Round about 2.6 million years ago, give or take, man started using tools. They were very simple ones, (hammerstones, stone cores and sharp stone flakes), and slowly, they started accelerating the gap between mankind, and everyone else he shared the planet with. Being highly adaptable, and ambitious, he did stuff, created plans and made things, that were in another world of complexity to what the other 8.7 million species of creature could ever conceive of.
This morning one of their descendants went into Midhurst to shop.
He had been furloughed, a word he hadn’t met before outside WW2 American war films, and had a new face mask. He put it on to go and buy croissants from the excellent new French baker, who was wearing a visor, himself. From there, he went to Tesco, a little bit further up the street, queued outside as there was a full compliment of 15 people inside, then sanitized his hands, put his mask on again, and went to buy a copy of the Times, and some cheesy wotsits. He met a few more visors and face coverings that he knew in the street, greeting them cordially but in a muffled way, and eventually ended up by his car again, just as Gerry was setting up his flower stall for the day.
‘Bit strange, eh, Gerry?’ he said.
‘It’s just bollocks,’ said Gerry, ‘and it’s crap, too’; and the two of them discussed just to what extent, and by how much, these were well chosen words.
Early hominoid’s descendant then went back home to pack for his holiday, carefully omitting the tools of all the things that he might have done, but was no longer permitted to. He turned on the television to watch the biosecure, crowdless, bubble cricket match from Old Trafford, appreciating the piped crowd’s noise from a past year, and the sanitized ways that the players had of celebrating.
That done, he went for a quick pint at a local pub, where his temperature was taken (36.3) by a contactless device on a stand by the door, and he was asked to sanitise his hands again before being brought a pint by a barman in a visor, and surgical gloves. It was cold in the garden, and slightly damp, but the inside already had its full allowable complement of people, so outside he had to stay.
Back at home, he had a quick scan of the paper, noting that unemployment, which had been around 3.8% of the workforce six months ago, was forecast to rise to around 11% by the end of the year, and that the government had spent around £45 billion extra in the last three months, paying the salaries of around 11 million extra people. The gym that he had gone to for a few years, but which had been closed for four months, was going to be allowed to open, but only for a limited number of people, and only if they booked a space; if he was that sort of hominoid, he noted with appreciation, he could go and get his nails done from today.
Even the vocabulary has changed. At his local golf club, a ‘Dominic Cummings’, is a drive, miles out of bounds, but with no penalty.
And on it goes. Right now, you just think I’m boring. A year ago, if I had written this, you would have thought I was mad.
We are an utterly changed world, possibly for ever. Much of the uncomplicated joy has been sucked out of life, possibly for years. We are told in various ways, and by various means, how scared we should be of a tiny crown-shaped virus, that has made its insidious way around our land, our world, in coughed droplets and infected contact. And yet, and yet.
Just consider for one minute the sheer extent of the adaptability that we were handed down by our ancestors of 2.6 million years ago. We talk a lot about the changes that have been forced on us, but hardly at all about the speed and calmness that we have taken it all in our stride. Each of us knows who we think is to blame, but largely we keep our thoughts to ourselves.
This is ‘the new normal’, and we are already putting up shelves and hanging the pictures within it.
Sometimes, we don’t give ourselves credit enough for being amazing.
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