Coronavirus

Today turned to shit pretty much as soon as I got up, when I saw I had a Zoom meeting request for 10am about agreement to sell the apartment block in Wellington. I attended the meeting – four members of the body corporate committee and me – and they pretty much put a gun to my head, even threating court proceedings if I refuse to sell. The most maddening thing of all is still their blind acceptance of our fate. Everything’s shit, but so be it. I’m beginning to wonder whether selling might be the best option psychologically. Get the whole damn thing over with and start again. They gave me ten days to sign (or not sign, in which case they still want to go ahead with the sale anyway, without the half-dozen or so like me who haven’t yet signed). Oh shit.

In between my two lessons with near-teenage boys, I got a call from a woman who wanted me to join some teaching platform. She was basically trying to sell me shit. She wanted to arrange a discussion. I called her back, we had a discussion of sorts, but in those situations I get stressed and my Romanian quickly turns to shit.

During my second lesson my aunt called. She was calling me about some photos I’d taken in 2008 that I emailed her on Monday. They included four female generations of the family: my grandmother, her, my cousin and her (then) three-year-old daughter. My brother was also there, as was my aunt’s dog who died recently. I described to her the situation with my apartment which she was unaware of. In her words she said it was pretty shit. She was amazed I would fail to even get my initial investment back. If only!

I’ve been reading about nursing homes in Oxfordshire – an expensive home that cost a whopping £1500 a week, where coronavirus has been kept under control, and others where just reading about it is heartbreaking. Shit doesn’t even come close.

Cracks had already been showing in the lockdown for some time. It was inevitable really – the warm weather, the light evenings until nine, and the general feeling of lockdown fatigue meant that people were itching to get outside. Then came yesterday, when the state of emergency was officially replaced by a state of alert, and it was like a switch had been flipped. Still fewer people than normal, but a big increase.

So what’s new? If you’re staying within the city, you no longer have to fill in a form to say where you’re going and why. Most shops and fast food kiosks are now open. Restaurants, bars and cafés remain closed (inside and out), as do malls (good!). Services are starting up at the cathedral again, but outside. Schools won’t be going back until September. The Romanian school year ends in June, so unless you reschedule it somehow, there’s no point in going back before the autumn. Although the UK school year finishes in July, it would be best if the Brits called the whole thing off too.

I’m still going up and down the stairs with those ten litres of water on my back. People often ask me, “Isn’t the lift working?” Today I tried counting the steps in Serbian, eight at a time, up to hiljada dvadeset četiri (1024).

This morning they repainted the pedestrian crossing below my apartment, with a twist. People in the UK are told to be alert; in Romania you have to B sharp instead:

When I walked by the Bega this afternoon I saw a hornet’s nest. I hadn’t seen hornets for ages. Maybe they were those killer hornets I’d been warned about. This is what the Bega looked like today:

Today I’ve translated part of The Magic Finger into Romanian as an exercise, I’ve practised some Serbian, I’ve worked on my book, I’ve written six short fill-in-the-gaps stories for my newest student, and I’ve been up and down the stairs eight times. I also had a quick walk this afternoon – noticeably more people were out than a month ago, but the quiet was still lovely, and I caught the first whiff of Timișoara’s distinctive late-spring and early-summer aroma. In some ways I’d prefer the lockdown to continue beyond this coming Friday.

In one of John Campbell’s latest videos, he talks about the higher mortality rate from coronavirus among people with darker skin, even when you remove the effects of underlying health conditions. The pattern is repeated all over the world, and the excess mortality rate increases progressively as one’s skin gets darker. He is convinced that this is because people with higher melanin levels (i.e. darker skin) produce immunity-boosting vitamin D more slowly, and is frustrated that this biological effect isn’t being talked about. It’s OK to talk about the socio-economic factors (which are massive too) but skin colour is somehow off-limits; you can’t go there, even if going there would save lives. Although I have white skin, I’m taking 2000 international units of vitamin D per day.

It’s time to call my brother again.

Last night I lay awake thinking about when I’ll see (and hug) my mother again. I feel I have an almost complete relationship with my father just though voice calls and emails, but with Mum it isn’t the same.

This Friday will be the 75th anniversary of VE Day. I remember the 50th anniversary well. I was fifteen, it was a sunny Monday, and we had a barbecue and drinks in the garden. I took Seagers gin from the cabinet at regular intervals, added it to my orange juice, and nobody seemed to notice. I doubt I would have been in much trouble anyway – my parents weren’t big drinkers, but they had fairly relaxed attitudes to their kids getting hold of the stuff. Vera Lynn (still alive today at 103) was rolling out the barrel. It was a happy occasion, and of course so many World War Two veterans were still alive, including my grandparents. My grandfather, a squadron leader during and after the war, already had quite advanced Alzheimer’s by then.

It was a different world in 1995. The internet was this new thing, touted as the information superhighway, with all its cyber-slashes and dots and dashes that normal people still had no need for. Normal people made do with 1471, a handy number you dialled to tell you who called last. (And people still talked about dialling numbers then.)

When I think of ’95, I also think of sport. Costantino Rocca’s 50-foot putt at the Open, Blackburn’s Premier League title and various ups and downs through the divisions, and then Jonah Lomu’s destruction of England in the rugby World Cup. (I remember I switched over from that ridiculous match – it felt like a boxing match that I hoped could be stopped – and instead watched a very long third set at Queen’s Club which Pete Sampras barely survived.) I also think of an essay our English teacher asked us to write, called “The Class of ’95”. We had to imagine a school reunion taking place this year – in 2020. She told us that statistically, one or two of us (out of 25 or so) wouldn’t make it. I didn’t enjoy the essay – the idea of a reunion didn’t appeal at all – though I imagined I’d be living in New Zealand by then. I never would have guessed I’d have moved to NZ and then to Romania. Where even was Romania?

I wonder how Britain would have handled coronavirus in ’95. The government response would surely have been more sober, more dignified. Those were not partisan times. John Major would not have declared 20,000-plus deaths a success – that would have been too obscene. There would have been less information, but less misinformation too. Right now though, living thousands of miles from the rest of my family, I’d take having the superhighway during this pandemic over living in 1995 and not having it.