Habits Formed

This post is comprised of the most coherent paragraphs written while feverish. I’ve been waiting to post it until my family were vaccinated, to avoid my momentary ramblings meeting morbid reality.

I also hope this tale may also prove nostalgic for anyone reading in 2023, long after the news cycle has passed on to fresh tragedies, easier to commemorate and with clearer antagonists.

Test & Trace have logged my walks and wanderings. What’s left to be recorded are the already fading memories and sensations of contracting Covid 19. What’s left to be repeated is the fascinating origin story. So, while she’s still soaking my sheets let me offer a brief re-cap of how this plucky little foreigner entered my life and who let her in.

Blame is vital. With our microscopic nemesis invisible, we’re permitted to indulge to our heart’s content in fear and anger. Elevated to the status of: victim of a banging headache, I scour my mind for the tangible to pour scorn on. All are valid targets. Not just those whose sleek dip dyed ends scream illegal backstreet barber, but also those who proudly display obedient self-chopped mullets as fresh medals, when I’ve been doing a shit job on my own hair for over ten years.

But the ode to joy of finger pointing has many verses. Before the crisis was a licence to criticize the chin masked English masses, it was a vehicle to shit on the Chinese “other”.  Mainly as the “other” had provided the opportunity for bats to shit on literally anything.

Once, lost in Kowloon, I sheltered from the rain among the stalls of a wet food market. On a blood-spattered table sat a cage the size of a bread bin, stuffed with large black toads. Some of the toads were watching the knife of a woman nearby as she, with the careful motions of a draper, parted a snake along its length.

In a place like that, perhaps, some hot mess of bat-shit and Pangolin blood begot a virus. A tiny sphere of information, not living, not dead, only replicating. It was our misfortune that this virus was well spiked with keys to fit the locks our lives. Lives that clutched sweaty pennies and shared cigarette ends before shaking hands and kissing cheeks. Lives that played out in dense urban systems of buttons and handrails, each city on earth networked to the others by the uninterruptible flow of high-value international business travellers.

Before the People’s Republic welded the doors closed the virus found herself following the money to the snowy peaks of Austria, where, in 2020’s biggest breakout cultural event, Covid spent a season dominating the après ski scene. A scene that counters digital and financial isolation by going clubbing in an outfit that communicates both a return to  nature and a sporting intent. I’ve nothing against Après, having spent my time half cut at Mooserwirt, sweaty bopping to euro-beat in puddles of regurgitated Jaeger, but it’s a petri dish. A dish where the agar has historically been able to pay its way out of consequence and the lab tech makes the year’s takings in a three-month window so must continue the experiment.

Finding herself on another plane the virus was re-assured at finding in the British Government the same systemic nonchalance and short sightedness as a cash strapped Ski Resort. Only this resort, famed for stability, could never fully close. Operating freely under the cover of the economy the virus rooted herself deeper than our Government dared dig. Encouraged by inaction the virus surged through the faults left by austerity to firmly lodge itself in the Kent Coast. It spent 8 months there, capitalising on the fact that the choice between infection and starvation is no choice at all.

There it changed itself. Learning to move faster and quieter it sprinted across the wintery Downs and over the High Weald to Sussex, where I picked it up before the daily briefing had a chance.

Then follows the sickening of everyone in the house. A growing dread of knowing I’ve been infected but am yet to show symptoms. Crying together as we learn that we’ve infected other family members by delivering presents to their door. That was the worst of it. Amplified by 10 months of watching death counts rising like a wave, the scariest bit was hearing the water myself for the first time.

Yet the fever was blessedly short. 3 nights around 39 C. Shivering in bed, desperately trying to avoid cooking my testicles with my thighs. Then it was over.

When my family could only judge the difference between the turkey and the cranberry sauce with their eyes, I could taste every herb used. My sense of smell went through the roof. Markedly better than it ever was or has been, a mixed blessing in our sweaty confines but a godsend when pacing the small back yard.

Isolation passed like lockdown has for the fortunate. A sense of shared tedium supported by crap TV and our hopes for a future of beer gardens and sandy beaches.

The sweetness of stepping out the house for the first time ten days and being limited only by a shortness of breath was the last distinct sensation I remember. Since then my predisposition towards inactivity well exacerbated by lockdown has taken two months off me like a half-day.

It has been quite difficult to write this without wanting to put a boot into the morons not bothering to run the show. Those who know how to still profit off a system without protecting the lives of the clients. It’s then I remember the times where I’ve not followed the spirit of lockdown, where I’ve skirted restrictions and considered only myself.

It’s privilege that permits me to work at home and gives me ample time to reflect on events, rather than suffer them.

What is coming for me are the long term effects of this privileged lockdown. A whole year of consuming vast swathes of media while near vegetative will be difficult to unlearn. Any future posts or lack thereof will be testament to how entrenched these habits have become.