SNAFU

I hadn't left the house for five days. The last time I went out there was no official lock-down and there was no real change in people's behaviour except that they were slightly more out-going: huge great family clumps had gathered to cough at one another and blight the footpaths. Joggers too had spread like a rash across the backside of East Belfast: sweaty, red-faced and gobbing on the streets where you live. No one was social distancing, the shops were running normally, even if stocks were running a bit low. 

I came in fuming at people's idiocy having risked my life several times crossing a busy motorway to avoid another diseased family group carelessly risking my health and well-being. 

Today I went outside. What a difference five days in a global health crisis makes. 

The birds are very loud now which means a) they were always loud and I just didn't notice because of all the surface noise or b) Daphne Du Maurier was on to something.

Went to the shops. The shops were shut.

Some confusion at the Co Op which was nominally open. The shutters were half down like in "Clerks" and a sign in the window said they were limiting the amount of people coming into the shop. They were. There was no one in the shop, not even any visible members of staff. After a few minutes I made a tentative tap on the glass with my elbow but nothing stirred. There was nowhere to queue but the car park which was already filled with two giant all-terrain people carriers. No drivers in evidence. I was approached outside the shop by a cheery man in his sixties blowing his nose into a handkerchief and clearly up for a bit of chat at close quarters so I made a break for it.

In the rest of the country, charmingly, the Off Licenses have been allowed to stay open in order that the paranoid population might continue to self medicate. Not in East Belfast, however. The fat seam of Presbyterianism that squats over this place does not consider alcohol the answer to anything. The local Winemark keeps its own hours at the best of times. And this is not the best of times. It is the worst of times. And the upshot of it is no wine for me. 

If I am to be sober than at the very least I shall try not to be clean. 

The scenes outside Supervalue resembled a pre-glasnost soviet bake sale. I'll live off the contents of the toaster's crumb drawer for the time being.

People STILL aren't keeping their distance (I don't think its down to pheremonal leakage from me) and joggers simply need to be stopped. With an air-rifle if necessary.

There are little rainbows in every other window which I thought surprisingly progressive for East Belfast until I realised they weren't gay rainbows. I think they mean hope. Which is nice.

There are a huge amount of people trying to sell their houses near me which seems remarkably optimistic in a pandemic. Maybe they know something. Though that seems unlikely.

So: loud birds, stupid joggers, rainbow flags and the impossibility of getting any wine from anywhere. I think I'm done with the outside. I'm going to check to see if human hibernation is a thing. And if its not a thing I'm going to make it a thing.