This grey concrete flat pavement of a morning has the suffocating air of a dystopian novel – a Phillip K Dick or George Orwell futurist classic – something hidden from the high streets, out of sight of footsloggers, barely visible to the naked pedestrian eye.
The clandestine mission – should I wish to accept it – to drive to a local Covid testing hub, freely dispense with a rogue sample of my saliva DNA and pass it on for national medical scrutiny and scientific examination.
So, I drive to an unknown Covid swab destination – an unknown abandoned school, on an unknown street, in the unknown suburbs – found by a satellite navigation system watching from the stars and the upper reaches of space.
Masked up, armed only with a phone and human cattle barcode, I walk the walk of the modern leper, down rows of make-shift aluminium alloy fencing, behind an old-dishevelled couple shuffling towards the Covid testing zone. They turn, a look of predatory fear, and usher me past with a concealed cough and wave of resigned dread, into the white wedding marquee of doom.
Inside the wedding marquee, a twenty-odd year-old emo kid scans my barcode through the thick clear plastic sheet he is skulking behind. He has white-blue dyed hair and studded eyebrows lined with aqua-marine eyeliner, and a look of youthful nonchalance, as he hands me my DIY Virus test kit, pointing casually towards Section Area 4.
I am directed to a white plastic table in Area 4, under the instruction to self-swab before the apathetic eyes of the zeroed hours McVirus workers. Would I like skinny fries with my suspected Virus? I muse.
The self-taught instructions for the DIY test have the same zen-like quality of laminated airplane crash procedures you used to find in the plane seat pocket.
First step: locate the tonsils, with mirror provided, in case they have been swallowed with Viral fear and loathing. Second step: wriggle and tease them with a foot-long swab, till the tears flow or wear the dedicated concentrated eyes of a hard-at-work porn star. Third step: zip it all up in the bio-hazard plastic bag, and hand it to the bored and daydreaming McVirus worker at the checkout desk.
Back at the ranch, I am stretched out on the sofa, exhausted from the morning’s activities, ringfenced by the suspected second Viral wave of the second Viral wave. To self-isolate, or not self-isolate.
The phone goes. I am talking to an old mate, who is cycling in the wind, yelling at full volume, and cracking angry rant man jokes. I am trying to interpret some of the comic fury he’s feeling and tune into something about Major Tom being a marzipan dildo for Boris.
I sleep. The sleep and fitful barren dreams of a suspected deadly flu plaguing the globe at large. I wake. Wake and Tom’s dead baby. Tom’s dead. And wonder whether its left to the baseless gallows humour to get me through the long days of this humourless pandemic.