Not Everyone Is Terribly Upset At School Closures

On my allocated time outside I can’t help noticing that there is at least one group not terribly upset by all the closures – especially school closures. Children who might have been dreading the next day in school complete with their unfinished homework have suddenly been given a reprieve. Their expressions remind one of the young boy in the film Hope and Glory whose eyes lit up when he turned the corner into his school yard and found that the Luftwaffe had turned his school into a huge mound of rubble. He raised his arms in glee and shouted, ‘Thank you Adolf!’

 

Thank you Adolf!

It also reminds me when I was that boy’s age in our small town in Vermont. When I say small, I mean small. There were – and still are – more cows than people. The only paved road was the one connecting us to a state highway. Everything else was – and still is – dirt. Rutted with bone-jarring bumps in the summer and slick with ice and snow in the winter. As kids we loved the winter when our heavy sleds with steel runners would literally fly down those steep ice-covered roads hoping against hope that Harold with his big snow plow was not coming up the hill around the corner.

But most of all we looked forward to this time of year when the temperatures began to climb above freezing and that glorious ice and snow melted, turning the roads into mud. Real, clinging, knee-deep mud that could pull your boots off. Why did we like this so much? Simple. No school bus could make the rounds picking up and dropping off children. We only had about 50 kids in the school anyway, and most them lived back in the valleys and hills far off the paved road. Ergo, no bus no school.

My mother was never one for sitting still and patiently waiting for the situation to improve. She noted that the skiing conditions in our area were deteriorating with the warmer weather and decided we should take advantage of the ‘mud season’ by going to northern Quebec where the temperatures were still frigid and the snow deep. So we all piled into our car and drove 8 – 10 hours to Mont Tremblant about 100 miles north of Montreal. None of us had passports. But in those simpler days nothing like that was needed just to go to neighboring Canada

 Mont Tremblant is now a flourishing year-round resort complete with all the mod cons. Back then only the actual town on the south side of the mountain resembled a resort with hotels and restaurants. ‘Stuff and nonsense’ would snort my mother as we bounced around the base of the mountain on what amounted to a logging road in the pitch darkness to the less developed north side of the mountain. ‘Are you sure we’re on the right road,’ my sister would wail plaintively as the trees grew ever denser and the ice-covered river ever closer. ‘Of course. Just a few minutes more,’ would come the authoritative answer. Two hours later we would arrive at our destination. There actually was a hotel – a small hotel where the adults and girls would stay. We boys, however, were consigned to what was grandly called the ‘Barracks’ which appeared to be designed and appointed by the same contractor who did the German POW camps featured in many films. There were double-deck wooden bunks and a huge cast-iron stove which – at that time – was stone cold. Thank God for warm sleeping bags, long underwear and thick socks. As for hygiene? Well, let’s just say everything was frozen solid.

Mont Tremblant in earlier times

But there were compensations. When we thawed out the next morning, we found deep fresh snow (most of it outside), wonderful trails, and clear skies. And it was cheap. The bunk house was $1/night. While adults and girls got to eat in the hotel we were sent to the Bears’ Den where you could eat all you wanted for 25 cents. The food may have been indifferent, but the Bears’ Den had the great virtue of being warm.

But the real benefit of these trips was not just the superb skiing. Many of my fellow inmates in what we jokingly called Stalag 17 were students taking a short break from some of the finest schools and universities in the United States and Canada. In the absence of traditional aprés ski activities we spent long hours around the by-now working stove – they with their beers and me with my hot chocolate. These discussions introduced me to a world far beyond my small home town and motivated me to perhaps take my school work a bit more seriously. Many years later I was not at all surprised when one of these students won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Every couple of days my mother would call home to check on the roads. After a week we learned sadly that they were drying out and school should resume in a few days.  We repeated this trip for several years until I had left the small local school and found myself in a place where attendance was not dictated by the state of the roads and studies were taken very seriously indeed. But not so seriously that I couldn’t smile at the memory of Stalag 17 and my mother’s determined efforts to fight through blizzards and ice to get us there and back in one piece.

Simply Getting Out Of Bed Is The Biggest Challenge

These new ‘lock-down’ rules present us all with a brand new set of challenges. The first one is the challenge of simply getting out of bed. I mean, why bother? What’s the point? What’s to stop us from spending a comfortable day in bed reading a good book or watching a movie on a tiny screen while munching biscuits and spreading crumbs all over the bed?

If that challenge is surmounted then we face the issue of getting dressed. Again, why not just stay in one’s pyjamas? What’s the point of getting dressed just to travel into the kitchen or dining room? It’s not as if you’re going anywhere.

Well, if one has a wife firmly grounded in the great British ‘standards-must-be-maintained’ tradition one is driven smartly out of bed into clean, freshly pressed clothes, and one definitely does not, repeat not, eat biscuits in bed dropping crumbs everywhere.

Assume all this accomplished and you even had some breakfast. You still have at last another 12 or so hours to kill before you’re allowed back in bed. Idle the day away? Forget it. Beware the lists - lists of things around the house that were always going to get done ‘some day’. Well, guess what? That day has arrived. Oven needs cleaning? Break out the instruction book – if you can find it. Try to understand the fluent Serbo-Croatian most of these things are written in and bravely dismantle the oven door and racks inside. Then with toxic chemicals not allowed in most civilized countries you scrub the inside while hoping that your thin rubber gloves don’t dissolve into a puddle of smoking rubber. If you survive that then you have to put the damn thing back together again – with helpful reminders from your wife that you’ve got the door back-to-front.

The kid does NOT go in the laundry!

The wardens have allowed us outside once a day for exercise. But right now in London all this does is prove that the Almighty has a perverse sense of humour. All winter we struggled with dark, rainy, cold weather. Now, when we can’t really take advantage of it, the skies are a beautiful cerulean blue, not a cloud in sight, and the sun beams down on nearly empty parks. I hope He’s getting a good laugh.

  By this time even Emmanuel Kant (see the previous post) is beginning to look good. But not yet. I have, however, only myself to blame for the next activity. To help keep the brain from turning into porridge I had begun taking German lessons at the Goethe Institute. Now German – as you might expect – is a language with a great many rules. Rather like a huge, very complicated jig saw puzzle where each tiny piece must fit precisely into the right place. Each pronoun, in the right form of course, and each verb – along with all those little verb helpers -- has a well-defined place in every sort of sentence. The problem is, however, that that ‘well-defined place’ keeps changing according to the nature of the sentence. The Goethe Institute had to close during the lock-down and I foolishly thought my brain would be given a well-deserved rest. No chance! These are Germans, after all. The staff came up with a very clever way to continue the lessons online – complete with a whiteboard and homework. So much for that well-deserved R&R.

Then, of course, there are the multiple ways we are supposed to use the internet to ease the strain of isolation. This assumes, however, that one is familiar with all the social media platforms or other programs that one can download, upload, side-load or otherwise cajole into some useful function. Judging by what passes for communication on some of these platforms isolation begins to look pretty attractive.

The real social distancing challenge comes if the wide-spread lock-down order remains in effect for the Orthodox Easter on April 19. Greeks are wonderful people but  - how can I put this politely –  natural social distancers or self-isolators they are not -  especially on the biggest day of the year. Even in London large crowds holding candles gather outside the Orthodox cathedral around midnight on Saturday to celebrate the Anastasi -- resurrection of Jesus. 

Good luck cancelling this one

Greeks will travel far and wide to be with family and friends to celebrate Easter weekend. The Lenten fast officially ends with the midnight service and people then congregate in homes all over the country to celebrate the ending of the Fast with a large meal in the wee hours of the morning. Later Sunday morning the air is heavy with the scents of entire lambs being roasted on spits. By the afternoon the feast is prepared and even larger crowds gather to partake of the mounds of lamb, goat, sausage, sweets, and the odd glass of ouzo. It will take a very brave official to ban or even limit for the sake of a mere virus this celebration that is hard-wired into every Greek’s DNA.

'Been in Kabul recently?'

Now that we are all more or less housebound newspapers, TV and social media are filled with useful hints about how to pass the time. Some hints are more useful than others. As much as I enjoy creative arts I doubt very much that I’m going to spend much time learning things like origami. The Financial Times staff came up with a suitably high-brow list of books we ‘should’ take this opportunity to read. One of them included the collected works of Dostoevsky. Are they serious? Wading through Crime and Punishment in this environment is a sure recipe for domestic mayhem. 

Sorry, Fyodor. Not the right time to become more depressed.

I scan our bookshelves and see titles I had every intention of reading – one day. As much as I admire the study of philosophy I’m afraid Emanuel Kant’s tome A Critique of Pure Reason will remain undisturbed on the shelf while I turn to my Kindle for authors like Alan Furst or the late and very lamented Philip Kerr with his wonderful character Bernie Gunther.

Let us for a moment look at the bright side of this situation. The hideous Eurovision song contest with its kitsch costumes and noise masquerading as music has been cancelled. Then the cruise ships have been kept in port. Wonderful news to anyone living in places like Venice or Santorini in Greece which have been assaulted and abused by these massive floating petri dishes. 

Time to re-think the whole business of massive cruise liners

And now many of these same cruise line companies are screaming to take part in massive U.S. government handouts to individuals and industries hit by the Corona virus. Slight problem here. Most of these cruise liners are registered abroad, pay very little if any American taxes, and avoid stringent American maritime and employment regulations. But, and it’s a very big But, this is an election year. And the state of Florida, where many of these vessels pick up passengers, is a key battleground state. We will see just how far Trump’s loudly touted Make American Great program will bend to accommodate this non-American industry to win votes in Florida.

It would take a lot more than home quarantine to make me turn to day-time TV which surely qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. The good news is that streaming services like Netflix and Amazon video have decent films. We are also fortunate to have available a streaming service called Walter Presents (Walter Iuzzolino founded the service and selects the content) that shows foreign drama and comedy – some of it very high quality. One of our favourites is Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86.

In a perfect world this enforced home stay would also present the perfect opportunity to do some of those long-delayed DIY chores. This might work if I had a clue how to use half the tools in my very handy tool box. I’m afraid if I attempted any serious plumbing or electrical work I would either flood the entire building or cut the power to large parts of the city.

Then there are games like Scrabble. Very enjoyable, even though my wife wins the vast majority of times. We’re trying to arrange a sort of online, video scrabble game with a friend who lives in France and faces even more draconian stay-at-home rules than we do.

We are blessed in our neighbourhood by having several extremely good and enterprising ethnic food shops and cafes. While the cafes and restaurants are closed they all offer take-away service. One very handy convenience store is run by an Afghani family that works at least 18 hours a day. When I sympathized with one of the boys on the current situation he answered with a wry grin. ‘Been in Kabul recently?’ Yes, well. That rather puts our situation in some perspective.

Regardless of official statements that there is no shortage of supplies much of the population seems seized by panic buying. Supermarket shelves are stripped bare moments after being restocked as people load up on a month’s supply of toilet paper, paper towels, frozen food, pasta, fruit, etc. etc. Most markets have instituted policies limiting the amount of any one item customers can buy. 

Not a lot left after panic buying

In an effort to help the elderly and infirm who can’t fight through the rampaging hordes the markets have also devoted the first hour of operation to those elderly and infirm. I took advantage of this and showed up at one market at 6:45 am and had a very nice time with the other oldsters who showed great patience, good humour and care for the most infirm who were gently led to the front of the queue. Sadly, the same cannot be said for some the young people who groused loudly when told they had to wait and then shoved their way to the front. Supermarkets are generally closed on Sunday mornings but at least one of them is opening its doors then for the incredibly stressed and overworked staff of the National Health Service who have been struggling around the clock to deal with this outbreak. These are the real heroes of the situation and should give us pause before we complain too much about our own incarceration.