Shop Talk

          At our local Tesco, there is a kind, attentive lady whose job it is to assist customers at the self-checkout. She has rescued me many times and, over the years, we have developed a friendly relationship that manifests itself in banal chit-chat. Once, I introduced her to my partner – who must have made quite an impression because, since then, she will sometimes enquire after her. “And how’s your good lady?” she will say. “Oh, fine. She’s loafing around at home, while I’m sent out to the shops,” I might reply. But events of the past few weeks have left the checkout lady increasingly fraught. It was never going to be easy for her to keep the regulation physical distance from customers. They marked spaces on the floor and put signs up everywhere; then they installed screens around the checkouts; and all the while she was increasingly apologetic for the inconvenience. Finally, they gave her a face-visor, behind which she looked quite mournful. “I’m not happy about it,” she said (lifting it to talk to me). “It doesn’t feel right.”

          This is the new normal – social and economic carnage. However, there are chances to enjoy unusual, even unique, moments in the midst of it. I experienced one yesterday, sitting, almost alone, in a city plaza bathed in sunshine, strewn with fallen blossom and quiet but for the mellow sound of a lone saxophonist blowing melancholy jazz. The music echoed around the buildings, interrupted only by the passing trams, empty but for their drivers. Ghost trams. The musician told me that the police had asked him to move on, lest he draw a crowd. But a passer-by had protested, saying that his music was a tonic, not a threat. Besides, jazz doesn’t draw crowds. She won her argument: it was the police who moved on.

          On my daily walks, the unnatural quiet of the streets draws attention to things that are otherwise unremarkable – like a seeming proliferation of roadworks, for example. Is the council taking advantage of the absence of traffic to bring forward its programme of repairs, or is the activity simply more noticeable than it would be under ‘normal’ traffic conditions? Whatever the answer, it is a good time to be fixing those potholes. One day, I encountered a friend who, like me, was out for his walk. We had our conversation across two metres of paving and he reminded me that it had been six weeks since we had been more comfortably situated, in a pub. It feels as if that was another era, for which I expressed a wistful longing. He recommended a couple of online beer suppliers but, you know, it’s not the same. Supping beer, alone, at home, is even more joyless than the solo, DIY coffee experience to which I am reduced these days.

          It’s those personal interactions, profound or otherwise, that are the missing ingredient in daily life. They make us feel we belong to society, that we have a place in which we feel comfortable, people to whom we can relate. A big chunk of that has disappeared. The few people you pass in the street avoid eye-contact as well as physical proximity. And facemasks conceal any subtle attempts to smile or look kindly on someone. The chances of having a casual conversation with anyone other than a shop worker are few and far between. But not everyone is down and out. I overheard a supermarket conversation that reassured me that there is humour in adversity. The man in front of me said to the cashier, “How are you? I haven’t seen you for a while.” “I’m fine,” replied the cashier, “I’ve just had a week off.” “Good for you. Did you go anywhere nice?” said the man, grinning.

The Real News

          There’s a bloke who, somewhat eccentrically, cycles slowly and continuously round town playing music, loudly, from a large, lo-fi boombox strapped to his back. Now that there is no traffic noise, he can be heard approaching from several streets away. Lockdown has not deterred him, nor does he seem to mind the lack of an audience – which puts paid to my theory that the motive for his activity is to annoy people. But then lockdown is proving to be an other-worldly dimension, where the accepted state of affairs is re-ordered, re-prioritised or called into question altogether.

          I count myself fortunate not to be in a position whereby staying at home is any kind of hardship. I know this is not the case for millions of people around the world, which is just one of the issues that I have more time to contemplate now that the clutter of life outside has been pared down to essentials. Things are quiet – too quiet. In fact, after waking in the night and imagining myself completely alone on the planet, I was glad to hear the sound in the morning of roadworks starting up outside the window.

          Searching the media for news of anything other than the covid-19 pandemic, I am struck by the fact that all things are connected with it though some, nevertheless, appear to have an upside. For example, residents in the Lancashire village of Cartmel can now get a £5 takeaway meal from the Michelin-starred restaurant at its centre, the chefs having no other work to do. And there is a Bavarian-based distributor of sex toys who, in the first week of lockdown, reported a sharp rise in orders, including a 3,000% increase in demand for fetish nurse uniforms. Cruel irony? Based on this news alone, it seems likely that we can expect another generation of baby boomers that will, one day, rebalance the aging demography of the rich nations. Then there are some items that are puzzling: for instance, the government’s plea specifically to video-gamers to stay at home. I had always assumed they were already the stay-at-home bedrock of the take-away pizza industry.

          But behind all the news items, whatever the source and regardless of the subject, there lurks one over-arching issue: geopolitics. The most obvious example of this comes from the most obvious source – President Trump – who, in his anxiety to deflect his critics’ attention from his own blasé handling of the pandemic, seeks to blame the Chinese government, the WHO or any other party that he thinks he might successfully rally his supporters to condemn. His motive? To ensure that he gets re-elected. And if he does get re-elected, the world will be in even worse shape to resist the next global pandemic. In his book, America: The Farewell Tour, Chris Hedges explains why. Donald Trump’s mission is to do the bidding of America’s monopolising corporations, whose appetite for profit is insatiable and whose disregard for the public good in the quest for that profit is unconscionable. Unrestrained capitalism has left America with relatively few publicly owned facilities, an expensive, profit-motivated health-care system that is beyond the means of millions of its citizens and a military establishment bloated out of all proportion to the purpose of national defence. The more Trump blusters, the more it becomes evident that the covid-19 pandemic, in exposing the weaknesses, is also exposing to view the excesses of the economic system over which he presides.

          It is the pandemic that makes the headlines but, if you look critically, the overstory is this: the present trend of capitalism, whereby all resources become privately owned by an ever-concentrating elite, is a route back to the impoverishment and servitude of the masses, last seen in the middle ages, when eccentrics were burned as witches.

All Change, Please!

          There are very few cars parked on the street in town these days so, seeing a line of four fancy models, each with a document displayed on the dashboard, made me curious. The document turned out to be a letter from a local stockbroking firm addressed “to whom it may concern” and stating that the cars belong to “keyworkers in the financial sector”. It was displayed, apparently, in lieu of a parking ticket. Merchant bankers, it seems, have not learned restraint from their 2008 debacle: in the midst of a viral pandemic they seek even small ways to profit. In our contemplation of the end of ‘lockdown’, the last thing we should be considering is a return to “business as usual”, a discredited system that, once again, stands exposed as being at the heart of society’s most intractable problems.

          Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists was published in 2014. In it, he argued the case for a universal basic income or, as he put it, “Why we should give free money to everyone”. It’s not a new concept – President Nixon came close to passing it into US law in 1970 – but it has always faced resistance from economists of a neo-liberal persuasion, whose belief – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary – is that it would be unaffordable and that paying people to do nothing encourages indolence. Pilot schemes have all proved these beliefs to be unfounded: administration costs for grudging ‘job-seeking’ schemes are an expensive waste of resource because the desirability of employment is about more than just wage-dependence. Yet, still, there is a wilful blindness to the facts when it comes to adopting a social safety net for all. Well, now that we are in a situation where governments are paying the wages of millions of citizens because their employers are unable to stump up, there is a chance to change entrenched opposition to the idea of a universal basic income. Of course, strictly speaking, government is not paying wages, it is redistributing taxpayers’ funds: government does not have any money other than that with which taxpayers entrust it for the benefit of society as a whole. And it is the principle of collective benefit that this viral pandemic has thrown into the foreground.

          The term “keyworker” is not new either, but when it comes to a crisis the true value of our nurses, drivers, garbage collectors and others on whom we rely becomes self-evident. And the fact that they are stuck on the lowest rung of the pay ladder is a travesty of social justice, given that they are truly indispensable: their work cannot be done by robots. And at the top end of that keyworker pay scale are the scientists, surgeons and researchers whose earnings may be good but whose ranks have been thinned out by the lure of higher rewards as stock market traders, corporate lawyers and bankers. These are the “bullshit jobs”, so-called because they extract value from commercial activities without creating anything of value in return. Their remuneration is vampiric and capitalism – especially since the Reagan era – has produced a slew of them that multiplies itself constantly, skimming off wealth and concentrating it in the accounts of ever fewer individuals.

          Neo-liberal capitalism, by sleight of hand, has privatised public wealth, hollowed out public services, belittled specialist knowledge (except in the field of financial gimmickry), commoditised education and left the world unable to respond adequately or collectively to a pandemic that affects everybody. No way should it be back to business as usual. Just for a start, we should teach bankers to be responsible members of society: they must pay to park like the rest of us. Then we should recycle all those bullshit salaries by taxing them, along with the bullshit financial transactions upon which they depend. If this pandemic doesn’t catalyse system change, what will?

No Time For Philosophising

          The city streets are deserted at night. The silence is unnerving and, contrary to what I expected, proving to be a hindrance to peaceful slumber. During the day, there is some life – a few shoppers, essential workers, runners etc. – but, more conspicuously, vagrants. News reports assured us that the homeless were all safely accommodated in council-provided emergency hostels (though how such places were so swiftly set up is a mystery when, for years, it has been seemingly impossible). In any case, vagrants roam the streets, as before, foraging for money, food, drugs or solace, but with an enhanced air of menace about them. Often, the beggars outnumber potential donors and the sight of ragged clusters of them, loping urgently along with fixed intent in their eyes and apparent disregard for physical distancing, is an image of dystopia. One morning, I observed a delivery driver chasing off a group of three such people who had attempted to steal from the back of his van. Fortunately, they were easily dispatched, unlike the ravaging zombies he might have encountered in a typical Hollywood version of the end-of-civilisation. With that, and my having just finished Doggerland, a novel which describes a desolate future in which humankind scavenges an existence from what remains of its technological heritage, it feels as if the fi in sci-fi is about to become reality. It has put me off my nascent interest in the genre and sent me back to the comforting refuge of the historical novel.

          I also have a non-fiction book on the go at any one time, which, until yesterday, was At the Existentialist Café, an account of the eponymous philosophical theory developed by Sartre and de Beauvoir. I have tried tackling it before and run out of steam. This time I persevered for an hour or so before concluding that I had no real stomach for the massively detailed esoteric conjectures of western philosophical traditions and that, even if I did, it would be hard to justify the time required to get to the bottom of things, given the more pressing issues raised by the raging global pandemic. To clear my head, I went out for my solitary walk, taking care to avoid the zombie hordes but narrowly missing collision with a speeding scooter rider who came at me on a blind corner. Another sign of lawlessness breaking out, I thought, but, reassuringly, he stopped, apologised profusely and committed to taking more care in future. For now, at least, civilisation prevails.

          Walking city streets may seem a sad substitute for yomping in the open country but there is scope for both delight and tedium in each environment. A walk in monocultural countryside can be just as dreary as a trudge through a dull cityscape. Fortunately, this particular city, with its rich Victorian architectural stock and its ongoing, large-scale contemporary developments, has much to offer in the way of interest. I had taken with me a pocket telescope so that I could get a closer look at some of the architectural details, particularly the Victorian ornamentation, much of which is neck-achingly high-up, and I was intrigued by what I saw. All those carvings in stone, mouldings in glazed terracotta and statues perched on pediments or tucked into niches that I had been aware of but never studied, apparently represent our forebears’ pride in their heritage and values. Coats of arms are everywhere and several buildings are adorned with tableaux of figures representing art, science, trade and industry, each one holding the tools of their respective profession. The funny thing is, they are all women. So, if – after the destruction of our civilisation – any hapless survivors, generations down the line, dig them up from the ruins, they’ll probably get quite the wrong idea of who used to be in charge around here.