I'm sure you've noticed, but there's been a bug going round these last few months. As there still appears to be a bit of mileage left in its coverage, I thought I'd tell you how similar it all seems to a dank Sunday afternoon one January when a collection of twenty-two Englishmen, Scots and a Welshman or two chased a piece of leather around for an hour and a half while the equivalent of half the population of Pontypridd tried disemboweling themselves with rusty spoons, so dismal was the spectacle playing out before their eyes.
Thirty-four years on and I can still remember Sunday, 5th January 1986 as if it were yesterday. Thirteen thousand people turned up at Selhurst Park in South London to watch a Third Round FA Cup tie between Charlton Athletic and West Ham United. In the dying minutes of normal time, Tony Cottee prodded Frank McAvennie's goal-bound lob into the back of the net to put the Hammers through by the slimmest of margins. It was a wholly undeserved dramatic end to what had been the most eye-wateringly tedious ninety minutes of football I'd seen since I'd paid a tout over the odds to watch the truly epic snooze-fest of Arsenal drawing 1-1 with Aston Villa a few years before.
An unresolved rights dispute between the Football League and the BBC and ITV kept the game off the telly at the start of the season, so the London face-off was the first football to be seen on the small screen since August 1985. No doubt under strict instructions to talk the match up no matter what, John Motson's breathless commentary frothed the approximative kick-about in the South London mud to King Kong cappuccino-sized proportions ('What a cracker we've got on our hands, here'), the crowd noise was ramped up to 11 but no amount of gushing hyperbole could disguise the Emperor's new away strip: this was the biggest turkey anyone would be likely to find so soon after Christmas.
Yes, you've already got the parallel. I sometimes feel we're being treated to latter-day Motty in the way we are instructed to respond to Covid-19. Panic! Save lives! Keep safe! Applaud! Isolate! Gloom, doom and disaster! Yes, there have been excess deaths due to this virus; greater scientific minds than mine have already listed an array of reasons for this but the reaction enjoined by the media seems disproportionate in the face of reality, so I'll move on to what I feel is the far greater danger of this pandemic, one which may stay with us far longer than the result of some Chinese market stallholder French-kissing a bat or whatever it was that set this all off.
Within a short space of time, our national response as a so-called global community was not to try to find a common solution to this unknown disease but to isolate ourselves. In the name of containing the spread we needed to sever contact with our neighbours and close our borders. That done, we were then required to distance ourselves from our real neighbours: those who live next door or down the road aswell as aged relatives, who fell fairly and squarely into the 'vulnerable' category. Just to make sure we were doing this properly we had to stay within our four walls - the dramatically-termed 'lockdown' - and forbidden to leave our premises for anything other than basic existential essentials. All well and good for those sitting in houses with gardens or generously-proportioned flats with terraces or the like but a real misery for anyone else.
Three months on and what have we got? Entire continents cautiously poking their noses out of their warrens as the virus predictably recedes, squinting at the light we've forgotten existed after weeks of wall-to-wall Netflix and a profound mistrust of our fellow humans. We've all been told to keep away from them, you see, as they could infect us and make us ill. Just to be on the safe side, we need to disinfect ourselves before we go near them and must always leave a few feet between us in case they kill us with a handshake. The obligation or desire to speak to them is also heavily reduced thanks to that ineffective mask we have to wear which, if combined with sunglasses on a bright day, makes us all look like pantomime bank robbers.
New, international social distancing norms seem to vary between one and two metres. I read somewhere that the UK's Social Distancing Czar (not his real job title) prescribed two metres as he felt the public couldn't be trusted to stick to one. Er, how often in your lives have you felt the need to get any closer than one metre to strangers in a queue? Walk alongside a friend or a member of your family and you'll probably find yourself abiding by that rule without giving it a second thought. The rule, however, creates emotional distance where you seek proximity. Rush hour commuting aside, people generally squash up together because they want to: in a pub, a concert or, with a little more distance, a concert hall or theatre. Now we've ascertained that the under-65s are at practically no risk whatsoever - the group most likely to rub shoulders and more in the Tube or at rock concerts - and that children neither suffer from this ailment nor transmit it, why are we all still required to pursue this theatre which has been systematically debunked by many experts who, strangely, never seem to get invited to talk about their theories on mainstream media?
Ah yes, theatre. Air France's and Ryanair's recent response to the French government's directive that they remove the central seat from the statutory row of three in order to respect social distancing directives was to say how ridiculous and financially suicidal this would be. OK, said the French government, you just need to ensure all the passengers wear masks. Sitting right next to someone wearing a mask for an hour or more is, therefore, entirely in sync with social distancing directives. So why, then, are theatres and cinemas still closed? How is an opera house or a multiplex more dangerous than an airborne sardine tin? Why this discrimination against those seeking a common artistic experience? Even if opera audiences are likely to be on average older and thus more 'vulnerable' than other theatre-goers, I'll bet my bottom dollar they'd prefer to take the infinitesimally small risk of contracting CV-19 (from which they'd almost certainly recover, anyway) and spending a night in the company of Verdi or Wagner than staying at home in glorious isolation yet again. If they tell us the reasoning is financial, our elected representatives are even more out of touch than we thought.
While our mainstream media bubble continues its tin-eared exhortation that we've got a cracker on our hands, we must resist the temptation to apply those rusty spoons to our tummies and get on with the serious business of re-engaging our critical faculties and natural desire for human interaction. If not, our theatres and cinemas will stay closed and football matches played in front of empty terraces. Still, in the case of one match I can think of, that might have been a blessing…
