Boring!?

A teenage grand-daughter complains that the Coronavirus is ‘boring’, and please can we stop talking about it? One can readily appreciate her point of view; it must be very tiresome for a youthful social butterfly to be confined to quarters, hearing the same old doom and gloom day after day. Even our youngest daughter, who promptly baled out of her job in Blighty at the beginning of the lock-down and made off home to Ireland, where she is lucky enough to have family with plenty of space, takes the line ‘why should she spoil a great chance for a holiday with her little girls by listening to the same old ghastly news?'

Baltimore Beacon from Sherkin Lighthouse.

But surely it is going to have a huge impact on the world? Can we possibly begin to make any sense of this hugely confusing moment, or begin to see what might lie ahead, and if there is any unlikely chance that we may be able to influence it? As for my dear wife, she invariably finds some job for me whenever I get my head stuck into such little problems. And as for this blog, it started out nearly five years ago as a sailing blog. How did it end up involving all this other stuff, first Brexit and The Ducky, now Coronavirus?

Public concern in the Anglosphere has lurched from blanket coverage of the one mega-story to the other. Now we can see the continuity more and more clearly, and apparently to a quite extraordinary extent in the USA, what with The Ducky shamelessly trying to exploit the frustration of those chaffing at the restrictions of lockdown, as if everybody doesn’t find it difficult.

For any sane society or individual person, obviously it is very difficult to get the right balance between responsibility and prudence with regard to the virus, and ‘opening up’ both their personal lives and that of the economy. For this reason if no other, we need to struggle with the mountain of frequently dodgy information. But then there is evidently a sad need to combat powerful interests who seek political advantage from setting the one against the other, and posing as the champions of freedom. Here again we find the continuity not alone between The Ducky phenomenon and Brexit, but also between them and the present political struggle. It even appears, unbelievably but as only the Americans can manage, the false dichotomy will set the terms of the forthcoming presidential election.

One way or the other, at whatever cost it turns out to be, we shall get through it; but I for one doubt if I shall see a return to my happy, carefree cruising days. Of course, I cannot just blame the pandemic; there was a crisis coming, the dear Anna M, 50 years old and made of wood, was going to need serious money, which I have not got, - a situation which I avoided thinking about as long as I possibly could. Boring? Well yes, and worse; but after all, what was going to happen only spending more and more time in whatever pleasant corners I could find, ‘kicking around waiting to die’ as my father memorably put it at about my own present age!

So come on, the very meaning and direction of our lives is brought inexorably to the fore in this present situation. Whatever else it may be, this can hardly be described as boring! Personally, I intend to at least go down fighting for a new life for the old boat, and in the process to make a little contribution to a new life for the old world. On both counts, a life without oil seems more desirable than ever, - without the noise, fumes, pollution and money that it involves. While we are at it, there are some more aspects of our old way of life which the pandemic highlights as past their time.

For a start, it highlights the danger of the trend to ever bigger cities, invariably the hotspots for this disease; conversely, the advantages of living more scattered and self-sufficient lives in the country. Personally, I voted with my feet on this matter 47 years ago. How fortunate we are now, to live in a beautiful place with plenty of space and a good garden! More especially with contemporary communications, I see no good reason for anyone to live in a city, except perhaps in the spirit of one going to war, for as little time as possible. Still, there will be demand for them, so let our cities be redesigned, with minimal noise and fumes!

Easter Lilies.

There will remain the little problem of making a living; and I for one disagree with those left-wingers of this world, who apparently think that one can simply print unconscionable quantities of the stuff and get away with it, and who also are quite happy to cede almost total control and responsibility to the state. Yet again, however, we should not buy into the opposite. Indeed this crisis is showing up the right-wing nonsense and hypocrisy also, with governments of every stripe tossed into the bottomless pits of debt. At issue between them are perhaps only certain variations as to who is enabled to get their hands on all that dosh, and who will have to make some show of paying it off, though eventually it is bound to be largely discounted, one way or the other. What that will involve is another story!

It is a good time to recall ‘how few the things are, the which if a man lays hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet, and is like the existence of the gods!’ - as Marcus Aurelius put it long ago. Shelter, heat, food, clothes .... they can all be produced at home in the country, and it is fun to do so, and who would not rather eat fresh, home-grown vegetables, say, than those supermarket ones produced far away in dodgy conditions? But one does still need money for what one cannot produce, and of course there are certain little problems like access to land.... But the revolution in communications has to be a game-changer, enabling one to communicate, cooperate, source and sell products so much more widely and effectively from home. Time I was getting back on track with the Sherkin-Nazaré Alternative Power Project !