In Episode Five of his new book, author Julian Roup speaks of the first swallow of Spring that arrives and how he remembers the Freddy Mercury song ‘Who wants to live forever?’
In case you missed Episode 4, click here.
Life in a Time of Plague
Sussex, 12th April 2020
By Julian Roup
I saw my first swallow today, flying high and moving fast, but it was without doubt the first swallow of this spring hereabouts. Not ‘ours’ yet – the one’s that nest in the stables – but an early arrival and a sign that ours are on the way. How appropriate its timing on Easter Sunday, this return of life. And how poignant among all this death.
The great 13th century Persian poet Rumi wrote: “Beyond hopelessness there is hope.” And there is hope, there has to be. Even now, especially now.
It is Nazir Afzal, Britain’s former chief Prosecutor, a brilliant lawyer, speaking on BBC Radio’s Today programme, who quoted these words about hope. His 73-year-old brother has just died from Coronavirus and yet he speaks of hope so powerfully in the midst of his quiet grief.
His brother had visited their 90-year-old mother in hospital in January when she was fighting TB and pneumonia and possibly picked up the coronavirus there. After three weeks of treatment for the virus he was sent home to receive ‘care in the community’ and died in his sleep, possibly from a heart attack. The family could not find a Muslim funeral home to collect the body for burial as they were all overwhelmed and London’s morgues were full. So the family sat with the body of their dead son for 24 hours before he was collected for burial.
Nazir said that when the pandemic was beaten, lessons needed to be learned. His 30 years of public service had taught him that the rarest quality among politicians was the ability to listen. And listen now they must. Any new legislation drafted in the future, he said, required those people whose lives would be most affected by it to be central to the process of drafting any new law.
The much maligned and embattled BBC, criticised by those on the left and the right – a sure sign if ever a sign was needed of even-handedness – is having a good war on coronavirus. It is often first with the news, both good and bad.
I took hope listening to our comic-turn Prime Minister on the BBC as he thanked and named the NHS nurses who had saved his life, two in particular, a female nurse, Jenny McGee from New Zealand’s South Island and Luis Pitarma, a male nurse from near Porto in Portugal, who worked tirelessly in 12 hour shifts by his side when “it could have gone either way” as Boris put it.
Ironically, both will find a future Brexit Britain that much harder to get into or stay in. A fine old irony. Maybe Boris has had a deathbed conversion to a saner course of action, but don’t hold your breath.
The news from America is not good, but there is a glimmer of hope: Trump’s approval ratings are falling at last. People are not buying his claim that he is not responsible for the death toll there.
Meanwhile China, it seems, is preparing to extend credit to its debtor nations entrenching its influence and soft power. What a victory for them, inflicting this monster virus on the world and then using it to build on their power. We need to be mightily afraid of China.
Various countries and companies are racing to develop an App which will allow our smartphones to tell us if we have been in contact with someone carrying the virus. This may help to save lives now but its implications for our future freedom is worrying.
After a quiet day Jan and I ate a late supper and as usual, took Gus for an evening stroll in the near dark. Halfway down the lane a large owl ghosted overhead on silent wings and then curved south to scan the fields for prey. Jan took my arm and hugged it. Not hard to believe watching it move so lightly that its bones weigh less than its plumage.
Later, on TV, we watched a vast crowd at a tribute concert to Freddie Mercury that took place at Wembley arena in 1992, with a host of celebrity musicians. One song stood out for good reason, that great anthem, Who wants to live forever? Who indeed? But for now, all of us are focusing hard on surviving this horror. The concert was a reminder of that other pandemic, AIDS, which cost Freddie Mercury his life, finding him before the discovery of the anti-retroviral treatment that has saved the lives of so many.
And suddenly this morning, April 13th, news on the BBC Radio’s Today programme again, that a vaccine is 80% ready to go and that it will be ready by September. This astonishing news comes in an interview with Professor Sarah Gilbert, an Oxford University based scientist whose clipped, authoritative delivery is as reassuring as her news, a promise of salvation shortly. She says that clinical trials will be underway almost immediately and her own children, three adult triplets, all scientists themselves, have enrolled to take part as the first human guineapigs. Production of the vaccine is already underway, not waiting for the end of the trial, ready to be used immediately if the trials show efficacy.
Hope after hopelessness indeed.
This morning is cold and overcast as the weather service predicted it would be, the first such weather for weeks it seems. I walk up the garden to see if ‘our swallows’ have arrived yet, but no. Last years mud nests in the rafters are still empty, awaiting new life.
Click here for Episode 6.
