I had a wobble today. I was sort of expecting it; it’s been feeling as though the picnic phase might be over, for a while.
What I mean by the ‘picnic phase’ is that first cheery burst of pragmatism. The war will be over by Christmas; come on chaps. We can handle anything Hitler tries to drop on us, by George. George? George! Yes, for Harry, and for England.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to cheapen the dreadful wars, or even this wretched curse we’re under now, by comparing it all with a picnic! I’m just trying to find words for that rather jolly spirit that braves a disaster with the initial confidence that everything will be alright if we press on through.
Actually, I think it will! It’s just that between the picnic phase and the end, there’s a sewer of difficulty to go through. And that’s what gave me a wobble today - the dreadful thought of being on my own for months in that sewer. This is going to be tough, and the realisation was hitting me.
It hit me when I realised I couldn’t do a thing I said I’d do. It hit me again when I realised that there might be people out there who have different opinions of what to do about church. I suddenly felt very anxious that I couldn’t hold together the two views that must be right: that you can be full of faith, and also wisely following the advice of health officials. Someone I know once said that handling cognitive dissonance like that was a mark of maturity. Well, raspberries to maturity then; I couldn’t do it today.
And then I ate a packet of malted milk biscuits. You know, for ages I couldn’t work out what the little animal on the front is. Next to the big cow. I mean, it actually is a second cow, lying down, but also, it kind of looks like a kangaroo. Or a fish. Or a crocodile. And I had to check every single biscuit in the pack, just to make sure.
And anyway, why would one cow be lying down and the other standing up? What weather is that predicting - looks like rain? Will rain on only half the field? Thundery spots on the windscreen but it ‘won’t come to much’?
Well anyway, I wobbled. This isn’t going to be very easy. To smooth out the peak so the NHS can cope, it means the standard distribution has to get wider and wider. So the peak gets smaller, and later, but fewer people die. Rather like a tsunami wave - it carries energy and devastation whether it’s a huge wall of water surging once into the town, or it seeps in like a tidal surge over several hours. We’re in this for a while, and I don’t believe it will be a picnic. Though I’m still very happy to check the malted milks.
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