My seven-week stint of solitary confinement ended on the 29th December. Just in time to celebrate the New Year, only the three of us couldn't be fagged to stay up till midnight. Better to see out the old year by slipping off to bed, the best place in the world, for a half hour's read before sleep transported us all into 2022.
After a couple of days of worrying about whether the refugees would pass their PCR tests in Oxford and thus be able to board the ferry that night at Portsmouth, I relaxed once I heard by text that they'd arrived at Caen and got through customs. After queuing for two hours behind an endless line of British cars, they flashed their French passports and were ushered through without reference to the whole-foods and the Bombay mix from England in the boot of the car.
French roads are a doddle in comparison to those of England. Even so, I never count my chickens and so, being incurably superstitious, I didn't say a word to Daphne about the imminent return of her two missing mistresses. Nevertheless, she was there by the front door, standing expectantly for at least 20 minutes before they turned up an hour before schedule. I was preparing the evening meal and hadn't even heard the car. But Daphne had sensed that something was astir. Their intuition is extraordinary, even more finely tuned than the Good Wife's.
Once the reunion with spouse and child had settled down, we unloaded a car full of dirty clothes, Christmas presents and almost forgotten purchases from my father's flat: the mounted Swoppet cowboys and Union soldiers, for example, bought on eBay during lockdown, and a selection of signed posters in Jack Hurley's wonderful 'Rubbish Seaside' series, a sardonic pastiche of British railway posters of the inter-war years that sheds a murky light on the anti-social and dystopian delights of seaside towns. My personal favourite is Blackpool with its one-word slogan, 'Don't'. I read about him and his work in The Guardian and found that his prints were remarkably affordable, so I ordered a few because they appeal so strongly to my own grim sense of humour. The trouble is... where the hell do I put them? Our walls are already crowded with the art work of family and friends.
The three horsemen of Britains Ltd. remain in their boxes for now, unable to 'swop and swivel' until I work out what to do with them. I take them out from time to time to marvel at the detail that enthralled me as a child. The Union soldiers are now incorporated with my Indian village in a tableau vivant of Wounded Knee on the shelf above my desk, the five of them poised to massacre their enemy. It serves as a memento mori, just in case I should ever forget a key lesson of history, that the history of mankind is beastly.
The protracted absence of my housemates taught me a number of lessons. Although I got along quite well and very productively on my own, there's certainly no substitute for the company of loved-ones – even if we do disagree on which film to watch of an evening, and cooking becomes more of an event, and I don't feel able to play music all day long.
It taught me, too, that we can probably count on friends more than we can our own families. It's quite clear to me now that neither of my sisters would have sheltered a Jewish fugitive during the war. It's possible my brother might have – if you could only get hold of him. My father offered the sofa-bed in his sitting room, but there wouldn't have been much future in the arrangement had the girls failed their tests on their way south and found themselves homeless for however long it might have taken to get back home.
The fear, panic and consternation created by the very idea of a visit from the tested-but-unvaccinated was terrible to discover, and underlined how politicians and the media have combined to propagate a state of mass hysteria and mass hypnosis. Both sisters get their news and views from breakfast television and scurrilous rags like the Mail and seem immune to any kind of rational thinking. If our father died, the younger of the two suggested, I would have his death on my conscience for allowing two fully grown consenting adults to visit a fully grown consenting father-in-law and grandfather – even though she regularly accompanies him to the pub across the road for a spot of lunch. After putting in place some ludicrous protocol for the visit involving opened windows and masks, the older of the two did actually pop round to see them, embraced them both warmly and spent a happy unmasked hour or two before they hit the road for Portsmouth docks.
With all the Grade A+ serious stuff with which to concern ourselves in today's disappearing world, the British public has now got its collective knickers in a thorough twist about Boritz and his drinks parties. Yes, the man is an overgrown buffoon who personifies all that's wrong with the British class system, but in the annals of political corruption such stupidity is about as small as the ludicrous Djokovic Affair that's currently gripped the tennis world. At least Boritz is sufficiently independent of spirit to handle the current wave of the virus with a degree of common sense. And one must ask the question: if Bortiz falls on his sword, who might take over? It's not a pretty thought.
Meanwhile in Vichy France, our micro-president is continuing to piss-off the Resistance, determined to hound those he probably blames for pre-ordering (I'm told) seven doses of 'Medicated Goo' for every adult Frenchman and woman. In his comportment, he reminds me more every day of the classic neatly turned-out, bespectacled Gestapo officer, the one whom you suspect of dreaming up the most vile of tortures. Now that he's got the passe vaccinale through parliament to replace the passe sanitaire that he'd previously said would never be countenanced, I'm preparing to go deeper underground for the long haul.
Thank God for Bombay Mix. My snack of choice will build up my strength for the weeks ahead and all those jobs I've been neglecting while I've been busy editing my mother's memoirs. Jobs, schmobs! 'Teignmouth: The Fun Stops Here', in the words of Jack Hurley's poster. That's a point... I need to find some frames. And then work out where to put them (if, that is, the revenant is willing).
