As I write, it seems that everything is up in the air: lockdown has just been reinstated in England; votes are still being counted in the USA; and the legal process of conveyancing grinds inexorably towards an unknown and unknowable date of completion for our home move. When will the pubs, gyms and shops selling non-essential items re-open? Who will emerge as leader of the “Free World”? When will I be able to sit on my west-facing terrace and contemplate the sun going down over Cornwall (or watch the Atlantic weather fronts roil in)? It feels like living in limbo, whatever that is. To be sure, I looked up the origin of the word and was horrified. It seems that having invented a place called Heaven, Christianity then had to institute a few border controls to ensure that only the worthy entered. Hence Limbo, the place where applicants, i.e. innocent souls, languish until their visas can be validated. This applies especially to saints who died before the advent of Christ and (it gets worse) all those unbaptised children who have committed no sin except for the “original” one of having been born. So henceforth I will shun the word, along with its implication that there is nothing to be done but wait. Instead, I will concentrate on the here and now.
As far as lockdown goes, although it means the suspension of daily visits to the gym, it also presents the opportunity to question the sense of a costly membership pass. Why not make permanent use instead of the outdoors, where walking and cycling cost nothing? As for the pub, the experience of the past eight months has made us resourceful in finding alternative ways to socialise – for the time being, at least. And the non-essential shopping? Well, it’s non-essential.
Then there is the presidential election. While one hopes for the worst possible outcome for the incumbent, the present hiatus is a chance to reflect on how he even got there in the first place and whether or not he has had any positive effect on the system of governance, which is not as perfect as the myth surrounding it would have us believe. Certainly, he has exposed its weaknesses, so maybe there will arise some momentum to fix them – if, that is, politicians who are not corrupt ever get to tinker with the constitution. For it is said that “power corrupts but it is more likely that power attracts the corruptible. And supposing an honourable, public-spirited legislature did turn the USA into a better functioning democracy, how long would it last? As one US Senator* has observed, “If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, color and creed, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.”
Then there is the waiting to move home, which is largely a state of mind, since there is a mass of displacement activity to keep one from dwelling on it. Despite paying solicitors to deal with it, most of the work is actually done by me. They made it sound easy, seducing me with web portals, through which documents can be exchanged – signed, even – and phone apps which track your progress towards the all-important ‘completion’, but the reality is that I do all the collating, scanning, checking, uploading, emailing and subsequent chasing-up. Without a fully equipped home-office, which (to my occasional regret) I do have, all this would be unfeasible. And even the removals companies got me to do the surveys for them via video.
So, I am trying to keep my mind focussed on the present, be in the moment and not waste time speculating about what might be. Even so, I do lapse sometimes into a daydream of what it will be like to sit on that west-facing terrace and watch the sun go down on the river Tamar – and, possibly, democracy itself.
* George D. Aiken, (d. 1984)
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