We always like to personalise events, objects
or huge entities, to fit them into our human scale. Thus, the American
government is Uncle Sam, our Empire in India was The Raj and,
booze is John Barleycorn and gin is Mother’s Ruin. Our current
scourge, Coronavirus, is known to look like a floating wart with prickly
toadstool-like excrescences, an evil-looking fellow in anyone’s book. I suggest
we call him Cyrus the Virus after the demonic character created by John
Malkovich, in the violent 1997 action movie, Con Air, who led a vintage
group of psychotic criminals to hijack a plane transporting convicts,
ultimately foiled by heroic Nicholas Cage, crash-landing on the Las Vegas Strip
and causing huge mayhem all the way.
 |
| Malkevich as Cyrus the Virus |
Our Cyrus is flexing his nasty microbes all
over the UK and Europe. Schools are closed, oldies are confined to barracks,
bankruptcies are set to grow like asparagus in May, prisons are being emptied
and, OMG!, the Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam has been cancelled. We
cannot drown our sorrows as convivial pubs are off limits, restaurants and
those agreeable pavement cafes are shuttered and the TV channels leaven their
dismal news bulletins with endless second-rate repeats.
Our politicians are bewildered in this
unfamiliar terrain but in time Cyrus will be squashed by vaccines just as
Malkovich was killed off messily by a pile-driver in the movie. I guess the
Nicholas Cage-like hero of this victory will not be Boris, Macron or Merkel but
some hitherto mute, inglorious microscope-scanner of the Marie Curie variety
who will make a crucial inspired connection. Make it soon, please!
Meanwhile, the death-toll rises inexorably and
our UK medical experts say 20,000 deaths will be “a good outcome” – claiming
that 250,000 would be the figure if we took no drastic actions. My age-group
and health profile make me a prime target but the odds on survival are still
attractive enough at 12-1 though much shorter than the younger population.
My mind has moved to the possible dialogue I
will have with St Peter, holder of the keys to heaven, should I unluckily have
to present myself at the Pearly Gates. It will go something like this:
Hi St P, I thought you were the good guys, so
why, in Christ’s sake, did you send us Cyrus the Virus to muck up my twilight
years. You dumb-cluck, you had the power to stop it but you were asleep on the
job! No wonder you are shifting uneasily on your comfy chair.
Peer at your ledger and you will see that I am
no saint but I would normally have another 10 years to put that right; simple
common justice is all I expect! Yes OK, I have not supported your religious
beliefs but they emanate from back-water Palestine 2000 years ago and I am a
modern man. I have visited your vast and ostentatious place in Rome and in
plenty of other places – City of London, Oxford and Norwich come to mind - so I
have not been ignorant of your influence, if you care a fig about that.
 |
| St Peter at The Pearly Gates |
I have been a reasonable, if occasionally
neglectful, husband and father. I do not do drugs, beat my wife or drink to
excess (in my view). My lovely, dynamic wife has put up with me for 50 years so
I cannot be all bad and my three fine sons have shown incredible generosity and
affection to me at all times. I keep in enlightened touch with friends and
family through my sometimes controversial Blog.
I try to like all my fellow-men but many are
buggers, who deserve a kicking. My beliefs were shaped in the liberal 1950/60s
but I have drifted in a more populist direction. I am a Tory Brexiteer, perhaps
a Conservative Radical, a bit like you St P? Is that Blessed Margaret I see
fluttering above? Come on, let me in!
Why are you giving me that “old-fashioned
look”?...............
SMD
20.03.20
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
2020
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