ISOLATION DIARIES PART 85: MOON BASE ALPHA

Greg tuned into a meeting today live from the office. I know - not a photograph of the office used so often as a comedy background; I mean the actual real thing! He was there!

I often think about my desk. It’s still stuck in March 2020, with its homemade cardboard calendar, pen pot, and stack of Chicago Manuals of Style (5th edition). Captain Assertive, my plastic pirate is there too, gazing into space, next to my JMW Turner mug and my spare smart-watch strap. The Captain must be wondering if I’ll ever come back across the high seas.

“Is there a thick layer of dust?” asked someone.

“No it’s not too bad, actually,” he replied, swiping a finger along the familiar wooden desk in front of him. With his headset on, he looked like a sort of astronaut reporting from abandoned moon base alpha.

I suppose we’ll all be going to abandoned moon base alpha, someday soon.

“Anyone else around then, Greg?”

“No,” he said wistfully, “It’s very quiet.”

I’ll bet it is.

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 0 days

Back to Sixes Day: 0 days

Haircut Day: 14 days

Big Travel Day: 49 days

Liberation Day: 84 days

STACEY DOOLEY’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME

“So did anyone else forget the clocks went forward this morning?” she asked, crackling over the radio. “I lucked out,” continued she, “because this show is pre-recorded, so I’m at home in my joggers and I sorta got away with it.”

I was suddenly fascinated by Stacey Dooley’s understanding of the passage of time. She either had the remarkable prescience that she would oversleep this morning having forgotten to change the clocks, (despite reminding herself while recording a radio show ahead of time) or she’s a time-traveller - who managed to record her show in the future, travel back in time to the past so she could upload it ready for this morning’s Radio 5 broadcast in the present.

I drummed the steering wheel and looked up at the traffic lights. Red. The dashboard said 9:03 still, the time of warm duvets on a GMT Sunday morning rather than ‘driving to church’. And even then I’m supposed to actually be there by 10 so it’s not really driving to church time in BST either!

Ah well. We get lighter evenings.

I’m guessing Stacey was just scrabbling around for something to say while being simultaneously on the radio and not on the radio at the same time. Schrödinger’s DJ. After all, she probably was in her joggers when the show went out today, she may well have forgotten about the missing hour after all, and she could easily have lucked out by not having to do the broadcast live. 

These days smartphones sort it all out for you. Only the oven and the previously-mentioned dashboard clock need a little hand. And the chances are you’re either a type A person (it is vital to change those clocks as soon as possible or the sky will probably fall in) or a type B (you’re very happy to drive around/cook a pizza in the wrong time zone, as in six months’ time it’ll all be back to normal anyway. If anyone asks you’ll say you just haven’t got round to it).

I wonder if you can guess which I am. The lights turned green, I revved the engine, let Stacey tell us what would be happening on her show in the future tense from her comfy living room in the past, and then drove my car through the Greenwich Mean Time bubble, ready for the first Sunday of the summer.

MAN RIDES BIKE

I just read a news article that is essentially, Prince Harry rides bicycle.

That is literally it. He’s been seen on his bike, riding it. That’s the news. That is the story. The rest is all context, which we know already, and we’re obviously supposed to speculate around like gossipy neighbours. Here’s how it plays out:

First time we’ve seen him since the big interview. Ooh what does it mean? What can we read into it?

He’s riding a bike.

The bike’s electric. How about that?

Yeah, how about that; he’s riding an electric bike near where he lives.

Look at him though, in his simple grey sneakers, hooded jacket and baseball cap. How about that for a Prince?

Hmm. Were you expecting full regalia and an ornamental sword?

What about his wife. Where’s she then? 

Maybe at home being what you call ‘troublesome’? Or maybe she’s simply not riding a bike. They have a two year old after all.

And all this after the rift with his brother, the stuff that came out, ooh remember that, remember all that, let’s remind you, don’t forget, we definitely want you to remember all that while he’s out on his bicycle.

Thanks, news. What’s next, ‘Man dies of natural causes’? ‘Woman in shoes spotted going to work’? ‘Local builder seen in Starbucks’?

I’m glad I’m not a famous person.

ON A CALL WITH THE BORG

I was on a call with Borg HQ today. At one point, they showed a slide with only one block paragraph written on it, in large, unironic letters.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is an English language adage meaning that complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single still image, which conveys its meaning or essence more effectively than a mere verbal description."

It passed by without the batting of an eyelid. You've got to love the Borg sometimes.

Meanwhile, I figured that the one picture that didn't give me the thousand words I needed, was the one from Hermes. In fact, scrap that - I didn't need a thousand; I needed two numbers, like a 24 or a 22 or a 27 - just to let me know which house my trainers had been delivered to on Sunday. Instead, you'll remember, I got a picture of  just the parcel itself and a pair of someone else's feet.

I stood outside my front door, squinting at the photo in the sunlight. Perhaps if I could make out any distinguishing features in the concrete, I could work out whose house it was near? There was indeed a small drain with a piece of grass sticking out of it, right in the corner of the picture.

Just as I realised where it was in real life, a door creaked opened from number 24 (near the grassy drain) and my neighbour (we'll call him Ben) popped out with a familiar looking package.

"Ah!" I said, "Is that my parcel?"

"Sure," said Ben, "Here you go."

And that was that. He'd seen me trying to sleuth the photo and had come outside to help me out. So, in a weird way, the picture had led me to the package after all.

The Borg continued to go through the assimilation strategy, word by word. I've always wondered how they manage to acquire so many different civilisations, yet remain essentially the same - always with the laser-eyes and cybernetic body armour. You'd have thought they'd integrate the plus points of all the worlds they'd taken over, like wings, jokes, poetry, language, culture? Nope. Just a big old metal cube with some soulless robots.

Hmm. Don't read too much into that. 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 84: SPEEDBUMPS AND MOUNTAINS

It seems remarkable that it's been a whole year. Back then, the Prime Minister, dishevelled, but yet to contract Covid himself, sat behind a desk at Number 10 on a Monday evening, urging us all to stay at home.

When I look back at the graphs, what strikes me now is how small that first wave looks - positive cases, deaths, hospitalisations - the numbers we thought were huge and unacceptable look so small now between March and April 2020 - like a little speedbump, compared to the mountains of what was to come.

Naively, I believed that there'd only be one peak. I looked at Italy, France, Germany, even China - the numbers seemed to hit a high, then the social distancing measures we were all still getting used to would kick in, and the graph would descend after Easter. And that, I thought, would probably be that. No-one had mentioned variants. No-one had mentioned the wave rippling around the planet, two perhaps three times. A few people twigged that the measures weren't about eradicating it, but giving the NHS room to breathe, but I think a lot of us thought it would be weeks not months.

Here we are then, on the steep downward curve of what turned out to be the second wave, one year on. More than half the adults in this country have been given a dose of a vaccine, and schools are back, with more restrictions due to be lifted. People are hopeful, I think.

The same Prime Minister today is more cautious than he has been, about that. In the middle of a big political furore over whether the EU wants to use the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, cases on the continent have been allowed to soar, and the still dishevelled PM is quite certain that the effects of the surge will 'wash up on our shores'. We should, he warns, be 'under no illusion'.

Funny. Much of this pandemic has been about the people being pessimistic when the government have been bullishly trying to get us all back to work. Today, it feels the other way around. We are all quite fed up and want this to be over as quickly as possible; the government are hinting that the timescale could still, quite easily slip.

Anyway. It is interesting that a year ago, we were watching Europe nervously, certain that we'd not be able to hold back the tide. Hopefully, this too, will be more of a speedbump for us, and less of a mountain.

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 0 days
Back to Sixes Day: 7 days
Haircut Day: 21 days
Big Travel Day: 56 days
Liberation Day: 91 days

HERMES, NIKE, AND HAROLD

“Your parcel was successfully delivered at 11:46 and was left with a neighbour.”

It’s nice to think that the folks at Hermes have such an implicit trust in humanity. I didn’t ask for that service, nor was I given the option to prefer they stashed it in the wheelie bin or left it behind the flowerpots. They kindly took it upon themselves to leave my new trainers with ‘a neighbour’ instead, as though this were Ramsay Street and every other resident was some sort of Harold Bishop.

I wasn’t in; that was the real problem. For some reason I didn’t expect the winged messengers to deliver on a Sunday, and I didn’t expect it so speedily after making the order on the previous Saturday afternoon. I thought Monday might have it, statistically. I should probably not have underestimated the incredible focus Hermes has on speed, even if it were at the expense of accuracy. The text came through after the fact.

So, which neighbour? There was no further indication on my doormat when I got home, and it looked like entirely none of the local Harold Bishops were in. What Hermes has given me then, is a trip round the street tomorrow, looking for my new running trainers. I can only hope they’re with someone who doesn’t have both a devious curiosity and size 8.5 feet.

They’re okay, my neighbours. I’ll find it. Or hopefully, the current steward of the Nikes will feel compelled to simply bring the package round tomorrow. Ha! Harold Bishop carrying Nike on behalf of Hermes! It’s a classicist’s nightmare - the Roman goddess of victory on the wings of the Greek god of messengers, and the hands of a fictional character off of Neighbours.

I checked my emails later, just to see if there was a delivery note with a house number. Boo. No such luck in the inbox. They had though, attached a delivery picture - a photo of my parcel on an indistinct bit of tarmac, next to someone’s feet... and I wish I were making this up but... the feet, with their owner not in the frame, were happily sporting a pair of Nike trainers.

A PUZZLESOME DAY

It's been one of those days when I've tried incredibly hard to explain something, or ask something very clearly to lots of different people, and I've ended up going round in massive circles of misunderstanding.

It feels like a puzzle, but a puzzle where I'm not sure I've got all the pieces, where the people I'm doing the puzzle for might not have the same picture on the same box, and none of them are really all that sure I should be sitting here doing puzzles in the first place. Talk about cross-purposes!

I know what you're thinking - a lovely meeting would sort all this out. Let's get everyone together in a room and discuss it! If meetings are for anything, surely they're for this!

Yeah. Except I'm not really in the 'bang-your-heads-together' group that can call meetings just like that. I'm just a puzzle-builder with a handful of pieces.

The worst part of this is that you can bet your skittles that the miscommunication will end up being my fault! That's the problem with ringing around everyone for help - the common denominator, the spreader of misinformation, the bug in the system... is me. Who knows whether I've accidentally muddied the previously perfectly clear waters? Who knows whether I am the fly in the ointment? All I know is that every call complicates what I found out on the last one.

So, either I've cleared things up today, or I've made it about ten thousand times worse. I bet I can guess which.

UNSOLICITED ADVICE FOR THE BINMEN

It's wheelie bin day. I don't know what it is about these new wheelie bins but they rumble like thunder. Every Wednesday I have to check the Met Office forecast page just in case I'm hearing things.

We've got these new food bins as well now - they're sort of self-sealing plastic hampers for food waste. It's a good idea - previously all of that stuff went into landfill I guess. Hopefully this way, the Council can use it as compost. I like to think of the flowers I enjoy in the park being a sort of result of that - though I'm pretty sure they'd have grown anyway.

The trouble with the food bins is that their natural centre of gravity is positioned somewhere near the lockable handle. That means that when they're empty (so, after collection) they all, without fail, blow over and get blustered around the street. Last week it looked like they were being raided by invisible foxes. Additionally, because they're quite a new thing, not everyone has had the chance to put those sticky numbers on - so it's tricky to sort out whose is whose. Though, I have a feeling that matters more to some people than to others. Context is everything these days.

Anyway, what the binmen, er, I mean professional refuse collectors and waste disposal engineers should do, is leave the food bins open, by swinging the lid and the handle down over the side of the bin, instead of leaving them clipped shut with the handle up. Low centre of gravity, harder to fall over. At least, that's what I think.

But then, I don't know how I'd take it if they cheerily waved at me and told me how to use the active voice, how to spell 'organize' and how to FTP text files to a live hosted site, so I'm not really in a position to give advice. I can't even put sticky numbers on my food bin.

 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 83: MOTHER’S DAY

Back when you could smell fresh cut grass from the open seat of your horse and trap, and good mornings were starched collars and doffed caps, Mothering Sunday, it turns out, had nothing at all to do with mums.

The idea was that you visited the church in which you had been christened - I suppose, to go back and to be thankful for the Christian life you had led since that day, to remind yourself of your roots and how you had grown since leaving your ‘mother’ church.

You can see what happened, and perhaps rightly so - the idea of honouring your ‘mothering’ evolved quite properly into honouring your mother. And very welcome a thing Mother’s Day is in our world, I say.

What with it being the sainted day, I revisited my own mater today, complete with a little gift and a nice card. I’m glad I did; it was so nice to see her. And once more I was reminded how much I’ve missed my parents in this woeful year of weirdness. In fact, in a very tricky way to describe, I found myself unable to be fully myself. I thought about that a lot.

I think there’s an unexpected heartbreak coming. I’ve voiced it a little before, when I realised the children were growing up too fast, but it struck me again today - we’re going to realise the time we’ve lost, and maybe more.

It’s like a delayed grief, a sort of tidal wave from an earthquake a year old. It will seep out, and then quickly seep in again. Had the pandemic been a month or two, as we assumed last Spring, we might have adapted, we might have collected ourselves and returned to how we were in early 2020 without missing a beat. Unfortunately, we’ve been on pause for so long, pressing play will feel as daunting as starting over. And I don’t know if we’re all ready for it.

Many of us are also going to have to realise the people we’ve lost too. There are over 140,000 of them now. A year ago, one of the experts who flanked the daily news briefings told us that 20,000 would be a tragedy. Here we are then, seeing that terrible toll as the waters slowly recede and we survey the damage. Coming back together will at best be bittersweet. I think it might be tougher than a lot of us are expecting.

And that’s how I felt driving back from seeing my Mum today: thrilled to tears that I’d seen her, but still a little bit crushed and confused that the distance between us had made it so difficult.

Perhaps that was what Mothering Sunday was about then - tying yourself back to the things that mattered, reconciling your journey with your start point, old friends and old faces swirling through the church like warm memories, keeping you grounded, keeping you thankful, keeping you home.

“I can’t wait to give you a hug then,” said I from the doorstep. I blew her a kiss, hoping it would convey thankfulness and warmth, respect and sweetness. I reversed down the drive as raindrops spotted on the windscreen. Then, as I strapped on the seatbelt and swung the car in the direction of home, I smiled to myself, wiping away a hot teardrop from my cheek.

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 0 days
Back to Sixes Day: 15 days
Haircut Day: 28 days
Big Travel Day: 63 days
Liberation Day: 98 days

ALGORITHMIC ESTIMATION

Seems I've gone up in the algorithmic world of estimation: I'm now getting marketing material from Mercedes-Benz...

I don't want to shout their promotional offers from the rooftops for them or anything, but apparently I can get £3,150 OFF a brand new GLC, or up to £2,000 off an A-Class. OFF! I mean, my last car cost less than the discount on these dooberies; how in the world does the algorithm think I can splash out on one?

They do look nice though; super-shiny and with fully digital cockpits (I'm really not doing the marketing work for them, I promise) and one, the 'New GLA' even says it's equipped for 'any family adventure'.

That's a clever bit of middle-class wording isn't it? For family-adventure. It's so sporty you can use it at weekends for those off-road, all-wheel drive feel-young-again shenanigans, and yet it's also sturdy enough for the school run or the weekly jaunt to the click-and-collect. And for that ultimate 'family adventure', you can even trust it on that long (and now comfortable) drive to the South of France, for this summer's long awaited vacance en Provence. 

Well. Anyway. Either the algorithm has missed the mark with me, or the good people who style and craft these fancy machines are getting desperate for sales. "Maybe, just maybe, some of those people are fed up with rustbuckets and jalopies?" they must wonder. "Perhaps they can be tempted, especially as lockdown comes to an end..."

Well. I have no need for multibeam LED headlamps. And if anything, Herr Benz and Herr Daimler, I just can't afford it anyway.

OSASCOMP

Thought I'd do a little thing on writing. Here you go:

---

You know how there are some things you know but don't know how you know them? It's especially true of the way we learn English - the more we read, the more we imbibe the best form and pattern of writing and speaking... often without realising.

For example, there is definitely an order to the way you use multiple adjectives to describe a single thing. You'd probably raise an eyebrow if someone wrote about green, little men from Mars, or a cylindrical, huge, battered, red, old spaceship. You don't know why, but you do know that you want to move those adjectives around to make sense.

What's the pattern?

Believe it or not, there really is a specific order - it's called OSASCOMP: Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose. You'd never use them all of course, but it makes sense to put them in order where you see them. For example:

Pass me that lovely big old red tomato would you? (opinion, size, age, colour, OSAsComp)

The glittering Russian satellite fell quickly through the cool velvet sky. (opinion, origin, and then opinion, material, OsascOmp and OsascoMp)

Or to go back to our slightly clunky (opinion) original (origin) example:

The huge, old, battered, cylindrical, red spaceship stood on the launchpad. (size, age, age, shape, colour, oSASComp)

Well anyway. There it is, just in case you wanted to check your description of a thing. OSASCOMP. Though to be honest, sometimes it's best to keep the list of adjectives as short as possible. Innit.

YOU SAY SCON

You Say Scon

You say scon and
I say scone and
So we disagree!
We have to leave
The table and
Our tea and sympathy

I must go to
Find my tribe who
Use the magic E
And you must dwell
With others who
Can't bear the likes of me

And there upon
The tablecloth
Between our points of view:
The jam and cream
And tasty cakes
Dividing me and you

Now I say scone
And you say scon and
Hate is all we know
Divided by
A letter, and
The way we sound an O

I can't help but
Wonder, if we'd
Really rather be
Discussing it
Together, with
A lovely cup of tea  

THREADS

Threads

This fine linen, silken thread
Adorns my body
Holds my head, and
Ties me to the lonely earth:
It wraps me to the dead

Come free me of these woven chains
And let me feel the
Sun again, and
Rip the garment, tear away
The sorrow and the shame

Cold, decaying, aching bones
In darkness dwell
Beneath the stones, I
Sink forgotten, out of time
And leave the world alone

And yet I chose these clothes I wear
In sunlit lands, I
Wove them there, now
Hid, unseen, their fine array
Is lost to dark despair

And do I dream within the deep?
Of someone tender, strong
But sweet, who
Calls my name from time beyond
To wake me from my sleep?

I, Lazarus, once light, once free
Now bound in threads
Of destiny, I
Wait to hear the call once more
Still reaching out to me

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 82: BRUTAL

"Actually when did we start working from h..."

"16th of March wasn't it?" interrupted someone else on the team chat.

It seems this week, thoughts have gradually been turning to going back into the office. There's not much enthusiasm for celebrating; I can see why. For one thing, our department is half the size it was a year ago. That is going to hit home when we're back and surrounded by empty desks. For another, this is a complex psychological season, and I'm not entirely convinced that everyone's okay.

'Brutal' someone called it the other day. I've been thinking a lot about that word. We were knocked out a year ago, slammed to the deck with a sucker punch by a virus we didn't understand. In survival mode, we did our best to adapt, to get going, to get to our feet and figure out the new normal, but let's be honest: we were all still dazed and confused. And I think some of us still are.

There are bruises too - some evident and sore, and some on the inside. Brutal's a good word, overall. We're all going to need some time.

If I'm honest, the thought of turning up at the office does terrify me. Sitting at a desk with those keyboards rattling, and voices churning over the dividers - I find that whole thing quite a daunting thought now. I just don't think it would be the big happy reunion we all thought we wanted; I think it would be an awkward mess.

It's not that I don't miss that environment - sometimes I think I do; it's more that it would be, will be, a really tricky situation to adapt to. And at least at first, I can imagine it being absolutely awful.

"It's not for a few months, anyway," said the manager, "Though I'm sure it will go very quickly," he added with caution.

Maybe the most brutal thing about all of this isn't the punch, or the shock, or the feel of the deck as we hit the floor. Maybe the most brutal part is learning how to get up and walk again, when everything hurts. 

The Five Dates

Back to School Day: 3 days
Back to Sixes Day: 24 days
Haircut Day: 38 days
Big Travel Day: 73 days
Liberation Day: 108 days

BANKSY AND OSCAR

This week we got our own Banksy. Well at least, our local ex-prison did. In the cover of night, the guerilla artist used his classic template-and-spray-can technique to add a poignant piece to the stern red brickwork of the exterior wall.

The prison, famous for once housing and inspiring Oscar Wilde, has been a youth-offending institute for a number of years, and was recently decommissioned, scheduled for demolition. It is after all, prime town-centre real-estate. The work of the world's most famous street artist might have just scuppered that plan - or perhaps even accelerated it; time will tell.

Anyway, much to the delight of those who opposed the development and wanted it turned into an arts hub, it, and now us, actually have our own genuine article.

I say us. This is the effect of Banksy: he generates a unique community wherever he turns up. There is suddenly an 'us', gathering around, taking photos, being together, pasting our selfies on social media excitedly. There's a sort of thrill at being chosen, as though the gods have decided to bless us with golden tulips, the infinite harvest or the fountain of life in the town square. Or in this case, a stencilled image of a prisoner escaping on a trail of typewriter paper. It's big news round these parts.

There were debates years ago, weren't there, about whether Banksy himself might be just a glorified vandal. In fact, if his work weren't so valuable these days, I truly think that discussion would still be ongoing. Instead of using it as a fawning publicity piece for our town, the local council would have been scrubbing it off like chewing gum under the nozzle of the high pressure jet. But there be money in it. They've already contacted the Ministry of Justice to try to get the work protected.

In many ways then, Banksy might just be the greatest contemporary artist we have - not just by daubing graffiti, but by starting a conversation, by drawing together communities around his message, by using that singular combination of fame and anonymity to speak loudly and silently into the world. Some may say he's on the wrong side of that prison wall; some may say his work supersedes the letter of the law, and others say he rightly transcends it, even descends it on the other side of it, like Oscar Wilde - an artist whose brilliant work outlives his prison sentence, the prison that held him, and the very reason he found himself there.

PAMPLEMOUSSE

Would it be pretentious to write a poem in French? I feel like it might be. I got away with Italian because it's a bit more niche, but French - somehow it seems like the language pompous people choose to show off their linguistic chops.

All the fanciest meals have French names, yes? They roll from the tongue of the bow-tied waiter as he recommends les haricots cuits sur un tranche du pain grillé or a bottle of vintage 1986 délice-ensoleillé, n'est pas? If you know, you know, I guess.

Well, my little pots pourri and petit filouses... here's my Delboyish attempt at silly-sounding pompous old poesie en Francais. It could be the deepest thing ever... or just some nonsense, some absurdité. I quite like that I don't have to pick which.

Pamplemousse

Je voudrais un pamplemousse
Pour le sac et pour la trousse
A l'ecole je mange aussi
Tous les bonbons, tous les fruits

A la classe j'ai une banane
Tres jolie pour la madame
Je regarde mon sac, ma trousse
Pour manger? mon pamplemousse!

Maintenant, moi je suis plein
Je ne veux manger rien
Dans la maison belle, je vais
Parce-que je suis fatigué

A PLACE IN THE SUN

An old colleague of mine has just got a job presenting a well-known travel show on Channel 4.

Thinking back, it really does all make sense. He used to come in and rant about traffic wardens giving him tickets for parking on double-yellow lines, not be particularly fussed about working as a temp at all but still charm his way through it, entertain everyone with his daily dramas, and generally be hilariously larger than life. I liked him - even though he was quite my opposite.

He got into property development after that job, I believe. That would be about right - there's a certain personality that makes a good go of high-end property, and the blend of likeable charm and steely-eyed determination fits the bill like a soft suit fits into a BMW. He had all of those things.

I say kudos and all the best then. I'm sure he'll be great on the telly, jetting off to foreign climes to look for fancy houses for expats. He was kind and funny, and presumably he's a lot more focused these days. He'll be a fine TV presenter - so long as he doesn't park himself on double-yellows.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 81: SELF-AWARE

It does seem sometimes, as though the virus is intelligently responding to our ongoing progress towards eradicating it.

What is that? Some sort of evolutionary response? How does it know we're developing vaccines? How could it know that our social-distancing and lockdown measures are actually impeding its ability to replicate?

Overall, the infection and death rates are plummeting - enough of course, for the government here to have introduced the Five Dates plan. However, in just over 50 specific areas of the UK, we're told, the infection rate is actually going up again. In addition, the government seem to be hunting down every single case of the Brazilian variant they can find, and that, all by itself, is worrying.

Meanwhile, in Europe, there's a potential surge coming, and even in the United States, they're preparing for their fourth wave, despite inoculating millions of vulnerable Americans.

Is the virus fighting back? Are there variants that are replicating like typos through a document-set, gradually outrunning the ability of the vaccines to keep up? Why does it seem that every day of good news is followed by a pushback of worrying headlines? Or, is this whole war against an invisible enemy simply being engineered by what we might call ‘sinister forces’?

What I think is that there are always sinister forces looking to exploit most situations - not just wars and pandemics. Someone somewhere's making lots of money, someone else just wants to be Loki, and still others are shooting for power as though the notion of inequality was just a made-up concept.

Well. I don't think the virus is self-aware, and actually, I'm not sure it can possibly be adapting in response to us - I think it's just mutating anyway, regardless of the pesky humans on the planet, and disconnected from the notions of conspiracy theorists. That is, I'm told, what viruses do - everything they can to survive, just like us.

Hopefully, with time, it'll start mutating into a less destructive copy, and the vaccines and boosters of the future will keep it under control.

The Five Dates

Back To School Day: 6 days
Back To Sixes Day: 27 days
Haircut Day: 41 days
Big Travel Day: 76 days
Liberation Day: 111 days