Whether we like it or not, this whole coronavirus brouhaha has worked its way to the forefront of the national consciousness.
It, rightfully so I guess, dominates newspaper headlines, as well as television and radio news bulletins. Epidemiology experts are trotted out on all these news outlets to opine. But, truth be told, no one on Earth is really any the wiser except, of course, for the advice about the need to keep a safe distance from strangers and washing your hands.
The one song that I’ve been thinking about is Disease of Conceit, off Bob Dylan’s great, if underrated album, Oh Mercy. Different context, I know, as His Bobness intones: “A whole lot of people seeing double tonight/from the disease of conceit give you delusions of grandeur and evil eye”.
At the time of its release at the start of the ’90s, the song was said to be a dig at televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, but you can never be sure what Dylan’s on about.
Anyway, to get back to Covid-19, the other day I was washing the breakfast dishes and I rinsed a bowl. I turned it around and spotted those three words which have become so ubiquitous in all our lives.
“Made in China,” it said, and I immediately thought about the genesis of the condition which is holding the world to ransom; never mind “grey water”.
The only bit of good news there has been since the outbreak of the illness, is the “flattening of the curve” of the condition in the land of the Red Dragon. Judging by a comparative graph I saw the other day, South Africa seems to be doing pretty well too.
Anyway, talking of which, I’m not sure about these sanitisers that they spray onto your hands at shopping malls. Man, these pale blue liquids make the skin on one’s hands sting.
At the weekend, my wife and I went down to Centurion Mall. We went into one of the entrances, got sprayed, but got no joy at the store we visited. We then tried another entrance and the security guard insisted on giving us another spray.
We remonstrated and said we had just been disinfected, but, I guess, it being more than his jobsworth, the geezer insisted on spraying us again. I Iet him spray my palms, only to promptly wipe them on my Levis what a handy garment that is.
Last Friday was a particularly sad day for me. A lovely dog I got to know over the past few years after she came here from Bangkok in Thailand, died.
The dog, named Mimi, belonged to a friend of mine, Reinette Wessels (aka as Pinki), who lives in Lyttelton Manor along with her sister, Hermien (aka Minky). We were seeing them later in the afternoon for level 3 lockdown sundowners.
But, at around 3pm, I got a call from the sisters to say that Mimi was in a bad way.
They wanted to take her to the vet, but were battling to lift her, so I rushed over there to lend a hand. On the way, I got a call from Minky to say they had managed with the help of a neighbour and were en route to the vet.
I raced over there, but by the time I got there, Mimi had already passed on tears all round.
Pinki had lived in Thailand for 12 years, teaching English, and had adopted Mimi, who had been a street dog, at a Bangkok shelter.
She was a pretty reticent animal and I never really won her trust, something that I regard as a huge disappointment. But given her loving nature towards beings she trusted, it is my belief that she’ll be reborn as an exalted being.
RIP, dear Mimi I’ll try next time, probably in another world.