Paradise Imposed: a Guest Post by Benedict Ambrose

I so much enjoyed the Speccie’s recent piece written by fellow inmates of their locked-down columnists that my pars meliora suggested I do a guest-post here.  I’ll spare you all the tedium of that and restrict myself to a bare few observations.  

If you promise to keep it to yourselves, I’ll let you into a shameful secret: certain irksome aspects aside, I’m really rather enjoying the impositions of lockdown.  Like countless other Brits in all sectors of work, my employer has put me on furlough and I’ll likely stay laid off (on full pay) until the end of May. The prospect of imposed idleness at first alarmed me, but I have since learned not to subject this gifthorse to too much tooth-prodding. After all, if someone had said to me at the beginning of the year that I could apply for a two-month sabbatical during which I could scratch my research itch to my content– and with none of the pressure of having to come up with something that looked to my employer like a worthwhile result at the end of it – I’d have gleefully opened a vein so as to sign up without delay. Seraphic* of course has to carry on working in the vineyard through the heat of the day, so I at least owe her the effort of not complaining about my enviable lot.

It’s not even as if our lockdown is particularly draconian.  I am a cheerful introvert at heart, and not exactly a gregarious gadabout at the best of times. The standard extent of my outdoor exposure consisted of a twenty-minute walk to and from work each day, usually punctuated with a stop at a supermarket, with a trip once a week into town for Mass. Whilst staying within the (exceptionally lightly-enforced) guidelines we’re walking a good bit further that that most days, whilst exploring the quiet delights of our locale in ways we never would have been tempted to before. Apart from missing Mass (the dismal effects of which are meliorated more than I would have expected by those being livestreamed) and not seeing colleagues on a daily basis, not a great deal has changed in my routine, and much of what has is for the better.  Seraphic is gardening with great gusto and with no little success and I am pleased that this creative displacement activity is keeping her from becoming too glum in the absence of her regular exercise regime.  The poor creature only really has me to interact with now and she’s coping rather heroically, it seems to me. Of the two of us, I am generally the more even-tempered but I’m prone to fits of grump, often related to the thousand natural shocks that employees are heir to, and which are no doubt difficult to bear.  Whilst I'm far from being transformed by furlough into an unwavering ray of sunshine, any remaining curmudgeonliness is at least not aggravated by stress, so if I’m grumpy at least I’m not “strumpy”. I’ve just mown our meagre (and almost dandelion-free) lawn and rather relished it.  That’s got to count for something.

I’m going to try to make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt, and it certainly makes one count one’s blessings when one is constantly reminded of the terrible tribulations of others.  So if I’m not exactly shouting “Long live the lockdown!” I’m going to try to learn to love it while it lasts, and thereby perhaps make it marginally more bearable to the one who has to share it with me.

*Note to relatively recent readers: That's Mrs McL's old nom-de-blog. [Ed.]

Another River Walk

Our apple blossoms.

I have just come away from a combox discussion about the Vile Germ and why, in the UK, a disproportionate number of people of colour are allegedly dying from it. Some have pointed out that the majority of Covid-19 deaths, like the majority of people of colour in the UK, are in London.  Some have pointed to the high prevalence of multi-generational households amongst people of colour. Someone else made a case for a lack of Vitamin D. He suggested that we had a sunless winter and that people of colour need five times as much sun as people of pallor do to produce Vitamin D. He suggested also that the elderly in care homes (also allegedly disproportionately dying) aren't in the sun much.

I am intrigued by this theory, but the first question that
comes to mind is the likelihood of the residents of Italy having a Vitamin D deficiency. (Maybe they do.) Nevertheless, I hope my white but housebound parents in chilly Toronto are getting enough Vitamin D, and that more research is conducted and advice about Vitamin D is widely published. Non-native Australians are given constant advice about skin cancer; it makes sense to warn about dangers from too little sun.

Golf course.

But to get way from theories about the Vile Germ, I can report I had a nice day yesterday. I blogged away until it was time for work. Around 1 PM, B.A. brought me cheese toast with tomatoes. Then I went out and dug up dandelions--and guess what? I have finished the entire lawn, and now need only go back over it for a mop-up operation. Naturally more of the green monsters sprouted behind me as I worked my way down the lawn.

I went back to work. One of the more curious stories from the pandemic is Pope Francis blaming human treatment of the environment for it. The more traditional Catholic idea is that pestilence is punishment from Almighty God. Pope Francis' notion (which he almost certainly got from eco-liberation theologian Leonardo Boff) is that it is Mother Nature "throwing a fit." Anyway, I was edified to discover that Earth Day was founded by a more-or-less respectable U.S. Senator concerned about air and water pollution. Senator Gaylord Nelson also was against uncontrolled migration to the USA, for the same reasons, and made birth control companies produce information about ingredients and side effects. [Update: The Earth Day "co-founder" was not so respectable, and I will have to look more into this.]

Pony.

True fact: instead of going deeply into the theology behind the Church's objections to birth control, my high school religion teacher of that year instructed us to read the entire page-long small print on an advertisement for the Pill. That convinced me of the dangers of the Pill, let me tell you.

But back to yesterday. After work, I ran around like a puppy who wants to be taken for a walk and went outside to wait for B.A. and mop up a few dandelions. Then I suspected I had spelled a name wrong in an article and so rushed back inside to see. I had. Furious with myself, I nevertheless did not commit suicide. Instead I informed two editors and went for a walk with B.A. This time we ambled along the Bad Side of the river to the golf course, past a pony and two horses, and returned via the beautiful side of the river.

It was an idyllic walk, really. We are so fortunate and blessed to live where we live. I thought about Marcus and Esca from The Eagle of the Ninth walking through the woods along the river themselves. We are, after all, only 33 miles or so from Trimontium, the abandoned Roman fort where they encountered the legionary who went native. Meanwhile, real Romans absolutely did walk along this river during the Antonine Occupation. How cool is that?

I asked B.A. what he misses most, and he most misses being physically present at Mass. He thinks I miss people more than he does, which is true. He enjoys being at home, doing his research, making toasted cheese ... All we need is a heather priest saying Mass at a "safe distance" in a field, and B.A. is set.

"Oh when I joined the Eagles
(As it might be yesterday)
I kissed a girl at Clusium
Before I marched away."

As for me, I miss people but I cannot complain. The sun keeps shining, none of my family or friends has become sick or lost their job, our flat is not cramped for two, and my broad beans have not yet perished. My travel plans are for the future: Poland in late May if possible. Italy in October if possible. Canada in February---it has to be possible, even if I have to book a berth on a freighter to New York.

"The girl I kissed at Clusium
I remember best of all."

We didn't go straight home when we finished our walk. Instead we went to a traditional chippy and ordered a big pepperoni pizza and a side order of battered mushrooms for me. (A rare treat.) As we passed our row on the way back, I took a photo of a worried-looking bear.

We watched two more episodes of The Chosen as we munched our pizza. I cried at the end of Episode 4. Do check the series out. It really is edifying.

Okay, photo time and then I will push our old-fashioned mower across the lawn.

Blossoms reflected in water. 

Bear in the time of corona.

Exchanging Enthusiastic Alarmism for a Walk

Wait, what does that say?

A reader critiqued my "enthusiastic alarmism" yesterday, a phrase I very much enjoyed. Okay, no more enthusiastic alarmism. Instead of contemplating the Death of Civilisation, I will remember that it is very much alive and work even harder to keep the best of it going. For example, this morning I ordered £19 of locally-raised meat from the local butcher.

Work was slightly different because it was my monthly "professional development" or retreat day.  However, the work task I had been focused on still needed some attention, and I also discussed it for an hour on the phone with my Italian tutor. I sometimes worry that my Italian tutor is overwhelmed by this strange new world of il Cardinale Burke, il Arcivescovo Viganò, and even il nostro povero Papa Francesco, about whom the vast majority of my tutor's generation of Italians rarely thinks.  Their world is politics, football and food. Meanwhile, he speaks beautiful Italian, whereas I rattle on in my unique Canadian-Polish accent. The good news is that I am rattling on. Reading is easy; speaking is hard. Listening is even harder, of course, but I have improved a lot there, too.

Some things remain unchanged! :-D

After my lesson, B.A. and I went on a glorious government-mandated walk. This time we turned our backs on the new-to-us countryside and instead walked to an old and beloved neighbourhood. I love it so much. We would have bought there had there been a two-bedroom flat for sale at the time. I did look at a one-bedroom, but its just as well we didn't get it, as it had only a shared garden and shared gardens in these here parts are usually a combination of dog toilet and cigarette butt farm.

Now that I've made it sound delightful, I should stress that it is a neighbourhood of 18th and 19th century houses as well as 19th century tenement flats, parks, the Firth of Forth, small businesses, locally-produced food shops, and ten years of happy memories.

On our way there, we passed a small water treatment plant and stopped. Strangely, the sound of live bagpipe music was streaming out of the much-graffitied building. I suspected that  it was coming  from the shore behind the plant, but no. After walking to and fro, I determined that it sounded like someone was actually in the water treatment plant, playing away.

"They must have a key," said B.A.

[UPDATE: The highly characteristic dialogue was as follows:

B.A.: I guess they're water pipes. Ha ha HAAAA!
Mrs M: I'm taping.
B.A.: Oh, sorry.]

We continued on our way along the Firth of Forth, passing houses I haven't given a thought to in months, studying flashcards instead as my gym-bound bus travelled past them. It was so good to see them and their brightly coloured doors. I enjoyed seeing the bright camomiles (which B.A. insists are called only daisies) and even yellow dandelions, too, as they were on neutral territory. And eventually a friend, coming along on his bicycle, hailed us. This was an unexpected treat, and we exchanged news. The news about our friends  under 65 is good (or quirky); news about their parents is less so, unfortunately.

Our tentative goal was a very good bakery for (heavenly thought!) croissants and (mad luxury!) takeaway cappuccino. However, it turned out to have shut before we left the house, so no croissants or cappuccino this time. I had a work-related Skype appointment in half an hour, so we walked along the bus route until the bus came along and got on. This was the first time B.A. and I had been on a bus together since St. Joseph's Day, and it felt like an exciting adventure.  The speed of the bus relative to the speed of our walking was mildly entertaining, too.

In the evening, we had salmon for supper and watched The Chosen. a semi-fictional but entirely respectful series about Our Lord. It is actually very good. It is so good, we are going to send the filmmakers money to make more episodes. We won't even buy discounted "Binge Jesus" T-shirts; we will make a proper donation because the show is a (literal?) godsend.

Perhaps I am getting old and pious, but I feel sick of standard Hollywood and West London Film Studios productions: all the violent/comic sex and sexy/comic violence, ugh. Watching The Chosen, I was reminded of St. Ignatius of Loyola discovering that whereas reading romance novels made him feel bad, reading the lives of the saints made him feel good. I felt very happy watching The Chosen, which begins with Mary Magdalene in the grip of seven demons, and what I wanted more than anything was for Our Lord to turn up and save her.

I also remembered that the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland believes that it is wrong to make images of any of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, including Our Lord. This is a relatively new notion, as we have found human-made images of Our Lord from the third century on, and of course there is the Shroud of Turin. (B.A. thinks the actor playing Our Lord in The Chosen looks like the image on the Shroud of Turin.) Anyway, I was thinking that it would be a pity if the ban extends to acting and our friend Calvinist Cath wouldn't feel comfortable seeing the series. It really is a cut above the usual Evangelical   attempts to make films.

Now I am thinking that it would be amazing to watch only Christian-friendly shows in the evening before we go to bed. Meanwhile, I will add photos to this post for your quarantine enjoyment.

The Last Dance

Yesterday I went sadly to bed, for the last thing I read (mistake) was a headline about the Vile Germ's many mutations. Now, do not be down of heart, for it was a study from China, and I will leave it to virologists to determine if their CCP-controlled brethren are capable of truth. But I was tired and it's difficult not to catastrophize during a catastrophe, so it occurred to me that civilisation was over, just like that.

"What do you mean, metaphorically fevered brain?"

"I mean dances. There can never be dances again. No more 'May I have this dance?' Future generations will know about them only from books."

"Present generations mostly only know about them from books. Remember grinding? 'May I have this dance' has mostly turned into strangers grinding on one another. As a culture, we don't deserve dances anymore."

"And concerts. Nobody can go to concerts."

"You mean those 20,000 people-strong, over-amplified, pricey burlesques?"

"Well, I am thinking also of the Dunedin Consort in the Queen's Hall..."

Et cetera.  Philip Larkin wrote what I thought was the most insulting poet about marriage I ever read, but it definitely fits our times because those of us not rebelling against our confines are stuck with only small number of people in our households. Called "To My Wife," although Larkin never married, the devastating second verse is as follows:

So for your face I have exchanged all faces,
For your few properties bargained the brisk
Baggage, the mask-and-magic-man's regalia.
Now you become my boredom and my failure,
Another way of suffering, a risk,
A heavier-than-air hypostasis.

"If you don't mean it, why are you writing it?" wailed B.A. just now. 

"I'm writing about being cooped up with the same people every day," I explained, but I should add now that one thing that I have learned from captivity is that I am lucky to have an intelligent, mild-mannered husband who likes to cook and feels guilty if I do all the dishes too many days in a row.  Meanwhile, nobody is anyone's "boredom" and "failure"; it's your fault if you're bored and nobody can be judged a failure by anyone until they are dead. 

But when I went to bed, I was frightened I would never see my extended family again. Only 16 flights took off from Edinburgh last week, only 25 from Glasgow. The point of quoting ghastly Larkin is expressing my longing for crowds of loved ones. It's been a long time since I thrilled at being in a crowd of thousands, but I dream of being in a crowd of twelve.

Fortunately, I took the May issue of "Homes and Gardens" with me, and as it was put together in February, there was no mention of the Vile Germ. Instead there were offers to tour the homes and gardens of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Devonshire, etc. The Highgrove Tour was meant to be yesterday. Oops! Fingers crossed for Chatsworth in May. 

I am trying to keep it together by remembering that I had no firm plans to go to Canada until next February anyway. I keep cheerful by recalling that B.A. and I were there for Christmas. Thank God, the whole family was together for Christmas, and we were all polite and pacific. The children loved their presents. I enjoyed going for walks through the frosty hydro fields. The food was delicious. I enjoyed sleeping in my old room--which my mother has remodelled beautifully: wonderful wood-tiled floor in place of the ghastly shag wall-to-wall carpet.  

An interwar nostalgia bar in Wrocław.

And I also think about Córeczka's christening weekend, which is taking a Pan Tadeusz: the Last Foray in Lithuania shape in my mind. Her father loves the glamour and elegance of the Polish interwar period; well, that weekend was right at the end of the inter-plague period. It is too bad that PPS's concession to Lent was to forbid dancing. That said, there were jazz musicians in a cellar bar at midnight, and PPS did dance with Córeczka in his arms. I wish I had seen that, but I was so tired, I went to bed. The others didn't want me to go--how flattering was that?--and The Economist wouldn't let me out the doors. I began to hand him coins ("Are you trying to insult me?"), and the others laughed, so I escaped. 

Oh, the nostalgia for early March. To return to the near-present, yesterday I took newspaper off the beans again, edited a letter for publication, wrote an article about a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and watched parts of an Italian news broadcast that I will be discussing with my tutor and others today. I weeded more of the lawn--the end of the dandelions is in sight--ate risotto for supper, and watched Step Brothers with B.A., who had read in the Spectator that it was good.

   

The Busy High Street

Wm. Kurelek again to soothe our nerves.

Yesterday was another day of staring at the screen, asking people for statements and resisting conspiracy theories. Here's one: China covered up a deadly virus to the extent of allowing citizens from the worst-hit area to continue flying all over the world, thus infecting people in other parts of Asia, Europe and America. The resulting pandemic killed over 170, 000 people, and forced Western economies to shut down. Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, suspended public worship.

Oh, sorry. That one actually happened.

But there were some relatively tranquil times yesterday. In the morning, I rushed out in my bathrobe to take the newspaper pages off the bean seedings. Then later in the morning I addressed an envelope to my girl student and walked to the new High Street (British for the principal shopping street of an area) to the post office. Although not exactly warm, it was another lovely, sunny, blue-skied day. 

I was shocked by the crowds, which weren't actually crowds, as everyone was more-or-less six feet apart. There were just a lot of people around, which I see now makes me nervous. There was a Romany beggar sitting on one side of the road, and a blonde beggar sitting on the other side. There was a long queue outside the chemist's shop and another long queue outside the bank. There was no queue outside the five-and-dime that houses the post office, I was happy to see. 

The homeless aren't bound by the lockdown rules, but all the same I was surprised to see the Romany beggar, despite Romany beggars being a part of contemporary Edinburgh life. Perhaps it was just too normal a sight for the perilous times. The blonde beggar and the long queue for the bank made me feel worried and sad; I wondered if she was a newly unemployed waitress and if the people outside the bank were there to beg for clemency on missed payments. 

On the way home, I was tempted to pop into Tesco for a falafel sandwich. I love the fancy falafel sandwiches with their crunchy veg and tangy sauce. However, I decided it was not worth risking the Vile Germ yet again, so I went straight home. 

In the late afternoon I took a break and popped out dandelions for half an hour. B.A. had gone out in a green boiler suit earlier and dug up some himself. I am not sure what his method was; from the looks of it, he attacked just the bigger, more obvious ones instead of minutely searching the grass, square foot by square foot. That took him rather far, which was a nice morale booster for me. I now predict that the dandelions will be gone from the lawn by the end of the week.

The neighbours further along the street were out. One of the best thing about our humble street is that the residents, no matter how impoverished, have a long strip of garden. The two-storey buildings were built for local workers by the local government circa 1930 when the Scottish poor still had many children. It was a manufacturing district, and must have been very noisy, but the buildings were well-built and the gardens generous: some philanthropic notions were clearly at play. 

Beginning in the 1980s, the local council began to sell the apartments to their occupants. Eventually the occupants sold them on at a profit or rented them out. I'm not sure if the Council still owns any of them; whoever owns the Moppet's part of the building is certainly neglectful. 

The gardens are separated by low hedges or wooden fences in good or bad repair, and it is easy to see right across them down the street. Three or four gardens over a tent has been erected in the lawn, and I spotted a boy near it, dressed in a purple velvet cloak and yet still staring down at the phone in his hand. 

After work, I went outside to grub again. The Moppet's mother sat on her stairs and chatted to someone sitting in the garden and coughing shallowly. She coughed; the pal coughed; I noticed the wind blowing in my direction. Cough, cough, cough. 

"Smoker's cough," suggested B.A. when I told him. 

Coconut aubergine curry for supper, rubbish telly, and becoming irritated by stupid opinions on Twitter. I suspect I will have to limit any reading of Catholic News and Opinion to Monday to Friday, 10 AM to 6 PM, for otherwise I will go insane. B.A. reads Catholic News and Opinions obsessively, too, and came in to tell me yesterday about Diane Montagna's tweet about Mayor Gabriele Gallina sicking the cops on a priest while he said Mass. I was working on something else, and thinking about another story--which my editor, of course, already knew about and had assigned to someone else--gave me an instant headache. 

Another conspiracy theory that is true: there are Catholics who tweet their hatred of anything beautiful or traditional just to make other Catholics upset. At least, that is the only reason I can think of for this message by a private high school religion teacher calling himself a "theologian."  

Okay: new resolution. No more internet reading before 10 AM or after 6 PM. I will force myself back to my language studies and also read some actual books. 

VERGOGNA

Sorry, but I must share my rage. All the English-speaking world must know what a petty despot an otherwise completely unimportant and irrelevant minor Italian mayor named Gabriele Gallina is.

To make a long story short because I'm working, a priest was saying a live-streamed in Soncino, Lombardy. There are six people assisting. Another six people turn up out of the blue. They are grieving. Family has died. They want the consolation of the Mass. They're wearing masks. They maintain social-distancing. As you can hear from the echo, it's a big church.

Anyway, word gets around and the mayor--Gabriele Gallina, make him internationally famous--sends police over to disrupt the Mass. To disrupt the Mass. IN ITALY.  Full story at La Nuova Bussola. Just chuck it through Google translate.

I am no longer going to use any insult but "Gabriele Gallina" for the rest of the day. "Oh, he's such a Gabriele Gallina." "Some people defend Vidkun Quisling, but I think he was a total Gabriele Gallina." "Those people at Marquette who bragged that their graduates are helping out at Planned Parenthood--and I still have the screenshot--are absolutely Gabriele Gallinas. They are simply Gallina."

A Sunday Walk

Butterfly

Returning to our pre-Lenten diet may have been a mistake. I feel very tired. Yesterday I had the sense not to drink coffee in the afternoon, though.

B.A. came into the sitting-room, where I was with my morning coffee, to tell me that there had been frost in the night. I was terrified for my beans and rushed out with pop bottle cloches that I had cut too short. Fortunately the beans looked okay. There was frost on the lawn, but not on the trug. Possibly I am too invested in the survival of six broad beans.

Closest look at the butterfly

Then I wrote a letter to my writing student to explain what
she needs to work on, in case that was not clear from the red scribbles on her submission. I also went through the draft again to mark in black everything that was particularly good. Then I was haunted that I hadn't done this for her brother. I am going crazy worrying about seedlings and the psyches of two children.

At 10:55 AM I dragged myself away to get ready for Mass. I set up two chairs in front of the sofa table, found Warrington on my computer, put on a dress, and filled up the incense defuser. The homily was fiery about lockdown conditions, and B.A. repeated told the screen that this would all pass until he realised the homilist's rhetorical strategy.

Country path.

Leftover spaghetti bolognese for lunch, and then we went for a walk to the countryside. I had a headache and indigestion, but indigestion is not a symptom of the Vile Germ, so I didn't worry. However, after we had walked though a few fields and reached the next settlement, I vetoed walking to a copse. I was simply too tired and sick. So we turned around and took an even more scenic path home. Halfway there, B.A. also felt tired, so he sat on a grassy knoll and I lay in the sun with my Panama hat over my face. This I enjoyed. It was not a warm day, but it was certainly sunny. The sky was clear and bright blue. Apparently dogs came along and showed an interest in my hair, which presumably they took for a beast of some kind.

Rocky wall & the Pentlands

B.A. stopped off at Tesco to get a Sunday newspaper for my beans, but I went straight home to lie down. I took my computer and read an unintentionally funny article in the Harvard Review against homeschooling. The central arguments were that  90% of homeschoolers are conservative Christians (the horror) and that it is bad for children to be in their parents' clutches 24/7. The illustration showed a child locked up in a house of books (including the hated Bible) as other children played outside, which homeschooling Twitter users found risible.

As this is the first time in centuries that schools are closed all over the world and most children in America are being homeschooled, it seems like an odd-time for the Harvard Review to publish an anti-homeschooling piece. Perhaps it's to warn parents who have newly developed a taste for directing their children's education not to get any ideas.

One thing I am reasonably sure about schools is that children pick up the ethos of the one they're in during the most impressionable part of their lives and then it is hard for them to lose it. (This can take curious forms.) Meanwhile when my family in Quebec discerned that their children were being treated like Anglo-Saxon Uber Untermenschen they had the children out of that school and into another in a minute de la Ville de New York. Not all parents have the choice of a different school, though.

B.A. returned with the Observer, and I read its left-wing point of view with some interest. I skipped the Trump-hate in favour of the Boris-hate and Royal-hate. My goodness. Also hated: lifting restrictions on the quarantine, except for children in Spain, and lying about the neighbours to police to settle old scores. Loved: ratting on the neighbours for not following the social-distancing guidelines. I was vaguely reminded of the cult of Pavlik Morozov--here he is.

Pentlands again.

I had a telephonic Italian class, which I cancelled. B.A. jokingly called me a slug-a-bed, which did not go down well, especially as under my Observer reading, I was worrying about the dandelions.  When the sun went down, I put pages of the Observer over the beans.

Flowering tree.

We had duck legs (which had been on special) for supper and watched some rubbish telly before I,   cross-eyed with exhaustion, called my mother on Skype.

One cheerful thing: a Glaswegian acquaintance of long ago wrote asking if my short story manuscript had been published, as he wanted something to read. My manuscript (from 2015) was rejected so many times, I had given up on it. But I sent it off to the Glaswegian and a friend-fan in America, too, who accepted it happily. So that was gratifying.