Life's a Beach


CoVID-19: Day 19

A friend reached out to me this morning recognising my stress and it hit me. I’d reached information and emotional overload and I was responding to triggers on Facebook — my strings were being played and I was singing like a bird. Fortunately I held it together but I could see why I was feeling adrift last night. Yet I can’t imagine what frontline staff are going through, watching people die, seeing their colleagues fall prey to the virus and being exhasted and ill equipped.


I guess there is some cognitive dissonance at play when we find ourselves as extras looking on as the paid actors play to the camera, acting out their roles as we suspend our disbelief. Its the stage hands and technicians who keep the whole thing going but only get a mention in the final credits which roll as the audience leaves the cinema. If the film set were a battle we would make up most of the casualties, the techicians would be the medical unit, the director and producer would watch from the sidelines and the lead actor would believe in his own invincibility while never actually firing in anger.



The whole political scene plays out like a sick farce
while those who are most influential and best rewarded
are the least competent



Its scarily like a cheap soap opera, conducted by invisible directors and fronted by ham actors. All scenes take place in manufactured stage sets constructed using MDF. What happens external to the convertable rooms is left to our imagination and hints dropped through incidental lines in the script. That’s where the real action is taking place and where our hearts are engaged but we are left to fill in the blanks ourselves, unconvinced by the contrived lines mouthed by a few people who are playing someone else.

But we are not an audience, we are the public and the actors are nominal public servants who wouldn’t understand servanthood if they did a masters in it. The whole political scene plays out like a sick farce while those who are most influential and best rewarded are the least competent — the lions truly are led by donkeys. We are now being asked to raise £5 million for the NHS while the concern of billionaires like Richard Branson, who sued the NHS in little more than a fit of pique, is to first protect their ill gotten obscene wealth.

My day turned out to be OK. I got some stuff off my chest this morning, had a constructive afternoon completing an important phase in a project I’ve being working on and joining in a fun virtual quizz this evening. I also have an online gig I’m hosting, to look forward to. There is a certain rhythm to this lockdown — hopefully I’m getting into it.

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