To say that these are strange times is the understatement of
the decade. Here in Wisbech, as elsewhere, Caliban’s words from The Tempest are telling:
“The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices ….”
“The isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices ….”
Never have there been so many experts, never before (in my lifetime, anyway) have there been so many conflicting opinions (of which, like arseholes, each of us has at least one); the scientists compete with each other with conflicting data, and the political activists on social media echo opinions which come closest to supporting their own beliefs.
I voted Conservative in December 2019, and will most likely do the same next time round. I joined the party (in spite of the local association) and will be renewing my membership when it comes due in August. That said, I am not going to stand up and say the government has played a blinder throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. I am certain that history will take the view that the lock-down should have happened earlier, and that allowing tens of thousands of overseas passengers to pour into the country via airports was a colossal mistake. The belated action to impose quarantine on arrivals is an act of monumental folly, if only because it is completely unenforceable. Even if a newly arrived visitor provides an authentic address, who is going to mount a fourteen day covert operation to make sure that he or she doesn’t leave it?
The government has been faced with an almost impossible task. The demands have been – to use the word of the decade – unprecedented. I missed the Second World War by just a few years, but I think the comparisons between wartime Britain (mostly used by commentators even younger than me) are unhelpful. No-one is dropping high explosives on our towns and cities. No-one’s father, brother or son has been called to arms and sent to fight in some far off desert or other foreign field. Fresh fruit, butter, plentiful meat and vegetables have not become a distant memory, while the most preposterous shortage of the year has been the farcical run (if you’ll pardon the word) on toilet paper.
The demands I speak of are those made on Boris Johnson’s government by a variety of disparate interest groups. Travel companies and airlines are now telling him that the quarantine rules will shatter their industry. Teaching unions are shouting that even a phased return to some kind of normality in schools in “too soon”. Small firms and traders (those that have survived) are desperate to be allowed to open their shops and businesses again, while strident voices (mostly of retired folk on social media) insist that we are all doomed, that things would have been so much better if we’d only had a woman leader, and that the whole rotten thing is actually the fault of Donald Trump.
I walked through Wisbech on Saturday last, for the frst time since early March. Food traders were there on the Market Place, and so were significant groups of people. Social distancing? Not a bit of it. Why they think it doesn’t apply to them, I have no idea. Herd immunity? I’d go with the “herd” bit, and I can only hope that none of them comes to any harm. On my reluctant daily walk, I saw groups of teenagers on the cricket field happily immersed in each other’s company. Statistically, they are probably safe enough, as Covid-19 has largely carried away the elderly and the otherwise physically infirm.
To close on a lighter note, like many families and organisations, we have used Zoom to stay in touch with our children – in North Carolina, Hampshire, London and Wisbech and, quite rightly, those meetings were entirely private. A shining (if that is the right word) example of how ghastly such meetings can appear when made public was the unfortunate ‘Zooming’ of the Wisbech Town Council meeting called to celebrate the anointing of the new Mayor. It’s probably still up there on YouTube, and if you are a fan of what is known as “embarrassment comedy”, then you should seek it out. The link is here. Me, I watched in horror as it unfolded, but I have no need to return to it. As they say, some things once seen can never be unseen.
