The corona virus has brought the best and worst out in us. Ladies fighting it out in the supermarket aisles over a roll of toilet paper and people going out of their way to help the frightened old age pensioners.
Will we get over this, or as with the black death suffer increasingly as in the Middle Ages virulent waves of virus attacks?
My sister lives a terrified existence in Manchester, afraid to leave her house to buy food lest she gets attacked by some yobo for her handbag or become infected.
I live in the USA, led by a psychotic President that initially denied, then downplayed, then called the virus a "hoax". Mr Trump had dismantled the very department that the previous President had formed to combat a prospective pandemic such as this, on the grounds that they were not doing anything. Now the authorities are scrambling to get equipment to the medical front lines and failing. Hospitals are triaging patients in the emergency rooms, who will live, who will die based on age because not enough equipment is on hand.
Still, you get the picture. My wife and I are self-quarantined for the next fortnight or more. If and when we leave our house for food we have masks, wipes and sterile gloves, keep a social distance of two metres from anyone we pass. My daughter,her husband and grandchildren interconnect with us via Skype or Zoom or whatever they call it these days. I think that the world we have known is now (to borrow Mitchell's title) " Gone With the Wind" and our grandchildren will inherit a world we will no longer recognize, but having been born in a Displaced Person's camp after WWII, nothing surprises me.
For those on this site that question why I am a member, suffice to say that Kluang Wksps were the support when I was the Greenie in Brunei Ghurka Flight and at JWS in Kota Tinggi. Some members might recall that one Christmas whilst 75 was in Singapore I tried to precipitate WWIII by calling the Russian Embassy and swearing at them in Ukrainian. Suffice to state that I was rather inebriated. I tell this for one of the members was asking as to "who the hell this Fred was".
Bye the bye Fred is not my real name, it was given to me by SSgt Piggot during Basic Training at Depot REME for he could not get his Anglo-Saxon tongue pronounce my Slavic name, so it stuck with me throughout my service. I know that I have crossed paths with some of you. I suppose this meandering is to let people know that I am still breathing the same air as you.
So now I am about to open my last bottle of Glenlivet 15 year-old single malt, toast a toast to one and all, put on my favourite all time film " The Spy who Came in from the Cold" with Richard Burton playing lead, and ignoring the burgeoning spring grass crying to be mowed ( and other tasks).
Cheers everyone !!!!
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