They walk among us

A face mask sign on a shop window

On Sunday, I endured possibly my most miserable day on Twitter in 12 years. Why? Because I foolishly responded to a Twitter poll about face masks (“How will you feel about going into shops and on public transport after 19 July if the requirement to wear masks is removed?”). Using my son’s nursery as a microcosmic example – where parents were informed several weeks ago that masks are no longer required during drop-off and pick-up – I replied to the tweet, saying that I have continued to wear my mask regardless. For my trouble, I got pilloried for the best part of a day.

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Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of Anxiety Over Social Distancing)

Award-winning playwright and novelist Marsha Norman once said: “Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.” If that’s true, then my book is destined for an inconspicuous bargain stand in WHSmith, clumsily stacked next to some shop-soiled Toffee Crisp and a collection of incongruous 10p advent calendars.

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This pandemic is killing my cynicism

I’ve cried a lot recently (more so than normal). While driving to work one morning in the week before lockdown, I welled up listening to The Leisure Society’s ‘The Last of the Melting Snow’. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that – plenty of songs get me in the throat – but it’s the fact that I was sobbing uncontrollably even when the song had finished. Inconsolable at the wheel and completely overwhelmed by the creeping, all-consuming nightmare of a deadly pandemic. Yesterday, I cried at the kitchen sink listening to the The Smiths’ ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’. If we’re in this for the long haul, I may cry myself to the point where my entire body becomes as withered, cracked, and desiccated as my excessively washed hands.

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