Some Sort of Normal by Tom Fynes

 

(Written during the Covid lockdown nightmare)

 

Something unknown whacked the Maya civilization back in the day.

One by one, their cities were abandoned, and by A.D. 900 the Maya civilization was gone, disappeared, vamoosed off to feed the fishes.

I’ve had that same sinking feeling about our great cities, “New York, London, and Tokyo.”

One by one they will be abandoned as variations of the Corona viruses come back, year after year, to wipe out the tightly packed city dwellers. All the lights of those great cities will flicker, like the great cities of the Mayans and then disappear, into the mummy dust and overgrown archaeology filtered vegetation of history.

Rome was once the template for the modern metropolis. But it to was virtually abandoned. The population falling from over a million to around 50,000. War, hunger, or pandemics, who knows?

We’ll soon be looking forward to escaping our straight-jacket cement prisons and heading for the sea or the mountains. I believe this will be the thought of all those, who have the means, to get away from the virus infested concrete jungles that our great megalopolis has become.

Food does not seem to be a problem during this worldwide lock-down. Staying sane is.

Bingeing on Netflix will not solve this. Yes, we can go online and learn something new.

But do we?

No, we just seem to go round in mind-numbing circles, waiting for the divine trumpets to blow their heavenly music, and then we will give such a great cheer as the walls of our lock-down Jericho come tumbling down.

A vaccine, a vaccine, my Kingdom for a vaccine, is the war cry of King Boris.

But no disinfectant thanks.

Even though the leader of the free world has recommended bright sunlight or injecting disinfectant or even using a Star Wars Light sabre to kill off Covid-19. But he won’t wear a mask. He wants to look people in the eye it seems.

Go figure?

When we’re all allowed out again on the streets, I presume we’ll have to use face masks. It has been a common sight in Asia for years. We’ve always thought it was a bit odd. Masked men on the street used to be a sign of trouble.

I suppose wearing Covid-19 masks is also a sign of trouble in the very air we breathe.

This pandemic will run and run until it runs out of warm bodies. We’ve been told to expect many more peaks. And many more lows and blows. As we first believe we have it beaten. Then, like a mad Tyson Fury, knocked out and never ever coming back. It rises from the ring floor like a phoenix and starts coming at us again and again.

 And, as we all know, Tyson Fury won the return match.

Now we don’t want that do we?

Perhaps King Boris will have his vaccine by then.

He mutters to himself, while searching the apartment for some disinfectant to inject or even a Star Wars Light sabre.

People who are renting are now looking for houses with a big garden. Forward planning is needed. Those 10 men/women to a cramped hostel room should be a thing of the past. As they’re a breeding ground for all sorts of nasty viruses.

I watched, “Contagion,” the movie. And I have to whole heartily agree, it can be the new uplifting life affirming, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Gwyneth Paltrow is in it. And in between eating the bat shit that starts the whole mess. Manages to infect everybody, including the quick shag she has on her way home to Matt Damon.

Paltrow is more famous now, for being Iron Man’s squeeze and for launching a candle that she maintained, as the big selling point, smelled like her vagina.

Her candle smelling test technician gurus must have had some fun with that.

What would be their job title?

Pussy Sommeliers perhaps.

“OK Ms Paltrow, Gwyneth, can we call you Gwyneth? Spread them. Yes!!Yes!! Yes!! I’m picking up that waxy aroma, that early morning toffee with hints of vanilla, mineral and fruity notes that lead into a prickly, savoury, mouth-drying hairy bacon experience.”

Gwyneth, unfortunately, dies in the movie and gets her scalp lifted by a pathologist.

The Doc checks out her virus ravaged brain. He was checking the wrong end of her it seems.

Or perhaps he’d lost the art of smelling mouth-drying hairy bacon scented candles.

Who nose?

The start of the movie has her eating from an, ‘everybody help yourself peanut bowl,’ on the bar counter.

Giving her card to the waitress to pay with. And generally spreading her slimy virus around.

Never noticed it the first time I saw the movie many years ago.

Now we’re more enlightened. Having paid the, “don’t fucking touch anything,” death price with Covid-19, big time.

Tapas bars in Spain anyone? Forget it.

Matt Damon plays the cuckolded husband. He’s reported to be in lock-down in Dalkey. Which is a suburb of Dublin. As he was in Ireland to make a movie, “The Last Duel,” and got caught up in the whole lock-down malarkey.

Does he watch Contagion and have that, “Déjà Vu,” all over again feeling.

I’m sure he’d prefer to have his feet up watching himself in, “The Bourne Identity.”

No virus plagued wife shagging her ex-boyfriend and then killing off half the planet, in that action movie.

Judd Law is in it, as a snake oil scammer blogger. Pushing a useless drug as a cure, that he happens to have shares in.

Now where have we heard that before?

There is no real mention of Politicians in the movie, except that the President of America, is whisked away to his Bunker in the mountains.

We wish.

Social Distancing gets a small mention. The rich and privileged get first dibs at the vaccine. No change there.

But it ends, and those who are left, live happily ever after.

Which is what we want to happen, in our own never ending disaster movie.

In Europe the lockdowns are starting to get relaxed. All the while the politicians and doctors are shit scared it will start up again.

Italy is coming out of their lock-down. Spain is easing up on their harsh restrictions.

Even here in the UK, Boris and his gang are optimistic we will see light at the end of this Covid-19 tunnel.

Boris as always assuring us of success, while doing his cut-price Poundland version of Winston Churchill.

The threat of armed UK rebellion seems to have seeped away with the return of toilet paper to the supermarkets.

I hear, “Snake Plissken,” has acquired a crossbow in Dublin. I believe he is out late at night, waiting to be mugged, so he can try out his new self-defense weapon.

But so far, no takers.

I mean who wants to tangle with Dublin’s version of a, “Bad Ass, Arrow.”

So, we wait for our lives to return to, some sort of normal.

And we’ll all try to, “Get Busy Living,” as the alternative is not an option.