The infected

It feels like forever since I last wrote a blog. I’ve had very little to write about. Since the business with Nathan last summer, I’ve not much liked the world. It’s felt vengeful. Brutal. Angry. Divided. I’ve felt irrelevant. Ignored. Old. 

And, of course, in the last few weeks, the world has descended into… well, what is this? How can any of us effectively describe the situation we’re presently in? Is this the “black out” that the shamans warned us about? Is this the beginning of the end? Or is this the moment when we take a collective step backwards in an attempt to learn what we’ve been doing wrong, so we can finally begin the process of healing? 

It’s certainly a surreal time. A frightening time. More than anything else, I suspect, it’s a time when we realise how fragile ALL human beings are.

My union, the Musicians’ Union, awarded me a grant of £200 to help me to pay this month’s rent. For the first time in my life, I received financial assistance without having to fill in a painstakingly long form. I wasn’t asked which word best describes my gender or ethnicity. I wasn’t asked to apologise for being who I am. The union simply asked if I needed help. The answer was yes and a day later the money was transferred into my account. 

My own story is, of course, echoed by creative freelancers around the world. Three weeks ago, I lost nearly all of my work. Every day, over the course of about a week, the emails came in to tell me that my diary had been denuded. I fell into an absolute panic, waking up in the night in pools of sweat wondering what was going to happen to me. 

But then I realised it was happening to other people. More and more of us. Other musician friends were losing their work. The theatres were closing - and the bars and cafes. Then the schools, the shops… And there we all were; an army of workers, scratching our heads, shell-shocked, challenged in ways we could never have predicted. 

And then Nathan and I got sick. We spent nine days in complete isolation, living with this infamous virus which had travelled all the way from a market in a region of China I’d never heard of. We initially told very few people and simply hunkered down. The stigma felt great - and we didn’t want people to panic. The problem with Coronavirus is that it consumes all of your thoughts. The news seemed to suggest that it was the second stage of the illness - the coughing - which was carrying people to their graves. And so you sit, waiting for the cough to come, going to bed at night with a heavy chest wondering if you’ll even wake up in the morning. And the other thing about the virus is that it makes your head feel very strange. A sort of fug descends which, on one hand, fills your brain with bizarre existential thoughts, and, on the other, makes it almost impossible to focus on anything. And worse than that is the fact that the symptoms come and go. One day you’re full of beans. The next you’re exhausted again. And after a while, this can start to make a person oscillate between depression and anger.  

And the sodding thing throws insane symptoms your way. All of those adverts which say that the only two things to watch out for are a fever and a dry cough are just nonsense. I, for example, have had no sense of smell or taste for four days. Nathan’s eyes ached and he had weird deafness. I had oddly painful feet, terrible upper back pains… But the number one symptom is fatigue. A deep, dark, fuck-this type of fatigue. 

The other thing you find yourself regularly doing is shouting at the telly to tell them that their numbers are wrong. They have to be. If no one but the very ill and the very famous are getting tested for COVID-19, how on earth does anyone know how many of us have it? Our Prime Minister has it. Our future king has it. This thing is everywhere. I have it. Nathan has it. Becky has it. Jo has it. Thierry has it. My brother probably has it. Are any of us included in the official figures? Of course not! And then the next question is whether there are legions of people who are getting it, but experiencing no symptoms. And we won’t know any answers at all until we start aggressively testing. 

What does seem to be the case is that the virus has sunk its teeth into my synagogue. The festival of Purim, I suspect, came at the wrong time. 

I’m horrified to say that people are dying. 

I was devastated by the news of the passing of one particular old gentleman of whom I was particularly fond. I actually dedicated an arrangement to him and his wife in the concert we did last month. He got ill on Friday and died on Monday. His wife, now ill, has been forced to self-isolate. There’s no one there to hug her or do any of the things which bring hope and respite to the grieving. 

And then, of course, other members of the community are feeling frightened and desperately lonely. 

The irony, of course, is that we endured gale after gale in the first half of the year, but since we’ve all been in lockdown, the sun has shone every single day! Spring has come. Blossom is heavy on all the trees. I woke up two days ago thinking how much I wanted to see my parents. On a day like that, at any other time, I’d have jumped into my car and gone to see them. But we can’t. Mothering Sunday came and went with very few people getting to see their parents. 

There is, however, something strangely comforting about all of us being in the same boat. It reminds us of our commonality in an era where we were being forced to see only difference. And I believe this is the key to the healing of society. 

At 8pm yesterday night, something very beautiful happened. The entire nation stopped to applaud our beloved National Health Service. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Londoners would want to get involved in an initiative like this. Though it’s painfully true that, here in the capital, we’re ahead of the curve in terms of numbers of infections, Londoners can be a little prickly and arch. We aren’t renowned for our sense of community spirit. 

Anyway, at a few minutes to 8, I opened my window and looked out into the street. I could see a group of three people standing on the pavement opposite who seemed to be looking at their watches. Of course, the eerie thing was the lack of traffic on the roads. If people had started clapping on Ballards Lane at 8pm on an evening before self-isolation started, we almost certainly wouldn’t have heard anything but the roar of engines. 

But suddenly I could see windows opening in flats above the shops opposite - and, at the stroke of 8, the applause started. It echoed down the empty streets. Soon it became cheering and then whistling. It lasted about a minute. It would almost die-out for a few moments and then take off again. 

The idea that people were doing this the length and breadth of the country was deeply moving. My mother said that her entire street in Thaxted had taken part. Hilary and Meriel applauded in Lewes. We were united in our pride in and love for the NHS. Many of us will desperately need its services over the next few months. Some of the people who stood and applauded last night will find themselves on NHS ventilators, feeling absolute gratitude that our health system is still available - free - for everyone. 

We none of us know where any of this is heading. The only thing we know for certain is that things will get harder before they improve. I can’t help but think that this is an opportunity for us all, however. This event could go down in history as the movement when we rediscovered the true meaning of kindness. The moment when we collectively reappraised the meaning of happiness. The time when we stopped shouting and started listening. When we discovered that there’s a difference between what we want and what we need. When we stopped demanding our rights and instead focussed on our responsibilities. Who knows, this may even be the moment when we finally redistribute wealth. Owning a house might become a basic human right and not another way of making obscene amounts of money. 

Please stay well. And if you’re lonely - reach out. Tell someone. They may not be able to come running to you in the flesh, but the one thing about this crisis is that we’ve all got a lot of time on our hands to listen.