or so of very trying times, I'd been put in a position where I can, somehow, deal with this.

I've lived through the deaths of immediate family members and close friends way before their time, I was arrested for a very serious crime I didn't commit (and, in fact, wasn't even committed) and threatened with, possibly, decades in prison, I've been beaten up so badly I was hospitalised, and I've been bullied out of a job I loved, and, like so many others, I've been made to feel unwelcome in a cruel society that values money more than it does life. In my most ungrateful moments I ponder how this load of shit just brings everyone else down to my level. Welcome to my world. It's not a nice one but you get used to it.

I hate thinking like that (and I'm fully aware I've not always helped myself) but I try to be honest in these blogs and, fuck it, that's how I feel sometimes, more often than I'd probably care to admit. But it's certainly not how I feel all, or even most, of the time. I feel lucky and, sometimes, I even feel I've earned that luck. Like I made enough effort with my friendships that, now, I'm reaping that dividend. I've experienced so much kindness that it's almost overwhelming. As a lachrymose lad anyway, you guys are really piling it on and, for that, I thank you so much.

I'm gonna stay in (because we all have to), finish reading my book (Head-On by Julian Cope - it's great of course), play a few more games of Words with Friends, drink more tea, eat some crisps, check in on some friends, and, on Friday, it looks like Owen's setting up another online quiz. There's also the possibility of 'attending' an online Fortean event this week so I've things to look forward to. What worries me most, apart from the idea of someone I know or love being hospitalised, or worse, by this fucking virus, is returning to the cruelty of the normal world WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER.

There are some signs of positivity with the death toll in the UK dropping over the last couple of days and people (Keir Starmer particularly) beginning to talk about an exit strategy (and other countries starting to relax their quarantines) but it will surely be a long and winding road. I poured my heart out during this blog and, possibly, shone a light on a more ugly side of my character than I'd normally be comfortable with. I hope I'll learn things throughout this that will make me a better person and I'm sure most of you will be thinking that way too. But as for the government - worrying signs are emerging that they're reverting to type. Prepare to pay the price for the fact that when death rode into town they poured it a drink and pulled out a seat.