Words of Isolation

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New cultural situations always throw up new words.  Often they are brand names like Sellotape or Hoover.  Then they lose their capital letters and become mainstream common nouns.  Then they get used as verbs - to hoover the room, to sellotape the parcel.  More recently Google and Skype have become verbs - we Google cross-word clues, Skype our friends.  At some point someone like the dictionary or the BBC decide a capital letter is no long necessary.  The Coronavirus has given us new words like lock-down, social distancing, social isolation and of course Zoom.  It's already been adjusted to verb form - we Zoom each other, and even an adjectival form - we have the worrying incarnation of zooming grannies pursuing recalcicrant grandchildren across the airwaves.

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Last night we Zoomed both our families.  The usual chorus of " we can't see you", " we can't hear you", "which button do we press?" was rendered more chaotic by 11 year old Sammie, already the master of the medium, appearing upside down, sitting on mountains or turning blue, switching off other people's mikes and playing joining the dots games with his cousins.  There were jolly japes of tongues sticking out and noses pressed against the camera and the usual shots up people's nostrils as they adjusted the camera.  Once the children had been disposed of we were introduced into the world outside our protected bubble: the world of trying to work from home with children around, trying to school them and impose regimes, negotiating with employers and, from those working in the NHS, the spectre of what might await them.  There's been quite a bit lately about misbehaving oldies.  Some wander out into the Peak District and pretend they had forgotten there was an emergency on and don't know where they are, wave at drones and cough at policemen.  Others try to sneak into shops because they've run out of gin or Sterodent.  A chat with an NHS worker is a powerful antedote.

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Which brings us to the lovely Laura, one of Crtich's battalion of volunteers, who today delivered our groceries. Equipped in yellow marigolds and standing at the regulation two metres we watched her unload the car.  Such frauds we felt, fit and upright as we were, relying on the goodwill of a mum with a new baby.  I suggested to Deirdre we should pretend to be decrepid, but the look I got disabused me.  Then there is the palaver with the gloves: do we handle the goods and take them off, take them off and handle the goods, spray the goods with gloves on or off, handle the gloves and wash them or wash them and handle the gloves?  I've had an uncomfortable relationship with  Marigolds anyway never having had a pair that fitted until now.  It's difficult getting out of the habit of removing them with my teeth or with the finger tips jammed between my knees.

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We'll be a funny lot when this is all over.  They say we'll be having more babies, drink more and avoid each other.  In times to come we'll all be drunks wheeling prams down the Common and shouting at each other across the road.

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