In Episode 8 of his new book, author Julian Roup waits for the swallows and speaks of his wife and partner in Covid-19 lockdown.
In case you missed Episode 7, click here.
Life in a Time of Plague
Sussex, 14th April 2020
By Julian Roup
Our learning curve on this disease is a steep one. There is news just in about a doctor, Cameron Kyle-Sidell of the Maimonides Medical Centre in New York, an emergency medicine physician at the forefront of fighting the virus, who says the behaviour of the disease is not like TB or pneumonia, but much more like high altitude sickness where the lungs are fine, but are being starved of oxygen. The violence of ventilators is damaging the lungs of Covid-19 sufferers and should be used on gentler settings, he says. The cure, it seems, is killing patients. Chinese doctors have told Dr Kyle-Sidell to use oxygen himself when feeling exhausted, as you would when mountain climbing. If this proves to be true, the numbers of people surviving the illness and treatment may grow.
Meanwhile, I may have stumbled onto the reason that our swallows have not arrived. Wildlife groups in Greece say that thousands of swallows and other migratory birds have died there in the last few weeks, unable to recover from the exhausting journey from Africa, made worse this year due to strong winds and chilly weather conditions.
Scientists say that persistent strong northerly winds over the Mediterranean and the Aegean have exhausted the birds, who have been spotted in their thousands walking on streets instead of flying, as they try to recover. Photographs posted on social media show great numbers of birds lying dead in different parts of the country.
“Birds, and swallows in particular, started their migratory journey from Africa in early March, but due to the difficult weather conditions, many bird populations arrived in Greece exhausted,” said Dimitris Bakaloudis, Associate Professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Environment at Thessaloniki University.
These birds fly up to 200 miles a day, with anticyclones favouring them on their journey, lifting them higher up in the sky. They spend the winter months in the southern Sahara and as far south as South Africa, and start migrating in waves from early March on a route of more than 6,000 miles.
Yesterday, as I cut the lawn for the third time this spring, I kept glancing at the sky and then to the open doors of the stables at the top of the garden to see if I might spot that tell-tale swooping dive of the black arrows. But as the grass got shorter in green stripes, there were no birds to be seen. I moved the weathered teak picnic table and benches to a different part of the garden, closer to the kitchen, to make eating outside easier, and looked up again, but nothing.
How different things were last March in Portugal where we holidayed for ten days, soaking up sunshine after a hard English winter, coming home to a host of swallows. We were based in the Eastern Algarve town of Tavira, a lovely place with over 37 churches dotting the skyline. The tidal Gilão River runs right through it and you can watch people fishing off the bridges that cross the river. At low tide, it’s not unusual to see fishermen in the shallows seeking clams on the sand bars and mud flats, watched closely by herons and egrets There’s a lovely old castle that offers great views across to the ocean and you get a good idea of the salt-making business from the heights. Tavira is filled with alleyways and small squares and restaurants serving great seafood brought in daily by local trawlers. At dusk, to sit at a riverside bar, your face tight with a day’s sunshine, and sip one of the giant G&Ts on offer as the local swallows pick insects from the river’s skin, is to know happiness.
Each day, we sunned ourselves on the beaches, one in particular, Praia do Barril, reached by a footbridge over a river, and a small railway line with a tourist train that takes you to a mile-long beach grounded by a great rusted anchor cemetery featuring more than 100 of these giants. As usual, Jan, who is fearless when it comes to cold water, went in despite the March temperature. I preferred to warm my ageing bones on the sun loungers provided and read and doze. Now it all seems such a distant dream, but if we survive this time, maybe we will once more walk that beach and remember.
I am sure that it makes a huge difference with whom you are self-isolating. Jan and I have had our ups and downs over the four decades we’ve been married. Who has not? I love her and respect her deeply and admire her many good qualities. She took the lion’s share of raising our children, while working full time. She is braver than me by a country mile, and has an indomitable spirit. She has been known to physically intervene when someone is being attacked, once in Sicily, and once on the platform of Tunbridge Wells station, our local arrival and departure point for London. In Sicily, she punched a man in the head when he rugby-tackled her friend to the ground and tried to rape her. (He ran away). On Tunbridge Wells platform, a group of teenagers were beating up another when Jan pulled the main attacker off the victim and gave him a piece of her mind. He was so nonplussed to be so manhandled that he and his mates took off.
A journalist like me by education and training (we met at journalism school at Rhodes University in South Africa), Jan has had a much more distinguished writing career than me. She has worked for such great names as the BBC, The Guardian, The Observer, the Financial Times and The Spectator, before turning to editing magazines.
Her books include Class of 79 (Jacana Media), about three of her fellow students who were heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle, and The World Beneath, about a young boy growing up under apartheid (Walker Books /Penguin Random House), which was endorsed by Amnesty International and won an award for its US edition.
She works as a freelance feature writer, and is currently finishing a novel and a children’s book. A committed Buddhist, she chants twice a day and tells me that she mentions me in her prayers. I know that she greatly misses hosting her Buddhist meetings here, attending poetry society meetings in Tunbridge Wells and teaching creative writing once a week at Share Community in London, a charity that offers a range of studies to disabled adults.
Thus far, I think, we are doing well in lockdown. I am also fortunate that my work has kept going and I am at work for part of each day for two auction clients, one selling classic cars, H&H Classics based in Warrington, and Barnebys, an auction search engine servicing some 3,000 auction houses, one of which, Julien’s in Los Angeles, has just sold the manuscript of the Beatles song ‘Hey Jude’ for almost $1m. It’s a strange world, Master Jack, as another song puts it.
Click here for Episode 9.
