Pete's Pandemic: 100 Days of Isolated Reflection

By Peter Davidson

"Pete's Pandemic" is all of our stories yet none of our stories. It is one man's attempt to understand the new reality caused by the coronavirus. We all have had to come to terms with very different lives. This is Jimmy Tolmie's attempt to manage his stress through humour, reflection, philosophy, reminiscence and current events. At times self-conscious, periodically stream-of-consciousness, occasionally controversial, Jimmy has struggled to find a way out of his stress through the medium of daily writings to friends. His book reflects 100 days of quarantine and then lockdown. It is an attempt to find common ground, to emerge on the other side with ethics and equanimity intact. It is hoped that the reader will find some point of contact between his or her own perspectives and those of the writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228840893

Peter Davidson

Peter Davidson is a freelance writer and has been, among other things, a restorer of antiquities from around the world, a writer and director of documentaries on World War II and related subjects for the History Channel, and a tutor on the Politics, Philosophy and History degree at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the co-author of Milestones of Civilization.

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Pete’s Pandemic

100 Days of Isolated Reflection

Peter Davidson

Pete’s Pandemic

Copyright © 2020 by Peter Davidson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-4088-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-4087-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-4089-3 (eBook)

In loving memory of Wattie Davidson

(1922 – 1986).

Physician, husband, father, skier, fisherman, sailor, violinist and polymath.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. The New Normal

Toilet Rolls and Arse-umptions

Quarantine Questions: Day 1

Bored in Exciting Times

Statistics and Generalisations

Locality and Globality!

The Number Seven

Self-Made Men and Women

Day 15: Daylight Come and I Wanna Go Out!

Questions but No Answers?!

Social Distancing 101

Beyond Canada Day

Hubris and Humility

Full Circle

Baby Boomers

Trouble is—?

A Paucity of Purpose

Arrogance and Ignorance

Leadership

Life’s Little Luxuries

Conventions and Contradictions

Chapter 2. The Natural World

The Owl, the Beaver and the Heron

Springtime in Vancouver

Salad Days and Snowy Ways

Wet Noses and Loud Smells!

Going Out, Going In

Trusting Instincts

Chapter 3. Education and School

The Hawthorne Effect

Wisdom and Knowledge

Bo

Concrete and Abstract

Moments and Momentum

Control

Chapter 4. Words, Books and Phrases

Language

Downtown Dopiness

Pan - & Omni -

Pachyderm-atology?

Paraprosdokian Ponderings?

Sitzfleisch and Why German Is Such a

Great Language

Quarantine Quizzicallities: Day 8

Verse and Worse!

I Wish I —

Decisions about Decadence

Make-Up

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd

Juniper Hedges

Lost in Translation

WMD

Tenuous Tenets!!?

Cromwells

Quick Wittedness

Flowers v. Weeds

Chapter 5. Philosophy

A Rocket Launcher??!!

Uplifting

British Eccentricity

The Theory of Relativity

Walking Wonders

Throwing Things Away

There Will Come a Time!

Narrow Paths and Broad Ways

Anna Robertson (1860 – 1961)

Glocalization

A Sunday Drive with Granny

Frail Heroes

Tenses

Engagement and Charisma

Hinterlands

Missing!

Thinking and Thought

Level Playing Fields

The Individual

Taking as Found

Cloisters and Clarity

Chapter 6. Travel

Gullible’s Travels

Ålesund

The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Chapter 7. Current Affairs

Sarcasm, Wit and Intelligence

Independence and Dependence

Versatile Principles

Twenty-One Seconds!

Respect

How to Social Distance in a Riot

Water

Saracens v. Exeter

Pyramids

Chapter 8. Reminiscence

Absence and Presence

Hope

Eccentricities

One Memorable Day

Life and Deaf

June 1, 2019

Father’s Day

Advice

Do It Yourself

Chapter 9. Conclusion

100 Declared

Epilogue

Pete’s Pandemic Bibliography

Introduction

Here in Vancouver on Saturday, 7th March 2020, the two-day World Rugby Sevens took place at BC Place, the covered stadium downtown that has a capacity of about 60,000 people. As ever, many of the crowd were in fancy dress, the atmosphere was partyish and good humoured. Canada played well and made it through their group to the final day in a good position to progress towards the final. On the Sunday, good friends of ours kindly sponsored a book launch on my behalf. My book, Kilt in the Closet was exposed to a wider audience, albeit many of whom I knew well. Canada almost made it to the final, and on the Sunday evening, the crowd dispersed home. On the following day, Monday, 9th March, Italy locked itself down, quarantined itself because of the outbreak of the coronavirus. On that day Collingwood School, where I used to work, finished the term early and closed its doors because a member of the school population had visited the Lynn Valley Care Centre where there had been a COVID-19 fatality.

On Tuesday, 10th March, I flew out to the UK with a return date of April 23rd. I landed on 11th March and immediately took the bus to Bath where I was to visit our daughter, Alison. She met me later that day and we went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner. The waitress confessed that she was Italian and joked that we had nothing to worry about as she had not been home in a long time. Alison and I had breakfast out on the following day, visited the shops and visited the post office where I had to post off a parcel for a friend. We also visited the Roman Baths and a wonderful exhibition of Toulouse Lautrec posters. I was beginning to get excited because my two brothers and I were going to Cardiff to watch Wales v. Scotland in a rugby international along with 80,000 other fans on Saturday, 14th March. Our niece, Rona, was also going to be in Cardiff on Friday night where she and a friend were going to a concert. On Friday afternoon, my brother, George, phoned to say that he felt because of a growing infection rate, that we should cancel our mother’s 92nd birthday celebration due to take place on the Sunday. At this point, Rona’s concert and our rugby game were still going ahead. Twenty minutes before it was due to start, Rona’s concert was cancelled. Around about the same time, the Welsh Rugby Union issued a statement postponing the rugby game.

On Monday, 16th March in the car I had rented from Bristol Airport, I began to drive up to Scotland where I was meeting my friend, Audrey, who had agreed to put me up for a few days in her beautiful flat in Edinburgh. Alison was worried I would drive too far and risk falling asleep at the wheel. She made me promise I would find a place to stay on my first night somewhere in Lancashire. I set off, and the driving was easy. Before I knew it I was in the Scottish borders having left Lancashire in my tailgate many miles before. I settled down into an excellent old-fashioned hotel outside Galashiels. I later discovered that UK traffic was back to 1955 levels.

On the following day, I drove to Edinburgh. I was early so parked in a trading estate and wandered into some of the shops. In one such, three senior citizens were emerging with three new suitcases joking with the security guard that they were going to put them in the corner of their front rooms and place pot plants and family photos on top of them because they knew they were unlikely to be able to use them for travel in the near future. I arrived beneath Arthur’s Seat in the dark and the rain in the early evening, and still too early for Audrey who was still at work. I walked up the Royal Mile and entered a Starbucks, which was deserted.

I was worried that Audrey would be so concerned about infection (she works in a care home for the elderly) that she would no longer want to put me up. I need not have worried. On the following two days, we had lovely walks, one on the coast at Aberlady and the other inland in the Pentland Hills.

On Friday, I was due to leave Edinburgh and head for Aberdeenshire. Before I set off, my friends in St. Andrews texted asking me to pick up some child’s paracetamol for their son, Harry. Audrey and I found the last two packets on the shelf. I dropped a packet with Jamie on the way north.

I arrived at the village of Tarland and immediately found The Tarland Inn on the main street. I walked through the doors and into the public bar and introduced myself to the barman. I registered for the next twenty-eight days. At that moment Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, was appearing on TV announcing the closure of pubs and hotels! The proprietor, Mrs. Shona Robertson, told me I need not worry as they would not throw me out! For the next five days, like many of us, I felt the world closing around me. I knew by the Monday that I was going to have to cut short my holiday. Alison booked me a flight from Glasgow to London and onward from Heathrow to Vancouver. I drove the three hours to Glasgow the following day, nervously worried that I would be stopped by the police. I arrived at an airport hotel made soulless and dark with almost full closure. I got into my room and was texted by Alison that my flight to London had been cancelled. An hour later she had found me another one. I flew into Heathrow early the next day and spent a fraught day watching flights being cancelled left, right and centre. I was relieved to find myself in the air and on my way with three seats to myself. I was given the quarantine lecture by immigration in Vancouver, caught public transport home and was greeted by Irene, my wife, with a pair of rubber gloves and a bin bag. I was sent upstairs immediately, and there I spent the next two weeks.

I had books to read and the TV to watch, but I needed the discipline of something. So, I decided to write a daily blog on any subject that came to mind. I resolved to send it only to people who were retired or not working. I created a list of eighteen people and, for the next 100 days, for better or worse, most of them received a daily diatribe from me averaging about 1000 words each. My scribblings were ill-disciplined, spontaneous outbursts covering a myriad of differing topics ranging from politics, philosophy, word usage, children, rugby, outdoor experiences and the patently ridiculous.

The following is a collection of my COVID pandemic writings. I have had many second thoughts about putting them into the public domain. I worry about political correctness, virtue signaling and all the current intellectual minefields that have sprouted up over the last few years. So here I feel the need to write something of a disclaimer. I am sixty-eight years old. I have NEVER been a racist, a homophobe or a misogynist. I have always met and treated people as I find them. So, if you find statements or phrases in my writings that you think signal that I am different than I am, then let me assure you that I am not. I may be stupid but I am not dumb. I know one does not have to be a white, privileged, heterosexual male to climb a mountain. A penis is not essential for running a marathon or a business. So please feel free to criticize, to castigate my phraseology, to tear apart my arguments, but know this, Dear Reader, I am accepting of all and dismissive of few, that I like or dislike characters based solely on what we may have in common. I am human, frail and fallible. I have had a wonderful life and I remain grateful for every day. Read on, and I hope you get some pleasure from Pete’s Pandemic.

"There is one art of which

people should be masters—

the art of reflection."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Chapter 1

The New Normal

Sixty-seven years on the planet had not prepared me for this. Suddenly to be confined and restricted hurt immensely. And yet stepping back from the situation and reflecting (and goodness knows there suddenly became plenty of time for that!), it became apparent how lucky Irene and I are. In our time, we travelled the world, had our children, had our careers, bought our house, have a garden, possess our established friendships. To be starting out on life at this time must be a daunting task, one full of uncertainty and hardship. To be in a developing country, already burdened with every day struggles for survival, must be body and soul destroying. If I was not me, I would envy me.

Toilet Rolls and Arse-umptions

A few years ago, a guy wrote in to the Globe and Mail advocating the end of toilet rolls. He suggested they were not needed and proceeded to explain why. Easy, he said, get up in the morning, do your business and get straight into the shower. All fine and dandy but the assumption is that people’s bodily functions work to a timetable. We know this is not true, otherwise we would not need sit -d own toilets in our male washrooms at work. Then the pandemic hits and there is a run on toilet rolls. Somebody has yet, after two months, to explain why they were such an essential part of our lives. We probably all saw the Arnie Schwarzenegger picture as he left the store with his horde of thirty -s ix double ply on his back.

Where did you get them, Arnie?

Aisle B back.

Assumptions are one of life’s irritants. I was stopped once on the way to coffee by an elderly couple where the old guy had decided on a short cut to North Vancouver Railway Station. I directed him back to Marine Drive explaining there was no way he could drive through Norgate park. He was insistent there was a way through! I, who had lived here for twenty years, did not know, he who had never been here before, did! His wife in the passenger seat was coaching him to turn around and retrace his steps. Now two total idiots were giving him the wrong advice!

A woman can make an average man great or a great man average.

But, dear friends, she cannot change a man who knows it all now and has known it all since he first fell out of his cot. I wish I had had the foresight to say to him, If I were you I wouldn’t try to get there from here, thus throwing another cat amongst the already ruffled pigeons. For this old guy, a toilet roll was indeed essential considering the constant effluent he was spouting!!

Driving back from London to Oxford as a student in the 1970s in George’s Morris Woodie Traveler, we were nearly back in town. I was in the front because I was the tallest, Paul and Alan were asleep in the back. We came to a roundabout on the by-pass. No bushes on it, just a kerb and grass. George drove straight over it, a bit of a jolt as we hit the kerb and a rapid slowing as we negotiated the grass. White knuckles from me, another puff on his cigarette from George and we were back on the road.

George, you really should have gone around the roundabout rather than over it, I stammered when I I was finally capable of words.

What roundabout, Pete?

One should never make assumptions, should one!!

My dad owned a sailing boat, a laser, really just a windsurfer in which one or two people could sit. It was a fibreglass body, hollow and buoyant.

Good idea for you to take the boat out, Peter.

Once when I was on holiday in Cornwall, my father assumed I had a great deal of experience as a yachtsman. Don’t know where he heard that from. I had been away when the sailing fad hit the Davidson household. But I rigged it up, sail, tiller, rudder, and I launched onto the water. I should have sailed but I drifted. I should have been able to steer but the beast had a mind of its own. It sluggishly became a victim of the tide, and so I drifted up the tidal reaches of the Camel River towards the town of Wadebridge, eventually finding myself beached on the far bank. You see, Dear Readers, I knew nothing about putting in plugs to stop the hollow hull from filling with water. The boat would never sink, but it floated with the tide and the tide became the boat. Any attempt at control from me was useless. I walked the disused railway line and hitched back from Wadebridge, arriving at our holiday home shivering and in the dark. I had assumed that the boat was seaworthy without plugs. Never had to check the plugs on the ferry from Harwich to Kristiansand in Norway had I? Plugs were always in on the boat from Ullapool to Stornoway, of course they would have been there on my dad’s sailing boat! My assumption made an arse out of me.

When I worked in London, my home rugby club in Clevedon from the county of Somerset were coming up for their traditional Easter tour. Couple of games, lot of drinking, off to Twickenham for an international rugby and copious camaraderie. I decided to meet them at their hotel in Kensington. Trundled into reception, smiling and happy, eager to see my mates.

Yes, an abrupt Basil Fawlty leaning over the desk.

I’m here to meet Clevedon Rugby Club.

"No rugby club will ever, ever be allowed to stay here in my hotel."

But, but this is the hotel, this is the address I was given. May I see the guest book?

And there they all were, familiar names, Cruncher Crane, Windmill Parker, Bootsie, The Thommer, et al. True, all individuals, but all members of an unmentioned club. Never assume that people who are signing into your hotel do not know each other and are not members of a rugby club. Let us not discuss here how the weekend went with the hotel proprietor and his wise decision never to host a rugby team in his beautiful hotel. From his point of view, it was an assumption too far.

Eleanor, our magnificent Irish renter who is now nursing in Iqaluit, looked after our house while Irene and I were on holiday in the UK a year and a bit ago. More importantly, she looked after our two cats, Angus, the ginger male, and Isobel, his sister. Eleanor was walking down Tatlow Avenue after work one evening and she saw Angus sunning himself on the corner of Sowden Street. She had never seen him so far from home before. She picked him up and gently chastised him as they walked down the street. Angus purred with the phlegmatic insouciance that is the trait of most cats. He did not complain at the loving attention of this warm-hearted young woman. Somehow Eleanor managed to manipulate her key into the lock without putting Angus down. She opened the door and at that moment the real Angus ran down the stairs, hungry for his dinner! We have always assumed that owning cats is easier than owning dogs but maybe that is a wrong assumption as well.

Cats look down on you, dogs look up to you, but pigs treat you as an equal. Winston S. Churchill

To end, please, please, please can somebody put me out of my misery and explain why toilet rolls were so, so important two months ago??

Have a great day.

Quarantine Questions: Day 1

Well, actually it is day seven of the Davidson quarantine situation but it has taken that much time for the old fellow to come up with anything. Not so much as a wee toe has nudged over the bottom step, the frontier of my territory. I reside upstairs and am dependent on help from below stairs rather like I am living in Downton A bbey.

If one lived in Spain or Italy then one would be so happy to be a member of the larger European Union would one not? Aha, my friends, I am sure you can hear and feel the sarcasm dripping from this statement. It would seem to be like any other crisis the world has known; it is human nature to hunker down, to return to the womb of warmth which is our family or, indeed, country. Thus do we see Italian and Spanish borders and, incidentally, help flooding in from that powerhouse of the European Union. I refer, of course, to China. Yes, my friends, just like the USA is receiving equipment and such from that hitherto unknown member of NAFTA—that would be Russia—so Italy and Spain are not alone. Help is coming in from outside, albeit not the outside they might have expected. Meanwhile the UK, the island nation, is discovering that it is NOT an island. There are no islands any more. The sea that separates so many countries has, after all, always also been the ocean that links us. COVID-19 is killing Britons.

Is this the end of the globalization experiment? Whither do we go when we are finally allowed local and international social contact again? Do we rush out and rebook that international, that cruise, that we were so looking forward to?

It seems to me we shall remain inextricably linked. We may no longer need to travel for a company meeting now that technology is proving so powerful a tool for us. Not great for those of you who study the nuances of body language; not great if one is a teacher when an absent presence, as opposed to a present presence, will be so, so missed.

A couple of travel experiences that I have read gave me a chuckle.

Back in the 1960s, a media type, Alan Hutchison, decided he wanted to explore Japan. He landed in Tokyo without a word of Japanese. Not being a city type, he could not wait to get out into the country. So he armed himself with a phrase from a friendly Japanese man he met in a bar. He practiced it until he was word perfect. He was now able to ask the following question with impunity:

I’m sorry to bother you, but could you tell me where I could find accommodation?

Soon he found himself on a dark, rainy night, soaked to the skin looking for a place to stay. He arrived at a village street and knocked on a door. A friendly woman answered and he popped his question with precise perfection. She looked confused, said nothing, waved at him and gently closed the door. Similar reaction at other doors until he, more by luck than good management, found himself at the local Youth Hostel. In the communal kitchen he asked a young man why he had received so many strange responses. On repeating his question, he was informed that it was translated thus:

May I take this opportunity to wish you ‘Good night’?

I challenge the legendary politeness of Canadians to outpolite those wonderful people back in the 1960s. Speaking to people who have lived and worked in Japan and many who attended the recent Rugby World Cup, they are still renowned for their welcoming open-hearted friendliness.

Another incident occurred when a lone English cyclist found himself in a shop in rural Aberdeenshire. Having never heard of the Doric dialect, the patois of the county, he could only make out two words from their brief encounter. They were Michael and Jackson. So, with thumbs up, laughter and smiles, words like Great and Fantastic, he backed out of the shop leaving the proprietor upset and confused at the fact that this heartless stranger had just celebrated the death of a pop icon.

The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands. Sir Richard Burton

My recent abbreviated adventure back to the old country did not quite become an unknown land, but it was so interesting to be part of a situation that morphed and fluctuated very quickly over a period of a couple of weeks. It is a fortnight I will reflect upon with pleasure and, I hope, a greater understanding. There was so much on this trip that was an absolute joy. Now in quarantine and you, my friends, being in isolation, I leave you with a Henry Miller quotation:

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Bored in Exciting Times

We are all experiencing exciting times, and they will likely become more exciting as things open up again. There is huge uncertainty. Any rate, I was thinking today about how the mundane, which is our lot, can lead to mendacity and to mischief. For example, just as I was going to bed last night I thought, What a wonderful adventure it would be to take a strong sleeping pill washed down with a bottle of ex -l ax . Now that, my friends, would be a bit of an adventure, don’t you know? Of course, there are lots of current videos on social media of things going wrong in our isolated indoor sojourns. Human beings are renowned for great innovations that often go w rong.

I read a wonderful obituary a few years ago about a brigadier general who ordered the use of scaling ladders in an attack on a well-fortified enemy position. Apparently, this was the last time such equipment was used in action. Apparently. He worked on the basis that he would at least surprise somebody, albeit maybe not the enemy. Who knows the consequences of such a leadership ploy; pretty dire one would have thought.

The mirror is dangerous as a guide of deeds. J.R.R. Tolkien

Who of us is so wise that we proceed on a new path without running it by somebody first? Without being sexist, there is often an impetuosity about the male of the species that makes him blunder in like a fool where angels fear to tread. A long-dead friend of mine, Andrew MacArthur, had volunteered to help try out new nefarious means of killing the enemy in WWII. He was not accepted and was rather glad he wasn’t. One of the experiments was to drop planeloads of troops behind enemy lines with their heavy equipment on the plane with them. In test flights, the plane landed OK, came to a halt OK, but the heavy equipment in the rear did not!

Back in the day in England, some bright spark in the government came up with the idea of raising money by taxing windows, the Fenestration tax. Thus, do we see so many old manorial piles in England that have been de-fenestrated, in other words their windows have been bricked in. Maggie Thatcher came up with the idea of the Poll Tax. Good thing, bad thing, fair way to raise money, unfair on large families, mutterings, murmurings, unease from the Conservative Party and her cabinet.

Tell you what, she said with starry-eyed enthusiasm (some might say wide-eyed fanaticism), arms raised at her flash of inspiration, We’ll try it in Scotland first.

Oh dear, oh dear, that’s chain sawing off the branch upon which one sits if ever anything was. It’s hard to be a human being is it not? There is a wisdom of the head, there is a wisdom of the heart, said Charles Dickens. Leadership, I think, is knowing when and how each is appropriate.

Any rate, I will desist now. I realize that the only way you will ever read this is if you are bored in exciting times!

Statistics and Generalisations

We have probably all heard the story of the guy who drowned because he tried to walk across a lake with an average depth of a metre. We know also the value of statistics as an aid to good government and business management. No point in a supermarket stocking its shelves with tripe and onions if nobody is likely to buy them. Generalisations are risky concepts as well, are they not? Insurance rates for male vehicle drivers over the age of twenty -f ive years go down significantly, therefore all of that category under that age are bad drivers. Statistically they might be, but generally they are not. Does that seem like a contradic tion?

I have been a wee smidge miffed with the COVID-19 TV news recently. They talk about the number of dead from the virus, the numbers tested and the numbers that have recovered. My current bugbear is the report that the United States is the worst hit of the countries because it has over 60,000