I don’t know about this lockdown

When I was young, my mother sent me to Sunday School as punishment for trying to steal her car. I was only seven. I could barely reach the pedals. It was a set-up. The priest, or whoever it was, stood in front of me with a shotgun in one hand and a Bible in the other and recited chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation while I cowered on the floor. When I say recited, I obviously mean screamed.

Later, when I grew up and the scars had healed, it occurred to me that chapter 13 might have been written by someone who licked one too many toads. Dragons, a seven-headed beast with bear feet, a dead lamb, men who worshipped both the beast and the dragon … it gets a bit confusing when a second beast turns up speaking dragon and, well, I’m not quite sure what happens after that. I do know that the number of the beast is the same as the last three digits of my car’s number plate. Probably just a coincidence.

Anyway. It’s not Revelation-13 we need to worry about. It’s Covid-19. Here endeth the lesson.

The thing about living alone right now is that it’s not easy to tell if mental decline is setting in. There’s no-one you can go up to and say, “How am I?” Physical decline, we know about. We only have to look in the mirror or step on a scale. Or try to move a case of beer from the lounge to the bedroom and do a mischief to the old gluteus maximus. That’s right. I sprained my bum. Laugh if you must. But don’t come crying to me when it happens to you.

Look, I walk around naked and unshaven, mumbling and cursing, even when there’s not a pandemic on the go, but this somehow feels different. I think it’s because we haven’t had enough time to prepare for abnormal becoming the new normal and everything is happening very fast and, at the same time, very slowly. It’s a bit like an acid trip. Or so I’ve heard.

It’s no good trying to find answers or reassurances on the internet, either. All that does is make us horribly aware that nobody else knows what’s going on. I don’t really consider myself a fully-formed adult, and it’s a little scary to realise that the proper grown-ups – men who wear lace-up shoes and women with lacquered hair – are as clueless as the rest of us about how to stop this thing, if it even can be stopped, and what the world will look like once it’s over. If it ever is over.

We are no longer the people we were a month ago. Our inner adolescents are crying out for someone to tell us that it’s all going to be okay. That it’s fine not to shave or wear deodorant. That nobody will judge us if we start drinking at 11am. Yes, we are turning into filthy, frightened children quickly developing an alcohol problem. The problem being that supplies are starting to run dangerously low.

People are already smashing their way into bottle stores and stripping the shelves. To be honest, I think this is the way we should all do our shopping for booze from now on. It’s a lot of fun, keeps the cops on their toes and sets a festive mood for the drinking spree that follows.

I don’t know about this lockdown. As children, we were sent to our rooms when we were naughty. When prisoners are naughty, they are sent to special rooms to be on their own. There’s a reason isolation is considered the harshest punishment. Subconsciously we feel like we have done something wrong. Most of us probably have. I know I have.

Adding to the weirdness is the fact that our lockdown regulations are among the harshest in the world. Who among us hasn’t felt a twinge of envy at the sight of Swedes going about their business as if all were well with the world?

Their government recommends citizens wash their hands regularly, which they do anyway because Swedes spend six hours a day up to their elbows in each others’ private parts, and work from home if they can, which is really the only sensible way to work.

Their approach to the pandemic might well prove a success and, with the global economy destroyed, they will send out the Vikings and we’ll all be speaking Swedish by Christmas. Fine with me. We’ve been colonised by worse.

The fear-mongering seems to be ratcheting up rather than abating. I read the other day that experts – and let’s face it, we are all experts today – are saying the virus can be spread through talking and even breathing. This is good news for anyone trapped with a garrulous spouse. I’m being careful to avoid gender stereotyping here, but I think we all know who I’m talking about.

Have you noticed how the weather has become irrelevant? I live at the beach and have always paid close attention to the wind and tides. That’s what people who surf do. Surfing, as you might know, has been banned. This is among a handful of new regulations that make no sense whatsoever. Surfers wear full-body neoprene wetsuits, shun contact with other people and spend their time immersed in constantly moving water. To get coronavirus, an infected surfer would have to paddle up to you and sneeze directly into your open mouth. This hardly ever happens under normal conditions.

Rather than this appalling confinement continuing for an indefinite period, I’d like to see the government issue an At Your Own Risk decree. On 16 April, citizens are given a choice. Stay in lockdown or go free. If you choose the latter, you will still be required to maintain social distancing, wear a mask and avoid crowds. However, if you are felled by the rinderpest, you will have to go straight home to isolate and recover. Or not. Life’s a gamble.

Or this. You could volunteer to be infected and if you survive and subsequently test positive for antibodies, you are given an immunity certificate and are free to reopen your business, join the effort to help others or, in my case, go surfing. The freshly released immune – we could call them eMunes – might be given some form of identification to minimise the chances of police killing them or neofascist neighborhood WhatsApp groups lynching them on social media. Maybe they could wear armbands or be given special tattoos. No, wait. Germany tried that once and it ended badly.

So. Everyone who knows nothing agrees that this is going to go on for a lot longer than we think. I imagine the government knew this when they imposed the three-week lockdown. They knew that if they had to tell us it was going to last for three months, there would have been more than just bottle stores looted. My guess is that they are going to adopt the strategy used by parents of small children on a long road trip.

Just another week. Maybe a teeny bit further. We’ll stop at the next garage and let you out for a wee.

Promise.

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