There's really not much to write about these days. I'm just sitting here at home, working away, watching the weather, feeling more and more disjointed; the world out there continues to slide into partisan misery, and all of us start to wonder whether our future looks much like this for good.
Amazingly, there are still people bleating about having to wear masks in shops and enclosed spaces. They cite their 'personal freedom' as evidence that they can choose not to - which is fine, so long as they're also expressing their freedom to choose to catch the disease. Most people though are quite sensible about it. Better still, most of us don't want to be responsible for spreading it, even if, as in our town, there are currently only 11 confirmed cases. However, it's just good citizenship to look after each other.
I went food-shopping yesterday, and for the first time, felt a bit wobbly about it. It's so daft - a thing I've done hundreds of times before, and yet I felt quite lonely, pushing a trolley round the half-empty store of masked shoppers. You can't see smiles behind a mask. They can't see you. For some reason it felt apocalyptic and scary, and I had a wave of nostalgia for the days when this might just have been an enjoyable thing to do, instead of a perfunctory task in purgatory.
"You got a nectars card?" snapped the lady on the checkout as I tumbled the last few bits into my bag-for-life. I slipped the 'nectars' card out of my wallet and swiped it, while she stared at me. She barked the total, I paid, then pushed my trolley on the squeaky route back to the car. She'd wished me a nice day, but to be honest, I'm not sure she meant it.
I hope the world gets a bit nicer again. It's tough to see, given the waves of fear and division that ripple across the globe. How long do we have to hide our smiles behind these masks, I wonder?
No comments:
Post a Comment