How Orwellian!?

Before launching into my diatribe, it is important, I feel, to make an acknowledgement at this time. As a teacher who has been retired for three years, I wish to pay tribute to my ex-colleagues at the end of the school year here in the Northern Hemisphere.  I have always appreciated the kindness, professionalism, adaptability and commitment of all of my colleagues. But this year particularly. Not only have they had to spend so much time looking at a screen but they have also had to police protocols ad nauseam when they have been physically present in school. I have the greatest respect for the resilience and courage that they have had to demonstrate. I don’t know how you have done it. But, be you teaching in Canada, Ireland, Scotland or England you have never deserved a holiday more. My hope is that the two extremes of the profession, Rona Mairi Davidson, who is about to begin her career and Lise Middleton, who is about to retire, never have to experience this again. And that goes for the rest of you for whom I am doffing my cap.

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                                             A Short Story

      In a secret bunker somewhere in a land far away , a group of professional watchers were grouped around television monitors. These were not the usual run –of- the- mill security guards on night duty in an office block. No,  these were an elite, highly trained group, selected for their ability to focus intently on screens for hours on end, obvious millenials. There was no tendency to drift into dreamy sleep, they were passionate about what they were doing. Suddenly one of them tensed and reached for the telephone hotline by her right hand. She made a short call. A red light began to flash, a klaxon jarred the room to greater movement . Within moments her supervisor was at her side, now with knitted brow, gazing at the screen in front of her, they were joined by other officials from offices elsewhere in the building.  Jordana, for such was the watcher’s name, was scanning back through her footage.She paused it at a crucial moment and they all gazed, amazed and startled at what they saw. The supervisor broke the silence.

“What’s the subject’s name?”

“Peter Davidson” was the scanner’s reply.

“Let’s forward the footage in slow motion.”

So, amid gasps and wide eyes, they followed the sequence through.

“OK, slot this into his file for future use. This is evidence which should not be missed.”

So  Jordana did as she was bid, supplying date, time, place and activity. Having done so, her supervisor checked it through, nodded and read it back aloud.

“Subject: Peter Davidson.    Date: 28/4/21. Place: Bathroom at his house.  Activity: Trimming his nose hairs in the mirror.”

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      This silly, little story is designed to illustrate what I feel about impingement on the rights of the individual, conspiracy theories about us being vaccinated with some micro-chip giving the rich and  powerful insights into our lives; allowing a big brother presence thus giving a fictitious, faceless group  the ability to impact how we live. As far as my own life is concerned, if some skilled, intrepid, power hungry billionaire wants to stick his or her nose into my business then they are welcome to go ahead.  Be my guest. If as a result of the above story, I am to be subjected to a plethora of nose hair trimmer adverts arriving in my email, fliers about the latest Dyson nose hair ‘experience’ being pushed through our letter box, then I have the delete button and the recycling bin to hand. Even I, who find what I do to be important to me, don’t find it that interesting, Dear Reader.  If a plethora of people want to know that I have dinner at the Cactus Club on Friday nights, that my favourite wine at the moment is a Pinot Noir called ‘Black Stallion’; that there is a dent in the body work of my car which has been there for a decade; that I vacuum on Mondays. Then fill your boots. Stick your hairless noses into my business and try not to look bored and fall asleep in the process.

I would, however, like some assurance that the woman sat next to me on the plane, bus or cinema is not likely to give me a disease; that she has taken all reasonable precautions; that she is carrying a vaccination certificate or has some proof that she is not carrying some dreaded lurgee. All this fuss about vaccination certificates being an infringement on the rights of the individual, I find to be humbug. Such documents are not in any way new, they were around when Irene and I were young travellers. They were no more intrusive than showing our passports at the point of entry. I am sure that there are a number of people who will read this and counter this argument with many an ‘Ah but’ rebuttal, to which I have to reply, “But me no buts!” I will be perfectly happy to turn up at an airport with a vaccination certificate.  

It is true that  over the years, vaccinations have impacted people’s lives. I was walking through an old cemetery in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders last year, just as the UK was shutting down and I was  being forced to curtail my trip. There on those moss covered, tilting gravestones where the letters were weather worn and barely visible, were the sad tales of 19^th Century mortality.  Children brought into the world in the 1850s named and dead. One family I read about had four children gone before the age of 5 years, their youngest at 8 months. Rarely have tragedies been written in so few words.  But it was a time when early death was a way of life. Infant mortality was rife, the death of mothers in childbirth was an ever present dark shadow. If ever there was a place and time that evoked  the Hobbsian mantra that life was ‘nasty, brutish and short’ then this was it. My grandfather died of pneumonia in 1929. Nowadays antibiotics would have had him out of bed and back at work in three days. Alexander Fleming discovered the healing power of penicillin. Banting and Best worked to beat diabetes, they extended the lives of diabetics everywhere. Polio has almost been eliminated. Who dies from tuberculosis these days except in poorer parts of the world? So I am belabouring the point, Dear Friends. To sum up, infant mortality has declined significantly since the 19^th Century. By and large, life expectancy for adults hasn’t done too badly either, has it? So if this whole pandemic has been an hoax, if vaccinations against Covid are microchipping us into subservience and a manipulation of who we are as individuals, then it would seem that much of history is a falsehood.  The three people who are my nearest and dearest are living proof that medical progress saves lives.  The Galashiels cemetery was a damascene moment in my life given the juxtaposition between the devastation of back then about to become the reality of the here and now.

  Sometimes it seems that conspiracy theories march hand in hand with paranoia. The flinging of mud at people and events often has no basis in truth but, as an old friend of mine, once said,

“It’s amazing. You pick up mud with gloves on, the gloves get muddier, the mud does not get glovier.”

It is a sad fact of human existence that one can tar somebody with the brush of disgrace, based on no shred of credible evidence. But the result can ruin a life. Nothing is perfect. There will always be the person who drowns because she tried to walk across the lake reported to have an average depth of three feet. The Darwinian theory of natural selection perhaps!!?? There will always be people for whom a vaccination can produce medical complications. If we seek perfection then we need to migrate to another planet.

    ‘Nuff of this, just found some hair growing out of my right ear. Must dash off and do something about it. Have a great day wherever  you are.

Be safe, my friends.

By the way thanks to the kind retirement gift from Cory Mclean I am not in the market for a nose hair trimmer.