'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.