Slouching Toward Blue Skies 4: Going Gently Into That Good Night

Are things normalising?

Hoepfully - and yet hopefully not. I don't want a return to the old capitalist shitshow with what seems to be the Tories Eternal. But yet I do (not that latter part). I seem to be stuck in a limbo of covid dimensions. That's how it all feels right now. The security of lockdown, despite the grim reasons, was reassuring to someone that needs that kind of structure. I knew where I was and what I could do, even though the spectre of the virus could have been near or far (i will never know).

That has gone now. People are out and about, doing all sorts of things as they would normally. No one else in the shop wears a mask. The one I use makes me feel silly, even if it's (hopefully) safe(r), that I'm the only one in the shop (other than the odd staffperson) so attired makes it worse. Childish, really. A bit like being a kid at school wearing the wrong brand of uniform (not the one that the cool kids wore that you didn't realise at the time was horrifically expensive and your parents couldn't afford).

Ah the halcyon days of the toilet roll panic. Good times my friends, good times. Not really, but it feels like an absurd memory, like remembering last Christmas in the middle of summer. Certainly compared to the yawning gap of uncertainty where the only sure thing is that the Tories will not take responsibility as they continue to make everything shit. We have barely even started: how will a second spike play out, what about Brexit?

I'm not convinced a second spike will happen. Of course it's a possibility, and one I have little power over (despite the governments terrible PSA campaign "stay alert", keep your eyes peeled for bacteria, they gets everywhere). But at this point I think the disease will dismally fade into the background. It will become a kind of deadly TV static. The white noise at the end of channels, back in the days before overmedia. It will sit there exuding noise, the sound of the newscasts reporting with increasing banality the daily death toll. We will limp on like a three legged horse until someone with pity takes Boris round the back and puts him out our misery.

Behaviour isn't going to change. The chances of getting a second lockdown, never mind enforcing  it, are nada. Not when you have a government of headbangers keen to reduce social distancing to a meter. At that level it's as good as zero. That's just how it will work. People normally keep that kind of distance anyway so well done!

Class War