An air of national optimism – of winning it and winging it – is drifting on the breeze, blowing gently in the wind, on this scorching hot, could-be-Summer day. I am sitting alone on a park bench, lost in suburban curiosity and a cul-de-sac of contemplation, watching the springtime daffodils breakthrough in late February.
Everywhere in this suburban neighbourhood scene, there are pockets of clandestine gatherings breaking out, mirroring the all-out-of-seasonal flowers: families congregating and socially distancing round doorsteps; neighbours leaning over the picket fencing, deep in conversation; and sweating men scrubbing the hub caps on their executive saloons, busy bantering with passing pedestrians.
Semi-detached lives living through the peacetime chaos of Lockdown.
Waiting for something to happen.
Waiting for the viral resistance.
Waiting for the mobile phone to ping.
Thirty minutes earlier. I am waiting at the railway station crossing, watching a young, bearded guy in silver shades, behind the wheel of his shiny new convertible, trading venomous spats with his platinum silver haired girlfriend. Reading the text from an Extinction Rebellion sign on the metal grill fencing, the stat jumps out. 1 in 5 deaths from the dirty air we breathe, and a passing thought turns to these rising mercury thermometers in the fag-end of winter.
As the red & white barriers rise-up – the warring domestic in the coupe reaches a fever pitch – as the bearded guy militantly revs the engine and skids off over the crossing.
Masking up, the new tin foil hat, is the new religious sacramental act required to buy shit, with Viral passports on the way. I mull over this, plugging into ‘Straight to Hell’ from the Clash, as I walk through the supermarket automatic doors.
The tune is from their ‘Combat Rock’ album and tells the story of US infantry papa sans – who pulled out too late, airlifted out too soon – to see their Vietnamese seed’s reach their first birthdays.
Selecting the biggest, shiniest red pepper, glasses steaming-up, I can feel the rising stresses of the fellow masked-up spenders. Of brittle tolerances for fellow man and woman pushed to breaking point. Spatial geography ruling the psyche and a deep-seated fear of venomous human snake spit.
Outside, sitting on the supermarket wall, a man in his mid-fifties with a small pit-bull like dog, is furiously rubbing his shaven balding head – like the maddened Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now – kitted out in combat fatigues, his head down, sunk in some lone despairing thought.
Ex squaddie, street drinker, or road man – the thought occurs of him holding it together for all of us – under the rising pressure cooker of Lockdown. The beginning of the Viral arse end of Broken Britain.
Gazing up into the blazing midday sun, seated on the park bench in the suburban cul-de-sac, it feels like the calm before the storm. The idea occurs: of a nation suffering collective combat fatigue – in this modern war of the black roses – led by weak, bad haired generals with wandering, lazy, political eyes on the rising tides of hospital body bags.
And now the nation has a shot in the arm for courage, the sunbathing and socializing begins in earnest, on the deckchairs and front garden lawns of pale skinned suburbia, as the gulf stream slows and the storm clouds brew on the horizon.