Doing more to help NHS staff

It's heartbreaking and also disgusting to read that this is taking place on top of everything frontline NHS staff have had to endure. It's not right at all. 

Intentionally instilling fear in care workers who are risking their lives battling to save critically ill people is verging on being domestic terrorism. 

More of us ought to do more and speak up, or at the very least question the evidence and engage in civil discussion, when we see our friends or family in our news feeds proclaiming COVID a hoax like they are some misunderstood prophets.

The silent majority's continued reluctance to become visible on facebook or to make themselves part of an online response which could help improve the online climate for us all is becoming more obvious each day. 

It's just too easy allowing headlines like these to stream down my feed like entertainment and for me to be all compassionate and understanding in the story's thread, and then when the moment's passed turn a blind eye to a mate's status update declaring that masks and ventilators kill. You have to activate yourself at some point.

The Activities That Are Helping Me Most Through The Pandemic

The activities that are helping me most through the pandemic all seem to involve the restoration of some sort of environment, be it internal or external - as well as trying to find new ways to reach out to others who are struggling which feel less obvious and draw less attention to the seriousness of what's happening.

Self-medicating with Netflix story arcs and living vicariously through the journeys of other people's lives, whether real or fictitious, hasn't helped much. They've been like nice sugary treats in between meals and I already made the mistake of thinking I could sustain myself on boxsets early on.

But I finally got round to putting up the bird feeder I've had sitting there for weeks, and made some food for it at work which is roughly 75% insect suet and smells 100% rank.

One robin has approached but then did a u-turn in mid-air!

The Importance Of Choosing Nourishing Substitutes

If Chris Whitty isn't chatting shitty, and social distancing is indeed extended to the end of the year, by then each of our new normals will include all the new habits we will have developed in the meantime.

Habits that will consist of the substitutes we've had to use as replacements for the actual things that we want to do now but can't at the moment.

If we end up having to say goodbye, for the foreseeable future, to something we miss really badly, and the gradual detachment process involves a sort of withdrawal stage to pass through; then it'll be important to choose a substitute which isn't a low-nutrition quick fix, and is actually a substitute good for us in its own right.

While we wait for things that are being missed to return, choose substitutes that contain within them opportunities for growth in life-affirming directions, instead of substitutes that act like cheap drugs to get you through, which only lead to diminishing returns on each successive hit.

Imagine Our Own Future Before Power Imagines One For Us

I feel like precisely because imagining the future which comes after this seems impossible, is the reason why we have to start imagining it. 

Otherwise the future we end up getting to live in we will have had no part in creating, and there are enough politicians and leaders of all kinds out there only too happy to design a future for everyone else to live in if it means they get to write the rules.

As difficult as it may seem, I feel like now is the perfect time for people to try and imagine what they want to happen after this, and seek out others who also share the same hopeful sentiment. Living in a future in which everyone has had a hand in making, no matter how small it may seem, is a really important thing in terms of having a sense of joint ownership about something everyone helped to build.

And that desire to seek out others who think and feel similarly to the way you are right now will be essential in order to galvanise people together into a cohesive whole, able to work as one. Because the only other option or road that springs easily to mind right now is one which leads to despair and total submission to the external forces that usher, steer and coerce us into doing what it thinks is best, if we choose not to do anything at all and remain stagnant.

That does sound proper dystopian, and even a bit hysterical when read in one go, but if you would have told me 2 months ago that very soon I would find myself staying in my house for 5 weeks straight in a bid to help save people's lives, then I would have mentioned that you didn't have to watch the entirety of Black Mirror in one sitting. 

But here we are! 

The truth of what's happening sounds just as wild as fiction right now, which is exactly why the way the story continues is so up for grabs. Everyone has writers block because the true extent of the reality we're in still remains unknown. Which is precisely why imagining a future that personally gives you hope is so necessary.

Lovemaking in the Time of Covid-19

What we need more than anything right now is to be able to touch each other. A handshake, a pat on the back, a hug, a kiss, a fondle...

Contact with those we love and cherish in all its myriad forms. But for the foreseeable future such essential life-affirming intimacy is forbidden to us.

How then can we physically touch without making contact?

With BODYDOM

Imagine standing in a box room which is partitioned straight down the middle, ceiling to floor by a see-through synthetic membrane as delicate as spiders silk, as flexible as a Queen's Variety Performance contortionist, and as strong as an iron bar. You stand on one side of the room, gazing longingly through the transparent veil at your partner who stands on the other.

How good would it feel to be able to just walk up to your partner or the loved one Lockdown has kept you apart from for weeks, and simply embrace them knowing it was totally safe to do so?

The transparent sheath that at all times maintains a safe distance between you is so thin and so light that its presence is quickly forgotten, allowing those feelings of love, longing and gratitude that have been on hold for so long to flood forth without restraint.

I'm asking for £100,000 for a 1% equity stake in the company. 

Ewan Davis: Well, what a remarkable pitch! I'd never heard of the Wirral before, but I have now! Such chutzpah! 

The dragons, hands firmly gripping their 50k wads, prepare themselves for the inevitable bidding war...

Don't conserve what little you have during lockdown. Generate more.

When you're low on energy, low on morale, low on self-belief, just low in general....it might seem like the best strategy is to conserve what few resources you have left for those parts of yourself you think are the most important or valuable. 

But you only have to look at how the The Conservatives operate to realise why replicating their mistakes and applying austerity to our own bodies will never leave us feeling better.

You have to invest your resources into things which are real and here, now. Not promises of what you'll get in the future. You have to invest your resources in things which are natural but also feed everything else, making the pursuit of dreams and ambitions possible to begin with. Investing in the living environment around us in order to help it make more of itself to nourish others.

Our True Nature Is About To Return

When people are confined for long periods of time, and their desire to resume the normality they know and are accustomed to is still denied them, their internal urge to 'do what they normally do' gradually builds up inside, becoming noticeable on their surface the longer confinement continues.

 

Because the outlets they had to channel themselves into are no longer available, and if they don't have adequate replacements or substitutes for what they need in the meantime, the desire to transgress the boundaries keeping them in, keeping them safe, starts to increase. 

So the warlike man may make enemies of those within his vicinity not because he sees them as an enemy or a threat, but because his nature requires an enemy to fight in order to feel like it is acting in accordance with itself. And if there is no one around to fight then the warlike man will attack himself.

We Yearn For The Real

There are so many things all happening at once that its difficult to select one particular thread that can bind them all together.

But over the last few days especially, a certain feature has become more prescient for me. The increasing use of conferencing apps and software for friends to remotely connect in order to bridge the sense of there being a divide and an effort to keep at bay the spectre of loneliness.

But I see the emerging trend towards the use of technologies that require increasing levels of our belief invested into it in order to render the experience as real as possible, a bit of a double-edged sword. I

Belief is such a fascinating currency. And civilisation needs to run on the shit. At the same time belief is just a belief. It's nothing really.

And so at this particular moment in time, facing a predicament which is a concentrated and necessary version of the thing which the system was eliciting anyway - namely social alienation. This is quite dangerous territory I think.

What happens when the yearning to be connected with other can be satisfied no longer? When people's desire for the real thing cannot be fully quenched by imbibing synthetic or artificial replacements?

Life doesn't cease being Faustian at any point, but more so during a global pandemic. There will always be a price to pay, at some point in the future, for whatever you have just gained even though may seem as though you are only accumulating good beneficial shit.

And the thing is, it's not all bad. I quite like and approve of many of the things that are getting clarified right now. The coronavirus is a clarifying event. THIS is the event which helps us see clearly, in 2020.

COVID-19 is making is painfully clear that pandemics do not care much for marketing rhetoric. They are nonplussed about your rapidly diminishing hopes of election success.You cannot gaslight a contagious disease even if you feel like you speak its language.

So clarification of what is, is the take home for me from all this. The reassertion of science and facts (not alternative ones). A reassertion of the value of love, of compassion, of truth, of cooperation and the sharing of burdens which in turn boosts performance and efficiency and expertise naturally. With a bit of luck, it will all become clear to us.

Perception Vs Reality

Thinking about those with less than me during the Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic

It's really easy for me to say "Stay at home you inconsiderate little pillocks!". 

I have a garden, my Mum enjoys making tasty food for us, and before he passed away my Dad had managed to pay back the mortgage he bought our house with in full, a feat which seems staggering to me right now.

But I'm thinking about how some of my friends live. Those who have never really shared close relationships with their parents or guardians and perhaps prefer to just get in touch once every 2-3 months to exchange some meaningless platitudes in order to be reassured that they are still alive.

Many of my mates are living in various concrete cities, devoid of nature's presence, scattered around the UK and abroad with only themselves to rely on and trust. 

The thought of having to stay holed up in a shared house in THE HAROLDS in Hyde Park, Leeds with housemates who mean nothing to me, knowing my XBOX 360 is still in storage somewhere, and all my real physical books I stupidly foisted on POVERTY AID to free up space in my box room... My food reserves dwindling because I thought everyone around me was just overreacting and very soon they would start chilling the hell out and calm would quickly be restored.....

I'd hate to be someone in that situation whose sense of claustrophobia or cabin fever might soon become inflamed in the next few days if they run out of things to give them a boost.

Two things I'd recommend (which you may already be doing - I don't want to assume too much here), is bringing your bedtime forward a lot. I've been getting up at 6am each morning and riding/walking to the local woods and inhaling tree farts. It's amazing that a tree's fart is what I call fresh air!! 😄 

On second thoughts it's probably tree burps that I'm inhaling. I'll look into this...

Two massive beech trees could be standing next to each other on a path that I'm walking and be silently communicating with each other totally unbeknownst to me.

"Sid....Sid.....Sidney!!!"

"What??? What is it? What do you want?"

"Here comes that boy again. The one who's always taking revealing photographs of us. Damn pervert!!!"

"It's what humans do you stupid oaf!"

"You're wrong Sidney. It's a violation of our privacy is what it is!"

"I'm going back to sleep...."

*Ben gradually approaches with camera in hand snapping away*

"Right you little pest, I've been storing up a right stinker for you here. Inhale this you meaty little cretin!"

*tree exudes huge burst of oxygen of the purest quality*

Me: "My God! The air which surrounds this fine looking beech is the freshest I've ever had the pleasure of inhaling!"

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So getting up at sunrise to inhale tree farts deep into your lungs at full capacity is the first thing I'd recommend. 10 of your deepest slowest breaths which feel like you are drawing in the universe and then you keep it there when you are totally filled with air. Put a cap on it when you can't inhale any more and then carry on sucking in air like you suck up cream soda through a straw to fill in the remaining space in your lungs and bring them to your actual full lung capacity. Then hold it....HOLD IT!!!!!!.....

And then exhale................

AAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!.............

Do 10 of them in a your local wood or forest when you wake up and I promise you, very soon......Instant ZEN Monk Mode! More inner calm. Increased lung capacity. Increased brain power due to increased oxygen levels in the blood. Improved circulation. Great mental focus and concentration. The whole nine yards mate! The full flaming monty!

The second thing I was going to recommend I'll recommend some another time because this post has gone on long enough already and I want some breakfast.

Post-Modernism's Shadow

BREXIT, CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19....

Isn't it a ironic how Post-Modernism had the audacity to claim that the age of Grand Narratives was now behind us?

They seem to have returned, but happen to be nemesis of the ones we originally embarked upon. Our shadow narratives. Cast whenever we insist on the way things OUGHT to be, overuling the sovereignty of how things actually are. 

ASDA staff caused me to shed tears of what must have been the love of togetherness

Just over a week or so ago I was in ASDA. It was pre-peak stockpiling, but the shelves were already looking ragged, as products were being left in their cardboard boxes because there simply wasn't enough staff to maintain the usual level of service, and so empty boxes lay strewn across the floor beneath.

I'd just popped in to get some essentials:

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2 Dr Oetker Spinach Pizzas

1 bag of Kings Veggie Jerky

1 bottle of Gordon's Gin

1 bottle of Diet Indian Tonic Water

1 Tiger Loaf (reduced to 27p)

1 bag of Haribo Super Mix

----‐---‐-----‐------------‐-----------‐-------

The atmosphere felt a tiny bit apocalyptic, but you could see that the rule of law was still being respected, so aisles were free of bandits and acts of a lawless nature. 

I took the items in my basket to the self-checkout and scanned them through. Owing to my childish features, the ASDA helper woman asked to see proof of my years before running off with haste to remove the security tag on the Gordon's. 

Considering the fact that the demands of her job had forced her to have to stand in close proximity and help thousands of increasingly panic stricken strangers all preparing for something that was unprecedented for them, the ASDA woman looked very chipper and cheerful, but was having to do the job of at least 4 people - darting about the shop floor like a wholesome entertainer at the Queen's Variety Performance, enthralling Her Majesty with her ability to keep as many plates spinning on poles as her small frame could manage.

She came back with my Gordon's and felt compelled to confess she thought I was her daughter's age and not approaching retirement age as my passport had confirmed. We had a little laugh before I popped my essentials in my bag, popped my earphones in my ears and then headed towards the exit.

In the distance, the two security guards who had been seated at the entrance when arrived suddenly got up and began walking towards me. I thought to myself "But I don't even remember robbing anything! Maybe I have a psychological condition which causes me to steal groceries and then erase all memory of doing so??!!"

I quickly checked my bag for tins of peas and sweetcorn or anything else not on my receipt. Everything was accounted for. As I got closer to the security guards I could see now that they were actually both smiling at me and gestering for me to look behind myself. 

My earphones had been pumping some seriously sweet bass grooves into my lug holes so I couldn't hear a single thing going on in the world around me. I pulled them out and turned around and it was the cheerful woman I'd just been having a little laugh with! She'd been trying to get my attention because I'd walked off and left my Kings Veggie Jerky at the self-checkout till! 

I said to her, "Amazing! Thanks for letting me know. I bloody love jerky!". I looked back at the security guards again and they were beaming with pride like they'd just made it possible for a father to be reunited with his long lost son so I thanked them too.

As I walked over to where my bike had been locked up outside, I felt really touched that despite the drastically reduced amount of staff working at ASDA that day, the fact that I should still leave the store with everything I'd paid for mattered enough to these staff members to chase me down and make sure that I got my jerky. The woman could have just said or done  nothing, as so many other shoppers were demanding her time.

I'm not fully sure why, but I did well up a bit riding back home, and wondered why such a frequent and unsurprising event at any other time hadn't moved me like the one that had just taken place.