Minnie The Moocher

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Now we’ve some sort of road map to guide us toward some sort of conclusion to, or at least a modus operandi in dealing with long-term, Covid-19; we will all be starting to think about doing stuff we used to take for granted before all this started. But will the world be the same place it was before the pandemic? Obviously not, at least not in the way we currently frame it. The next few months or years will not only be marked by a new caution and an adjustment of civilities, but by more fundamental, structural changes to the way our society operates.

The shift in patterns of socialization in recent years has been guided by a number of factors: changes in the hospitality industry such as smoking bans and licensing relaxations among them; online activity and ubiquitous deliver-to-home services - all have contributed to the atomization of society; the need for public gathering has been subsumed by a ready fix of soma-like media and fast-food feeds, music on tap and endless box-sets to binge on: our living units supplied, Huxley-style by the all-encompassing machine.

These have been our staples for some years now, ensuring our contact with the outside world atrophies with the resultant damage to local businesses: shops, pubs, cafés, etc., a natural concomitant. Add in our current, enforced restrictions and turning over, as we do, our purchasing and socializing options to the internet and online corporates to provide not only daily needs [which has admittedly been a boon for many with no choice] but also to satiate our desire to consume for its own sake; and we have the perfect recipe to strip our towns and villages, even our great cities; bare of life for good.

What we will need after things are freed up - to whatever extent they can be - is probably precisely what everyone is now dying for: the return of the pointless wanderings in public places that all societies prize so highly: be it on Las Ramblas, the Liston, Piccadilly or the Champs-Élysées. We will need and will seek out shops to browse, graze and mooch in again; just to be out there in society, however small or large it be: if, that is, there is anywhere left to do so. I’m pretty certain and indeed hopeful, that there will be a grass-roots response to the aftermath of this pandemic: to satisfy the need, fundamental to us all, to socialize: something the online, corporate world simply cannot provide on its own.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner26 February 2021 at 14:36

    Put NO store in ANY "roadmap" espescially one with the tag line "data not dates" and then proceeds to give DATES!! You can book a return to Rio from Lufthansa for £543 and there's a NEW variant there which looks like it is capable of making their death total will rival that of the "Masters of the Universe" the USofAssoles. Until we get on top (i.e., STOP international flights) the brave (and sadly now deceased) Chinese whistle-blower doctor who gave just a gif of international flights as THE vectors for this shit over a year ago, WILL be proved right. Ghana just got its first shipment of vaccines and they're going to use it to stop the slaughter of their health professionals; just like we should have done and STILL haven't!!! Ghana must not be blessed with the surfeit of twat-bag MBAs and venal politicians that pander to populist opinions that we have!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joe Stoner26 February 2021 at 14:41

    The proverb: "Knowing the price of everything, but the value of nothing" would seem pertinet to the above mentioned shits! Have a nice weekend folks. I just traced the sailing fishing boat "Lois" that I learned to sail on in Cornwall in the early 1970s and I was "chasing a ghost" cos some one had dropped the e from PZ 125 the LOUISE in the 1930s!! No doubt abetted by my dilsexia:))

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