The Humbling

I fell over in the street. I didn't trip. I fell. My ankle turned under me and I fell on my face. 

It was an empty street, no cars, no people in either direction. A quiet empty afternoon. If you were going to fall over anywhere you couldn't pick a better spot - except...at the exact same moment that I fell - and it was a slow fall, a stumble, there was time - as I fell, a woman opened her front door. About seven feet away. She opened her front door and the first thing she saw was an old man with a big quiff sprawling at her feet on the pavement. 

Great. 

"Oh My God," she said, "Are you alright?"

I did an inventory. Normally in these face/floor interfaces I can expect to have badly damaged myself. My bones splinter, my joints crack. Not on this occasion, thankfully. I scrambled to my feet. 

"I wasn't expecting a bloody audience!" I said. I was hare-eyed and my arm hurt. She laughed. 

"I hate it when that happens," she said. I looked at her and made a few unfair assessments. She was tall and slim and lived in a posh house. This had never happened to her. She may have fallen off a horse or gone awry on the piste, but she never fell arse over tit over nothing in the street. 

"I have to go home," I said. 

"Okay."

"I'm too embarrassed to continue this walk now." And I ran off the way I came, clutching my sore arm, looking at the patchwork tarmac undulating beneath my feet, trying to marshal my rogue ankles. 

But I didn't go straight home. I wanted to get some gin. 

I got to the Co Op. There was a queue of two people outside. Covid has reached even East Belfast. A member of staff was operating a one in one out policy at the door, and I thought "I haven't been clubbing in twenty years". And I was quite pleased as I always hated clubbing. 

An old woman joined the queue behind me. She was frail and tiny and using a Zimmer frame. Like my mum. Great. I knew I had to let her go ahead of me in the queue or I'd be a bastard. But I couldn't risk asking her if she wanted to leapfrog in front in case a) she said "No love it's fine" and I had to continue standing in line in front of her, with everyone going past thinking "Look at that prick making that poor old woman queue behind him - bet he drives an Audi." or b) if I did let her go ahead of me I might have to make conversation with her - she's Irish after all - and that couldn't happen - I am English after all. So, I made a big performance of saying "This bloody queue! Gah!" and storming off, hoping the other two people in the queue would let her go ahead of them. They didn't. Ignorant pigs. 

I looped around the block. When I came back the queue had gone and there was nobody on the door. I went to get a bottle of Tanqueray from the booze booth (in Northern Ireland alcohol is kept separately from all other groceries, and can only be bought at specific tills - I know!) and joined the queue. It took up an entire aisle and splintered off into two mini-queues, like a fishtail. Everyone was wearing a mask but there was no social distancing. There was no room. Everyone had full baskets - they were doing their weekly shop. I would be there for a long time. The old woman with the Zimmer frame appeared behind me in the queue, like something from "It Follows!", so  I returned the gin to the shelf and left. Outside the queue was ten deep. 

Going home I passed General Merchants, a cafe popular with the wealthier, sportier denizens of East Belfast, and there they all were in their high-end sports gear, bunched in groups on the pavement outside, forty of them, none of them social distancing, all of them clutching the ordinary takeaway coffees they couldn't possibly make themselves. There were so many of them I had to step into the oncoming traffic to get past them. They were oblivious. They had their coffees. 

I went into the off licence. Mask on, glasses steamed. They had no contactless payment. After a year of pandemic I had to punch in the numbers on their grubby card reader with my bare naked fingers. Like everyone else. Like the three teenage boys buying Coors Light who were in before me, off to a super-spreader party. No one is taking this pandemic seriously. They're just bored of it now. 100, 000 dead. Fuck it. Let's grab a coffee and breathe on one another. 

I'm still jangled from the fall and my arm has started to ache, but I'm not wrong. People are behaving like dicks. I went home and washed my hands in the hottest water I could bear for ten minutes until they were pink and stinging. 

Later I had some gin to kill off any lingering Covid germs. The brain cells are collateral damage. Cheers.