coronavirus – View From A Bridge – management, education and personal thoughts

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD LOOKING FOR SOLACE IN LOCKDOWN

It’s been difficult to know if there is anything interesting to say about being an expartriate during a pandemic. I suspect that the experience of lockdown and wearing a mask and being on Zoom is pretty much the same wherever you are. But as we begin to think that the glimmer of vaccine hope may turn into the dazzling light of mass immunity there are some things I have learnt and would share.

The Buggles told us that video “killed the radio stars” but we should be grateful that it didn’t kill radio. Not being able to travel to the UK in 2020 did not mean that we couldn’t share the mild, British eccentricity of Liza Tarbuck on a Saturday morning or the tones of Steve Wright on a Sunday afternoon. In the early 80s I found the latter as annoying as I was to find Chris Evans in the 1990s. Wright started the whole notion of “zoo format” radio in the UK so has a lot to answer for, but the decades have mellowed us all and he is now as comforting as an old jumper.

Listening to UK radio also reminds me to avoid Snake Pass during the winter, give the M5 near Bristol a miss at any time of year and to always check the rail timetables for disruption when the wrong sorts of leaves are falling. If I wanted to feel even more in the homeland, I could listen to the rhythmic heartbeat of an island nation as the shipping forecast incanted, “Dogger, Fisher, German Bight…”. Running since 1867, the shipping forecast is the longest continuous weather forecast in the world and that makes it the essence of being British.

None of this is of any practical use in San Diego but then it wasn’t of any real use to hear about snow in the Cairngorms when I lived in the relatively balmy climes of Brighton. For good measure, finding 88.5FM SoCal has been a further boon and for anyone looking to get a sense of high-quality southern California music radio programming it’s highly recommended. It’s topped off by the celebrity appeal of a Saturday evening slot with Joe Walsh of Eagles and James Gang fame whose wonderfully titled solo album “The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get” is reputedly a play on the phrase, “the higher you get the better you play.”

Walking and running in the road has become the norm as the polite dance of social distancing has been underpinned by the San Diegan belief in science and staying healthy. The nice thing is that drivers don’t seem to mind at all and there is often a cheery wave as they give a wide berth in passing. Cyclists have increased in number and remain slightly less accommodating but that’s probably to be expected of people whose anatomy is constricted by inappropriate amounts of spandex and silicon padding.

We’ve also seen the end of the plague of Bird, Jump, Lyft and Lime scooters that had threatened life and limb on the pavement or the road as they carried crazed, no helmet riders to an inevitable date with the Emergency Room. In a double sign of the times, Bird “terminated around 40% of its then about 1060 employees in a group Zoom meeting” in March 2020 and a May 2020 deal “valued Lime at $510 million, down 79% from its $2.4 billion valuation in April 2019”. The long-term consequences for “final leg” scooter companies remain unclear but it seems unlikely that the glory days will return any time soon.

Ordering food out has been one of the ways of feeling good about supporting local businesses and extending the range of cuisine beyond restaurants in walking distance. Some experiences have been brilliant, while others have shown that a dining place that is outstanding in person does not necessarily deliver (sic) when delivering. Generally speaking, Indian food travels well from distance, burgers need to be collected from nearby, noodles are no go’s, and pizza tastes fine but the organization of the process does much to explain the joke about Hell having the Italians in charge.

Restaurants are certain to be one of the most significant beneficiaries of a successful vaccination programme. One of the real downsides of lockdown has been missing the Friday night pint at the Whistlestop but there really is nothing quite like the whole ritual of visiting a favourite restaurant, selecting a much-loved meal and then walking away without any thought of doing the dishes or taking out the rubbish. It’s to be hoped that most survive until there is a chance to reopen but the resilience of the sector and the energy of entrepreneurs will fill any gaps.

With everyone stuck at home around the world the propensity to engage in calls on Zoom and other formats has brought me back in touch with people I might never have otherwise spoken to again. The notion of a global community and everyone being just a video-call away is facilitated by saving the time that is usually consumed by travelling and waiting for transport. Not having to be on the next plane or train with a group of strangers has been a bonus for communication and that’s a good lesson for us to remember.

Time zones and geography are among the disadvantages of being an expatriate but when everybody is challenged by mobility and finds themselves with more time it becomes a lot easier. Everyone is sharing a similar and unusual situation so being abroad and several thousand miles away is not much different to being seven, seventeen or seventy miles distant. It seems that being isolated has, for some people, been the very best way of getting back in touch.

That’s about it – re-finding radio, walking in the road, ordering take-out food and getting back in touch. Certainly a lot better than being bombed in a Blitz, going over the top into No Man’s Land or facing famine and I am among those who can have no complaints. No description is complete without saying how it’s all aided by the San Diego weather which permits an outdoor lifestyle and the sunshine to cure most of the lockdown blues.

None of these consolations take away from being pained by the tales of human tragedy during the pandemic or being shocked at the scale of the hospitalizations and deaths around the world. Locke told us that “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind” and we can only hope that this worldwide catastrophe is a reminder of the connections between us. In that respect the schism of Brexit and the bitter partisan nature of the US elections do not augur well but it is best to be hopeful.

Image by Angela C from Pixabay

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD TIME TRAVELS

Reaching week four of lockdown is a reminder that California was the first State to realise that social distancing was a necessary step in reducing deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. The Sunshine State’s leadership, thus far, has been calm, considered and given confidence that it is making difficult decisions in a thoughtful and intentional way. But this week also signals that four weeks on from the stay at home order the future is still unclear.

It’s obviously an anxious time thinking about family, friends and colleagues in the UK and I wish you all well. Watching the UK’s current dance of damage limitation over PPE and the non-answers about deaths in the health service is a reminder that, as one publication put it, there is a ‘vacuum’ at the head of Government. A vacuum would probably do a better job because at least it accepts that its function is to clean up the mess and suck it up, rather than posture and blow hot air.

Constraints on travel, meeting and hospitality make for restless minds and the only real option is to dream of places far away or to look backwards to better times. I’m going to cover distant places in a later blog but I find myself, on a daily basis, wondering how people I know around the globe are doing. Bono once sang about ‘trying to throw your arms around the world’ which seemed supportive of my mood until, in the same song, he reminded me that ‘a woman needs a man, like a fish needs a bicycle’.

The sentiment is true except for the fact that I am the resident tea-maker in the house – it’s one of the areas where English genetic advantages are obvious . In that role I was trying to explain about the Teasmade and how it was a mark of the aspiring middle class in the 1970s. The first automatic tea-maker patent was actually in 1891 by the wonderfully named Samuel Rowbottom. But it is the Goblin Teasmade, dating from 1931, that lingers in the memory as the noisy, complicated beast that made stewed tea from under-heated water.

This started a walk down memory lane about emerging signs of the British working class becoming a middle class and set the scene for monetarism, globalism and the end of the post-war social consensus. Consumerism and conspicuous consumption blossomed and US pop acts, TV series and films dominated the airwaves. Strange that it all happened in a decade the country endured a three-day week, a year with two General Elections and a drought.

There was an obsession with carpets as people moved from functional, low-cost floor covering to being knowledgeable about twists, fibres, density and weight. Even kitchens became carpeted rather than having the type of sticky underfoot, luridly patterned, vinyl beloved by my grandmother. The word ‘shag’ became all about quality carpet rather than water-birds, tobacco, lockdown hair styles, or some other form of deviation from the norm.

Then there were holidays in Spain for the adventurous who would rather deal with Latinate disdain than Welsh hostility. In the era when Silvia topped the charts with Y Viva Espana, the sign of the aspiring middle class was ten days in Benidorm and a winter tan that could be topped up with a home sunbed. Nobody cared about the long-term effects of sun exposure as coconut oil was slathered to ensure flesh was fried and lime juice was squirted in hair to provide highlights atop sunburnt bodies that owed more to pie consumption than Baywatch. As it happens Baywatch didn’t arrive in the UK until the late 1980s – perhaps a sign of how far we advanced in that decade.

Spanish holidays led to a passion for cocktails served from a home bar in a kitchen where a high, island table had been formed out of MDF. The ultimate touch was having bar stools that allowed you to while away the English winter sipping on a Pina Colada while dreaming about Typically Tropical’s promise of ‘going to Barbados’. Even for the middle class that hope was more a wish, sustained by Del Trotter’s motto that ‘next year we’ll be millionaires’, than a reality.

I was surprised to learn that the Barbados song was the brainchild of two Welsh engineers, Jeff Calvert and Max West. It song inspired a 1999 cover by Dutch Eurodance group, the Vengaboys, called ‘We’re Going to Ibiza’, which has the distinction of the main chorus line sounding like ‘whoa, I’m going to eat pizza’. From Wales to Barbados to Holland and then back to Spain – you can’t argue that this blog doesn’t get around.

Back in my 1970s time capsule a balaclava was still considered an ideal Christmas present and often knitted by a loving grandmother. Words like sombrero, beret and fez became increasingly popular although anyone who came to school wearing one would pay the consequences and carry the bruises. Maybe that’s why I spent several troubled months where I didn’t understand that baklava was something you ate rather than a Greek form of headwear.

And there was the brief flirtation with nylon sheets in dayglo colours which combined with nylon pyjamas to carry a serious risk of static electric shocks while sliding uncontrollably around the bed. New cars were a dream that could almost certainly be fulfilled with ubiquitous hire-purchase and owning a house became a defining feature of the change in society. Being paid weekly, or sometimes daily, in cash, was giving gave way to bank accounts, cheques and even credit cards.

It’s an era where the tension between the certainties of the past and the hopes for the future is captured almost perfectly in the late, great Victoria Woods’ epic Let’s Do It. The song tells the story of a libidinous woman and a jaundiced man. The woman is seeking excitement, passion and novelty while the man clings to domesticity, DIY and dreariness.

The romp reminds us of the time that avocado was a lewd and licentious fruit for the bohemian and a hostess trolley was the middle-class housewives dream. Grouting, lagging and thermal vests were the preserve of the sensible and the cautious. The line ‘beat me on the bottom with the Woman’s Weekly’ is a nine-word summary of how old values were being torn up (or perhaps rolled up) and the country was working to embrace the future.

My father once told me that it was important to ‘laugh at life’ in all its inanity, confusion and uncertainty which seems like good advice right now. I offer up Let’s Do It as a small service to help with that process during these troubled and uncertain times. Enjoy (at a reasonable distance), keep smiling (behind the mask) and keep safe.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD AND SOCIALLY DISTANT

Strictly speaking expatriates have been doing this social distancing lark ever since they left their country of birth. Six feet shouldn’t seem very much when you’ve put an ocean and several thousand miles between yourself and the society in which you were born and bred. But these are remarkable times and everybody is living apart from the life and people they know.

Anybody looking at this blog for any answers about how things will resolve themself is going to go away even more disappointed by my ramblings than usual. The media – social and mainstream – has been full of pundits giving their views on what’s going to happen and usually they are proven incorrect within three days. So, it’s difficult to know how three months, or even three weeks, is going to be.

For what it is worth I hope that after two to three months of community action to save lives we will all be better people and realise, at last, that Margaret Thatcher was wrong to suggest ‘there’s no such thing as society’. But I realise that there is every possibility that economic meltdown could lead to an even greater upheaval based on survival, selfishness and personal greed. It’s a bit more disturbing in a country where the race to purchase guns has been as shocking as the stockpiling of toilet rolls.

For now, the streets of sunny San Diego are peopled by individuals who wave at each other and say hello as they cross the street to follow the medically approved etiquette is observed. Dogs are happy that they receive five walks a day but slightly bemused that they aren’t allowed close enough to do the social sniffing that is good behaviour in their world. Bars and restaurants are building their delivery business and our local favourite The Whistlestop had its first Instagram Happy Hour, with Britpop classics, on Friday evening.

Americans are ‘can do’ sort of people and as usual national characteristics come to the fore in times of stress and crisis. It was impressive to see the Italians turn to opera and classical dancing on their balconies as they came out each evening to demonstrate their unity and defiance. The South Koreans and the Germans have impressed us all with their testing, tracing and total focus on following scientific advice to get ahead of the virus.

In the middle of this, and as if there was not enough socially transmitted disease around, the British had the infamous ‘Clap For Carers’ to show support for the front-line saviours in the NHS. It is sad that a country with the richest history in modern music – the Beatles, the Stones, Zeppelin, Oasis et al – were unable to find a song to unite the country in a time of national struggle. It’s very difficult to accept that You’ll Never Walk Alone is the answer because strictly speaking the current rules say that you should and must do exactly that.

My own choice would have been, 500 Miles by the Proclaimers, because it at least implies that you start a long way away from each other. At an average of 3mph and walking eight hours a day it would take 20 days to get within six feet which is, of course, an appropriate self-isolation time if you started off with symptoms. It’s also a lot more rousing and has sufficient ‘da da da dun diddle un diddle un diddle uh da’ for those who are no good with lyrics.

For aficionados it is worth adding that the line in the song saying, ‘and I would walk 500 more’, indicates a willingness to walk 1,000 miles. That is taking precautionary measures to a new dimension but in a spirit of being useful I’d note that it’s about 2,000,000 steps, or 100,000 calories, which would see you lose about 28lb in weight (all else being equal). That seems quite a disappointing return on so much walking but the combination of social distancing, exercise and weight loss could make it mandatory under the ever changing Government guidelines.

It was particularly misguided to pick a song so closely associated with a single football club – even if Liverpool have successfully distanced themselves so spectacularly on points from the rest of the Premier League. It’s amusing to see these runaway leaders stranded when they are so close to equalling Leicester City’s record of one Premier League title, but also a constant reminder that live football is sorely missed. The NBCS response is hour long shows featuring the greatest goals scored but that is like replacing a three course, gourmet meal with microwave canapes and dips – all taste and no substance.

It’s like showing the last three seconds of a boxer being counted out, or the five strides before a 1500 metre runner crosses the line in an Olympic final, or just the final putts in a closely fought Open championship. Sport is about the ebb and flow of the event, the moments of controversy and the play of pressure, luck and character which forms the spirit of the game. Next thing to fill the gap will probably be ‘100 Greatest VAR Moments’ because that acronym probably always stood for Virus Against Reality.

The situation is stressful in many other ways but one thing that distresses me is the continual chatter about cash being cast aside by polite society and literally becoming ‘filthy lucre’ used only by pariahs, pimps and drug overlords. As the latter two groups have moved onto virtual currencies in a big and totally untraceable way it’s probably only social outcasts who will still carry on using ‘shrapnel’ and ‘folding’. That means I will still be socially distanced when all this is over because I can’t bear the thought of never handing over a note, smiling in a kind but firm way and saying, ‘keep the change’.

On the upside we have all found that technology is the great enabler when it comes to staying connected and in touch. I’ve been part of productive and positively effervescent meetings of over 70 people ranging from Australia, through Europe and to the west coast of America. When borders open and flying seems normal again there will be a renewal of travel for business and fun, but meeting and working virtually has undoubtedly come of age.

That’s worth a pause. Nothing can quite replace the emotion and excitement of standing alongside people you know and like after a long period of separation. One of the most moving things about global conferences is to see colleagues who have not met for many months, or even years, approaching each other with uncontrollable joy. Even for a reserved Englishman the embrace has become the norm under such circumstances.

In that respect I don’t see the elbow bump, foot-shake or formal bow becoming the norm. They all have their place and will enable adults to engage in a charming social dance that will be a reminder of the global pandemic they have survived. But after that they will laugh and then they will hug and perhaps hold each other a little tighter and longer as a reminder of what it is to be human.

Keep safe and well. Remember that there will be a time when this is over.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay