One day last week I had my reading glasses on and I glanced down at my hands, ( just to check in disbelief that I actually needed this focal aid) Anyhow with the ability to focus I noticed that my fingers bore the scars of a life lived and wondered how many of the marks and nicks had been experienced over the last year of extreme washing and cleaning, or was there a longer timeline involved in the marking up of my prints!
I was listening to the radio a day or two after and I heard an interview with a man of 107 years old. Michael J O'Connor from Muckross, in Kerry is an amazing character with a perspective on life that we can only imagine.
As a child of six he was unfortunate to contract the Spanish flu. Remarkably he recovered but sadly it killed his mother. From this start this man lived through two world wars, (was torpedoed in the first one) lived through endless cycles of recessions, the ups and downs of life and now seems to be coping well with the latest challenge Covid 19.
According to Worldometer 2 million 68 thousand and 272 people have died as a result of this global pandemic to date and at present the race is on to inoculate it out of our lives. We can not discard at any stage the effect this has had on the communities effected, or deny the hurt felt by relatives who were not even able to say a personal goodbye to someone they had shared their life with. To me it is unimaginable and difficult to accept the fact that we might before it is all over contract or be killed by it, or have to watch the same happen to a close friend or family member.
So I block that bit out and do what I can to help break the chain of infection (hand-washing, mask wearing and distancing etc.). But the havoc isolation is wreaking on our lives is a tough one to quantify. This in fact is a worry and we will live with its consequences for years after the covid 19 event has been halted.
Children are loosing so much at all ages now it is sad to witness the loneliness and isolation caused just by separating them from their peers.
Third level students in a lot of cases have not seen the inside of their colleges at all if they are in first year and perhaps since March last year for others.
Workers have been embracing working from home, but there are a whole set of ills that must be addressed to enable a seamless transition to this form of work and the jump start that was covid 19 was not a good start. So you have back aches and RSI from bad furniture, huge expense re light, heat, internet, blurred boundaries both in time and space and of course the negative effects of no socialisation with ones co-workers.
The elderly have a huge burden to contend with, fear of infection, isolation, nutrition, no socialisation and of course the passage of useful time, or that fear of spending your last years in a prison or some sort of purgatorial waiting area before your inevitable death. The older you are the stronger this feeling of time lost must weigh on your soul.
With pubs abandoned, restaurants closed and personal contact shunned what have people been doing with there spare time? I suppose the answer is positive things and negative things.
My Christmas this year was totally family focused and un-fussed, it worked, it was a fine time for all of us and we did it effectively for all. That was very positive.
Earlier in the Pandemic I ramped up my habitual swimming with a vigor previously unknown in my life. For all but two days in the last opening of my local pool (I missed the first and could not bring myself to the last out of sadness), I managed to swim a kilometer a day everyday with no gaps. This made me tired, so regulated my sleep, got me up early in the morning, gave me a good start to the day, slowed down my consumption of wine and made the rest of the lock down easier to take. (This now gone I am concentrating on late nights and lie ins to make up for the elation, but to date no success).
Work wise all has faded to crash levels, and I am sure this is the case for thousands, but my work in education continues. Thankfully this has provided me with something to focus on and the enthusiasm of both my young and adult learners has been a source of great strength for me.
Money wise though I don't know how long more I can take this financial pummelling, it's at stronger levels than the financial crash (the one where we were powerless and sat on by the troika). But once we are sitting at home inactive we just need to feed ourselves and I suppose that takes only a little cash.
Government reaction to this situation overall has been reasonable, leaving us with a certain liberty and /or some freedom of choice. However there was some reluctance to tread on the Good Friday protocol and our 'special' relationship with the U.K. Our Island which may have been insulated by water was not as well protected as, lets say, other Island nations. (travel bans not issued until the emergence of new variant strains of covid).
Whilst these reactions are all subtle I can not avoid noticing some worrying local developments where the state of emergency has been grabbed and actions have been taken that are abuses of authority - the 'power grab' that can happen when peoples attention is diverted by hard circumstance.
Previously I commented on the bad planting on a so called 'covid mobility' route in Grangegorman, Dublin 7, my home patch. I was so upset by the bad gardening that I posted about it here. I had my suspicions at the time but lets say that these have been borne out by developments at the site in question since my posting. The shabby gardening has been redone and corrected, that is fine for sure, but the route which was an official covid mobility scenario, has been made permanent without the crisis being over and with out any normality to patterns of travel being re - established. I ask the question now is this evidence of a cynical hijacking of power during a crisis by an interested party to speed up their agenda, or even to make their objectives achievable in a time where it is possible, and could there be other such circumstances rearing their heads around out country?
My gaze returns to my fingers, I hold them up to my face and peer out to the world, I note that I am weary of it, but my focus can shift with efficiency between the two, well at least when I wear the right coloured spectacles!
