So where the hell were you this morning?

Having worked through the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve found myself regularly driving these past months at a time when most people have been at home. This has led to quieter roads, and a halving of my usual commuting time. Paradoxically, it’s also been a time when I have never been more afraid of taking to the road. Speeding, cutting in, pulling out without looking, overtaking on blind corners – all of these things I witness regularly on my commute now. The situation is such that when I am not required to go to work, I leave the car at home as much as possible for fear of accidents. This is not normal and I have a theory about it.

Psychologically we can be divided up into various personality types. There are a number of profiling methods, but the main one used in psychological research is called the Big Five. This lists five main personality traits: extroversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Insights into our nature are revealed by how we score against each of these traits.

Those who have stayed at home during the pandemic, those who obey the rules about necessary journeys and social distancing will measure high in conscientiousness, neuroticism and agreeableness. This basically means you worry about doing the right thing, you’re thorough in following the guidelines and you’re thinking about keeping others safe as much as yourself.

The idiots who score low on these same measures don’t care about the rules, they believe the rules don’t actually apply to them, and they don’t worry about others at all, indeed they don’t think about others, and couldn’t give a fig if others found them  disagreeable. Indeed, they might wear the latter as a badge of honour. So, these quieter roads are an invitation for such types to floor the accelerator and really see what the old girl will do. In other words, if you’re sensible, agreeable and conscientious in the current climate you’re more likely to be at home doing the right thing. If you’re on the roads, you’re more likely to be an idiot, and a danger to others.

Speaking of which:

To the driver of the corporate-looking BMW who joined the M61 at around six forty-five this morning, from the on-slip of Junction 5, doing about seventy, and who missed me by inches, then careened blithely out into the fast lane before disappearing in a cloud of dust as he ramped it up to warp speed, I say this: that was some manoeuvre. I’d also say no human being could possibly have reacted as fast as you did, threading that obnoxious beast of a car into tight traffic, unless they were coked up to the eyeballs, which I suspect you were.

You didn’t see all the tail lights stabbing in alarm to make way for your safe passage, and even if you had you would not have cared. Nor did you feel the jolt of shock I felt, deep in my stomach, and which lingered well into the day. You would have considered it amusing perhaps, merely the price others must pay for you to exercise your divine right to do as you want.

And then to the stone-faced cop in the scowly-faced SUV, who followed me halfway home this evening, waiting, I presume, for me to forget to indicate (yes, I score high in neuroticism), I say to him:

Where the hell were you this morning?

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The Blue Lagoon – making your mind up?

Picture by Simon Harrod at Flickr, taken in May 2012

This fêted age of infinite information renders us vulnerable to a blizzard of spin. Some of this is deliberate and state sponsored, some of it is mere tittle-tattle. But as Churchill once said, a lie can be round the world before the truth has even got its pants on. It pays therefore to be careful how we interpret what we see, read and hear.

Newspapers are the least trustworthy sources of factual information, no better than gossip. We all know this, yet are happy for them to feed our own particular prejudice. The online gossip-mills too are manipulated to dramatic effect by the same nefarious actors. But at a time of crisis when we’re hungry for facts, such misdirection  undermines confidence and spreads fear.

Some newspapers took delight in reporting the fate of the Blue Lagoon in Derbyshire this week. This is an intriguing little beauty spot, near Buxton – its most striking feature being its beguiling Caribbean-blue waters. The newspapers tell us that to prevent people from gathering there, flouting social distancing rules,  the cops poured black dye into it.

Whilst correct, the facts here are spun by omission. They make it sound like the act of a police-state gone mad. Worse, they sound like a reckless piece of ecological vandalism. It takes a little more digging to learn the cops often do this at the Blue Lagoon. They do it in collaboration with the local council to stop people from swimming there. Why? Because, with a Ph close to that of bleach, the lagoon is toxic. So, the first story aims at shaking public trust in the police at a time when that trust needs reinforcing. The other story shows the police in a struggle to protect us from ourselves. Which story you prefer depends on your innate prejudice and political leanings.

Facts are those things that don’t change. They do not dance around with fancy hats on. This makes them lacking in novelty in a world that craves novelty. We crave it day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, and it makes facts boring. Spinning the facts is what the press, the politicians, the propagandists and the gossip-mongers do. So, we should be mindful never to take anything at face value. Once we deviate from rules and scientific fact, the truth is always something we’ll have to dig for.

Facts – the full facts – enable us to make up our own minds. And what’s so interesting about any form of mass media are the ways in which others can use it to make up our minds for us. One mouth. Many listeners. So, be sure you know who you’re listening to and remember how the omission of certain key facts in the telling can change a story completely.

Lets be careful out there.

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The joy of living – standing like a tree

Farewell, you northern hills, you mountains all goodbye.
Moorland and stony ridges, crags and peaks, goodbye.
Glyder Fach farewell, Cul Beig, Scafell, cloud-bearing Suilven.
Sun-warmed rocks and the cold of Bleaklow’s frozen sea.
The snow and the wind and the rain of hills and mountains.
Days in the sun and the tempered wind and the air like wine,
And you drink and you drink till you’re drunk on the joy of living

Ewan MacColl – The Joy of Living

The scenes of massed hikers flooding Snowdonia at the weekend prove we must keep our exercise local from now on, and for the duration of this crisis. Local means whatever you can do on foot, or bike from your own doorstep, and at a good distance from others. It means an hour round the block. It does not mean travelling to Wales or the Lakes, or the Dales to find a hill and get away from things like we used to do. Chances are you’ll end up in a traffic jam.

It’s a grim prospect for me since it means I won’t have a hill under my feet again until this thing is over, and that could be next spring. So it is indeed farewell to my northern hills and mountains for the time being. But needs must, and it’s not all bad news; there are other things we can do.

Social distancing is nothing new to me. Indeed, I’ve been doing it all my life, and as I get older I make less apology for it. Others pester for Skype connections and I’m thinking: what the hell? Can’t folk manage for a minute on their own without moithering others? And then if everyone in my locale takes their exercise around what dreary bit of green I’ve got on my doorstep, it’s going to be unbearably busy. So I’m looking at my garden now and seeing it with fresh eyes. I’m seeing it as my sanctuary of solitude and, as March goes out like a lamb and the blossom swells, it’s also the ideal place for a bit of Tai Chi and Qigong.

I began Tai Chi fifteen years ago. I practise Chen style, which led to Kung Fu for a while, but for the last few years I’ve been doing Qigong. Qigong is a technique with a focus on the breath and mindful movement that’s well suited to our turbulent times. I tried to do a bit in my garden today, but found myself assailed by the noise of my socially retarded, self-entitled neighbours’ beatboxes. So, yes, there are still challenges, but we’ll make do, and I have ear defenders.

Distractions aside, how to do you begin Qigong if you’ve never done it before? Well you can go look on YouTube. There are gurus on there as thick as hikers on the Watkin Path right now. But you can do no better than to find somewhere quiet and stand for a bit. Breathe slow and deep, not with your lungs, but with your belly. Then raise your hands and close your eyes.

How do you know your hands are still there? Well, if you focus, you can feel them. Now, on the out breath, try to induce a feeling of relaxation, and breathe into your hands. I don’t mean by blowing on them. I mean mentally. As you breathe out, breathe into them with your mind. Notice how the feeling intensifies. Weird, isn’t it? Do that for a bit until you get bored. And then do this:

Thank you, Master Lam. You’re a legend.

This method is the most impressive Qigong technique I know. It looks simple but is the hardest in practice. Standing for just ten minutes takes a monumental effort at first, so try it for five. It also raises a buzz in your hands faster than any other practice. What is that buzz? I don’t know – I’m not going to use the Chi word here. It could be vascular. It could be the nervous system. All I know is if you hang your mind onto that feeling, it gets stronger, and it’s deeply relaxing. And if the mind is relaxed, it’s not thinking about anything other than how relaxed you’re feeling.

And that’s a good thing in trying times.

However you manage your social distancing,…

Be well.

Graeme out.

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Freud on a Friday

I had a feeling in my water the government was going to issue a strict “stay at home” order last Friday. So, after work I swung through Rivington in the West Pennines – my local beauty spot. I was thinking to get a little open air social distancing, before the clamp-down. I was not the only one.

The Great House Barn at Rivington is a popular watering hole and a favourite of mine. But the advice was to avoid cafés, for risk of infection, so I drove by in search of a quiet pull-in, further up on the moors. I was amazed to see the Barn was packed out, the car-park full and spilling over onto the roadside. There were people, kids, dogs everywhere. Indeed, it reminded me of a Bank Holiday weekend, a time when Rivington is better avoided because of the crush.

Social distancing they were not, and I wondered why. The advice has been clear enough. It’s to save your life, or save you enduring a distressing bout of illness. Is it that we no longer believe a word we see or hear any more? Are the post-election utterings of politicians taken as the same vacuous nothingness? Are the hysterical headlines of the press all meaningless noise? (I mean who can blame us on either score) but what else explains the fact so few people are taking this seriously?

I found my quiet pull-in, managed a brief walk in the sun. It all looked spring-like, but there was a chill wind taking the sweetness out of it. Plus, the trails were thick with weekenders, and they walk so damned slow it’s like they’re barely alive. Their dogs were also loose and bounding up to sniff your balls. So much for social distancing.

“Aw, don’t worry, he’ll not hurt you, mate.”

It was not an enjoyable yomp, more like a turgid commute up the M6. I returned home frustrated, feeling unclean. It was as if the panic buyers were now hogging the countryside, greedy for the very air we breathe, hanging their bags of fido-turds as they went. Social distancing from now on means going no further than my garden gate.

The clampdown came that same night. But it was not as severe as I’d expected, more a polite request for the pubs, clubs and café’s to shut. So then my local shop was at once cleared out of beer and wine. I suppose now the pleasure seekers are holding their gatherings indoors. In every country this plague has visited, the health services have collapsed, and medical staff have died saving the lives of others. Our lack of caution is blind, irrational and selfish. It puzzles me.

Since Friday, I’ve been thinking hard about this social distancing thing. We’re advised it’s fine to go out for some exercise, that fresh air and the countryside is good for you. But there is also a danger here, that there will be tens of thousands of people every weekend making a rush for the same open spaces. Then there will be the exodus of the caravanners, and the holiday-homers, off to the remoter places to hole up and wait the plague out. The risk there is resentment of the locals, on whom we descend as we overwhelm their modest health provision.

So we need to stay at home, walk round the block – at midnight if need be, to avoid each other, provided there is no curfew. 2020 is cancelled – well except for my garden, which will be very tidy indeed this year. And I will use the time to deepen my practice of Tai Chi.

Freudian psychoanalysts have a very pessimistic view of human beings. They tell us we are slaves to a thing called the id. This is an unconscious, primitive drive that craves simplistic gratification in whatever form it can get, a thing at odds with logic and reason. Then there’s the super-ego. This is unconscious too, but contains the balancing forces of guilt, shame and morality, preventing the id from destroying us in wild orgies. And then there’s the ego. This is the conscious bit which tries to reconcile the forces of the id, the super-ego and the demands of society. But generally speaking we’re a lost cause unless we can sublimate the resulting tension into some form of creative endeavour. Or we go mad trying, or more likely we succumb to the id, to its selfish and unthinking drive for pleasure. And we behave like idiots, like sheep in its siren pursuit.

I’ve never been a fan of Freud because he doesn’t offer us a way out, and that’s always frightened me. His work shines a light on our stupidity, our gullibility, on our neuroses and the reasons for them. But most of us, he says, are lost causes. We are irrational, unreasoning automatons. We are slaves to desire, and blind to the consequences of our actions. He saw right through us, shook his head.

And I see now, he was right.

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There were plenty of cucumbers!

I know, it’s a drag. We’re already suffering from Covid-19 fatigue in the UK and it’s not really hit us yet. We’ve all seen the pictures of those selfish people hoarding toilet paper. But there are stories too of great generosity, of people reaching out to others. Still, this endless panic buying it to me proof western society is incapable of even the most modest forms of Socialism. Society is too enamoured by now of greed and looking after number one. So all us bleeding heart lefties might as well shut up and self-isolate with the rest.

It’s been quite a sobering experience seeing the yards of empty shelves at Tescos, like it’s the Zombie Apocalypse, and it’s tempting to be pessimistic of course. But then there’s the story of the woman pushing leaflets through the letterboxes in her community. She’s offering to help the elderly with shopping or anything else they might need. She’s contacted by an old lady who wants to know how much the good Samaritan charges for this service. That the service is free is quite beyond her understanding. We do not expect kindness, and when we receive it, we’re stunned by it or we’re looking for the con.

As for the official response, I’ve been trying to get behind our political leadership and do as I’m told. This hasn’t been easy, having spent the latter part of 2019 campaigning for the Labour party. Then I spent the early part of 2020 aching for the Tories to screw up over something – probably BREXIT (Remember that old thing?). But they cannot screw up over this. They have to get this right, yet I find myself a little worried we seem to be making up our approach on the hoof. I listened to the PM tonight who thanked us for our cooperation and our patience thus far in these trying times. But from what I’ve seen of the way the populace has been reacting what we need more than anything is a kick up the arse.

Yes, we’re good at muddling through, but there is nothing about the British that frightens this bug. We are not immune to it on account of our thick skulls, but until this evening the pubs and restaurants were still open. People were advised not to got to them. But people – especially young people – have a tendency towards thinking they know best. As a result the PM closed them down tonight. By now thougha good many of our blase, partying, booze imbibing, socialising types are positive for Coronavirus. They don’t know it yet but they’re spreading it to their nearest and dearest, also to that unfortunate stranger on the bus. But that’s fine, after all it only kills old people and old people aren’t important in a consumer driven economy .

The scale and the sweep of this thing is beyond imagining. The sooner we take it seriously, the sooner we get over it. But it’s also having unexpected effects. This evening I saw one of the most right wing Tory administrations in British history announce financial measures to safeguard people and jobs and these are measures few socialists would ever have dreamed possible – all be they temporary. Suddenly, aftyer decades of being told there is no money, there is more money than you can imagine. The world is on its head.

Meanwhile the shelves at Tesco are empty tonight; toilet paper yes, of course, all gone, but also booze. I checked while I was in there looking for a cucumber (don’t ask). No whiskey, no wine, no beer – shelves as bare as those for the household cleaning items, and the milk and the bread. The PM shut the pubs so – hey! everyone’s partying at home tonight – with friends. We’re so stupid I’m amazed we’ve survived this long.

But I was in luck. There were plenty of cucumbers.

Graeme out

[Stay safe – keep your distance, and wash your hands.]

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Covid-19 – the incontrovertible fact.

It strikes me that, what with one thing after the other, we have been immersed for years now in such a fragile atmosphere it’s hard to know if we’re coming or going. First we had the shocks of Trump and BREXIT – BREXIT dragging on since 2016 – and, though it might not occupy the news cycle very much now, we know the worst of it is yet to come. And then of a sudden we have the Covid-19 virus, and the news-media bent daily on stoking our worst fears.

So, a brainless virus in a market-place in China mutates to such startling perfection it is half way round the world before we can even blink. And we, with all our superior faculties cannot even keep our poor from dying of cold and hunger – well, we can, we just don’t. Why not? Because we are liars and worse, we are suckers for one damned liar after the other. Perhaps that’s why Covid-19 leaves us trembling at its brutal honesty. It is the one genuine article in a world now otherwise enamoured of fakery.

Ahead of the virus making any significant landfall in the west, we find surgical masks are already selling out, and the prices going up. Hospitals are running out of them as the public takes ad-hoc precautions they might have seen on TV, yet which experts tell us are ineffective outside of a clinical setting. My local chemist has even run out of gel-based hand-wash, and is unable to restock. Share indices are plummeting. Airlines are cancelling not just flights, but entire routes.

We are driven by rumour, victim to the daily dose of media hysteria, which is less about genuine public information and more about playing to outrage and fear. We are victim also to our social media where any fool can appoint themselves a pundit, spreading falsehood, both inadvertently and cynically. Cybercriminals have spied an opportunity too and are spamming us with Coronavirus-baited mails, promising the secret of immunity. It is not just the virus then we must contend with, but also the infinite capacity of our species for self harm. We can’t help it. And worse, we’re so vulnerable now, so easily spooked, after so long braced against a calamity that never quite comes.

It is at such times as these good leadership can calm nerves and save lives. But our leaders these days seem of a breed ambitious only for power, and it strikes me how feeble they actually are as true leaders of people. It may be they have relied so much on the deployment misinformation to drive their campaigns to power, their tried and trusted strategies are useless in the face of the non-malleable fact of a highly contageous virus sweeping the world.

If it’s at all possible to stem the spread of Covid-19 before it becomes endemic, it will be our much scorned public servants who will do it, not our political leaders. Indeed it will be the public health services our leaders are so set on scaling back. It will be, dare I say it, the voiceless experts, so often derided and smeared as fools by the powerful. For now we wait on developments, but in a world already befuddled by the ultimate post-modern phenomenon of fake-news we are left wondering whose, if any, are the truly reliable voices, astonished that the only incontrovertible fact remaining to us in these horribly duplicitous times is that of the virus itself.

Worried? Don’t go to YouTube or Twitter for your info. Get the facts. Try here instead.

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