Life After the Plague

Why it’s important that we never return to ‘normal’

Cards on the table. I’m not a brilliant person. Unlike so many of the writers here, I only have a BA. I’m not the CEO of some start-up, or a consultant or teacher or whatever. My career has been nothing if not unremarkable. I was a junior Civil Servant, recently retired due to ill-health. Mental health, that is. I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, who has spent much of his 61 years watching, listening and reading, then thinking (in my own simple, direct way) about what I have seen, heard and read.

I’m not a nice person. I’m what they called ‘difficult’ or ‘challenging’ at work. I speak “After the use of the English/In straight-flung words and few” (Kipling). I don’t suffer fools gladly -which is a problem, as there are so damn many of them. I am occasionally grumpy, frequently sarcastic, prefer dark to light humour and speak my mind, regardless. I’m not prejudiced or biased against anyone in particular: I don’t like anybody.

Right now, I’m angry and scared, and unapologetic about it. My wife has health issues, my youngest granddaughter has Type 1 diabetes and my parents are in their 80s and frail.

But what is really scaring me, and pissing me off in equal measure, is the endless refrain of “when things get back to normal”! Whatever happens, and however long this thing takes, things must never get back to normal. Or at least pre-Covid-19 normal. There must be fundamental changes in the ways societies and economies work, before the next one hits.