The Sun Also Rises

A great many moons ago, far more than I care to remember, I was faced with making a choice of going to university to study the breeding habits of the South American hermit crab or classical literature. I chose the latter. These Corona crisis lockdown days I’m not so sure I made the right choice.

This morning, lying in bed wide awake at 5.00 a.m. I was in my Shakespearian “Once more unto the breach ” mode. I was all fired up to leap from underneath the cosseting duvet on a Japanese futon, whilst my other half an orange lying next to me was getting all metaphysical poetry on me. She grumbled something along the lines of the John Donne classic “Unruly sun, why dost thou thus shine down on us.” and dozily implored that I simply do no more than turn over and spoon a little longer. Temptation seductively beckoned me back to the comfort of marital bliss. It was a close call for sure.

Maybe with a bit of both of the choices I was faced with would have been an idea that would have served me well. It may have taught me how more entertainingly to deal with being imprisoned in what has become a domestic hermitage far from what I used to call home.

And I suppose the above meanderings could be seen, at a stretch, as a metaphor for how we are all dealing with the situation we were hurled into by a viral force to be reckoned with.

Yes we bolted the doors and lowered the portcullis, we battened down the hatches, we shuttered up the shutters, at least most of us who know what’s good for us did. And we had to get used to a new way, taking cover beneath the sheets of cotton, or satin or silk if that’s what soothes your soul and beating heart better.

But now I feel the time is approaching for a more robust, Shakespearian attitude. It’s time maybe to got to flannel bedding. A coarser covering which tempts us not to lie in and grumblingly chastise the unruly sun, but to leap from the harsh texture of a blanket and take on the brave new world we are faced with. Full of positivity and optimism with a renewed sense of purpose, galvanised into action with a hardened focus on successfully extricating ourselves from this morass of this pandemic and getting down to business.

I fear our rise from our slumberings, of necessity and sense of responsibility towards public health concerns, will be timid. It is going to be a slow recovery. I fear it will last at least one year more. However, in the long run I do feel that with a reinvigorated sense of fortitude we can in the long run rejoice in having got through what has been the biggest post war challenge of our lifetime.

It is not yet six o'clock in the early morning and to the background chorus of birdsong I can feel positivity coursing through my veins as my first creative rumblings get into full stride. Today I feel the heavy presence of the muse, I feel invigorated to move towards a better future for myself and everybody else. How long it will last who knows.

So let us just make hay whilst the sun shines, for as Hemingway rightfully declared ‘The sun also rises.’ Or Captain Tom who said ‘Tomorrow will be better.’ And so, “Once more unto the ” it is. Have a nice day and be safe, be lucky and to hell with South American hermit crabs. What do they know of Corona virus anyway?