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Before and After Covid came to call • Sam Hawksmoor Some random thoughts before I open the wine ...

Well here we are in May 2020 and we stand like bewildered children lost in a big crowd, not knowing which way to go and trying to remember where your Ma said you were going before you let go of her hand.  There is no found.  We are all lost.

Some random thoughts came to mind as I was sawing up the remains of my fence that disintegrated in the bad March weather.  (It will make a good barbeque fire this summer).

One: Celebrity News - I think we passed peak Meghan about three months ago.  It’s time to let her go to page 9 in the news and maybe only one inch of column space.  You won’t miss it.  I promise.

Two:  Exercise - I’m absurdly jealous of people getting in long walks in their ‘exercise’ hour.  For those of you who have a weak bladder, you’ll know that one cannot do long walks unless in the wilds or between coffee shops.  There are no coffee shops open and I can just get to the park and back without having an accident.  The surprising thing is that in my walk today I hardly saw anyone in the park and it was a perfect sunny day.  I rarely see many others out walking, except dog walkers and many of them have stopped picking up I notice.  This is extremely annoying.

Three: Creativity - I’ve been working on a book about living with pain for about two years, on and off.  I know the first part is OK, but if truth be told, it all went off piste and ended up like a soap opera that you can dip in and out of a year later and nothing much as happened in between.  There’s very little tension, but the characters are interesting, perhaps hanging around waiting for a better book to be in.  Maybe I can sell the book to people who don't mind a lack of plot.  I’m reminded of The Wonder Boys and Michael Douglas’s Professor’s novel that was thousands of pages long. * I managed to get some readers involved at last and have had positive responses and useful suggestions for changes. So work has begun.

Four:  Indecision - I wish I had bought the house in Spain I wanted.  Yes I know the virus really hit Spain hard and is still causing pain and suffering but I really should have had the courage to go through with the purchase.  It just wasn’t close enough to the beach.  I realise that I would have been confined to the house for months but it was pretty nice and I feel foolish for settling for a semi in England that needed so much work it ate all my savings.  Now property prices are going to plummet and I’m probably stuck here for the rest of my life or the second wave – whichever comes first.  The lesson here is that you need to be decisive and stop second guessing what might be, rather than what is.  Brexit is still my nemesis and looks like we are in the no deal zone again.  I’m guessing travel is going to get real expensive in the months ahead and risky.  I doubt I will make it to see my friends in France this summer and probably not by Ryanair.

Five: There is no five.  -  Everyone is probably going to escape ‘lockup’ except my age group and if I dare to go out to the coffee shop or pub once we come off the leash – the virus will be everywhere.  It seems people under forty rarely get any symptoms so don’t even know they have it.  To be fair they should be able to go back to work soon.  But a year of lockup?  To wait for a vaccine that won’t work on older people anyway.  This doesn’t fill me with joy.

Six: - Why aren’t people reading ‘Things we didn’t see coming’ by Steven Amsterdam?  It has nothing to do with the virus but everything to do with economic collapse post the Y2K debacle in 2000.  He imagined a world where the Y2K disaster happened and it pretty much looks like our world right now.  Only we have Netflix to keep us from thinking about it.

Seven: Passing time - Of course you could be reading ‘Another Place to Die: Endtime Chronicles’ if you really want to know what the post-virus world will look like.  But you could also read J&K4Ever, which looks at America fifty years from now after the virus and the consequences of Trump.  Believe it or not it’s a post-virus love story.

Eight: Reality - I have been communicating with my nieces.  One trapped in her apartment in New York and trying to plan her business life post virus and the other who normally manages a bar in a boutique hotel in Toronto.  It’s going to be hard for both but they are being positive and making plans.  The Toronto one has written about her trip to a Wildlife Conservation location in Africa just as the virus was getting started.  Maybe this could be a new direction for her.  Read about her week shovelling Elephant shit here.

Nine: - Planning  - I’m going to attempt to adapt my book The Repercussions of Tomas D for screen.  Been putting this off for ages but now is the time.

Ten: Opening the wine. Tonight it's Meerlust Rubicon. The last bottle damnit. Drinking good wine alone is no recompense for a lack of company to talk with. No I don't want to Zoom. It's just not the same.

© Sam Hawksmoor May 2020
SamHawksmoor.com


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