Here We Are

i. Aloha Oh

We’re on the last day of the heatwave that has been sweeping the country. I haven’t sweated so much since I was in Thailand. Indoors, outdoors, all I’ve been doing for days is melting. At worst I’m dripping, at best I’m sluicing away slick layers of moisture from alien parts of my body. Passing various parks on the way to work I notice that no-one is sitting out in the sun any more, the novelty has worn off, everyone is around the perimeters, seeking the shade of trees. In the office I’ve got all the doors open and a fan going full blast but still nothing touches it.

Hearing that the community centre has re-opened its doors again Rami has decided to pay me a visit. He’s wearing khaki chinos, a cream and teal Hawaiian shirt, opaque dark glasses and a surgical mask. It’s a good look. It suits him. Very Dario Argento; if Dario Argento had directed Blue Hawaii and got Marlon Brando to star in it instead of Elvis and there’d been no musical numbers, only ritualised murder.

We sit on different benches outside and both pull down our masks.

“It’ll all be over soon,” he tells me.

“You told me in March that it would all be over by April.”

“Did I say that?”

“You did.”

“I don’t remember. Well, it’s nearly over now. The virus is becoming weaker.”

“I don’t think that’s how viruses work.”

“What do you mean?”

“That science doesn’t support that idea.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘science’.”

“Scientists. People who are looking at the virus.”

“Are they looking at the virus or people who have it?”

“The virus itself.”

“Well, I’ve been listening to scientists who say it’s getting weaker.”

“I guess it depends on who you listen to. I don’t think that’s the consensus.”

“I don’t listen to the consensus,” he says scornfully. “What do they know? The flu kills more people every year than this virus has killed.”

“No, it doesn’t. Also the flu is a very broad category. It encompasses a lot of different strains of virus.”

“Viruses get weaker over time.”

“No, they don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that’s not true. Or at least it’s relative. Look at the Spanish Flu. That killed millions. And the second wave was worse than the first. Although there were very different circumstances then; they hadn’t even discovered penicillin yet. It’s not that viruses become weaker over time, it’s that our response becomes better”

Rami pulls his mask back up.

“Am I making you nervous?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “I’ve just got used to wearing it.”

ii. The Devil used to wear Prada, now she grows cucumbers

Gail has been running her yoga class at the centre for over ten years. She used to work in the fashion industry, or the ‘rag-trade’ as she calls it. Everyone knew her she says, and I can well believe it. Now she teaches yoga and markets her own line of essential oil products. Since we opened for the nursery in June she has been badgering us on the phone daily, asking us when we’ll be re-opening the centre properly again so her yoga class can resume. We were secretly hoping that she might not want to come back at all but that was just wishful thinking. Returned she has. Immediately upon seeing me she throws her arms wide and freezes, unsure of the etiquette.

“Do you want a hug or are you socially distancing?” she asks.

“I’m socially distancing.”

“I see,” she says smartly.

Gail isn’t worried about the coronavirus because she doesn’t believe it exists. She thinks it’s all a hoax, part of an elaborate plot that also involves global networks of child trafficking, government cabals, Zionist conspiracies and the pyramids being ancient power stations built by extra-terrestrials. Apart from that she’s lovely.

After her class tonight, as I’m locking up, she regales me with stories of how magical it has been to watch cucumbers growing in her garden this summer. She laughs girlishly, humoured by her own wonder and innuendo.

“They’re this big now!” she says, pulling her hands apart to illustrate their length and girth.

Gail’s is so far the first and only exercise class to resume at the centre. Unlike Gail, many of the other teachers switched to running Zoom sessions during the lockdown. What has surprised us and them is that these Zoom classes have proven more successful than the real life classes they were intended as a substitute for. The tutors prefer them and so do the participants; they don’t want to go back to doing things the old way, they want to stay online. To which end we are now rapidly losing a number of groups that had been running at the centre for years.

We used to have more enquiries about running yoga classes than we could accommodate or want to. I used to joke that if you threw a stone up in the air in this city there was a very good chance it would fall and land on a yoga teacher. Now I’m wondering if that principle will still hold true in the future. Like many people forced to work from home this year, they’ve discovered that they like this arrangement; working from home works for them. Although I was horrified to see in the news this week that the toy company Fisher-Price have started making a ‘My Home Office’ play-set for toddlers, so that 3-5 year olds can mimic their parents who I’m sure can often be found video conferencing with cats in spectacles. While I feel like I could have predicted this given the inclination, I never imagined that the future of yoga might be online. In my experience while there is a great deal of human spirit online, there is very little of the divine. But I guess for some that’s as easy to find alone in front of a screen as it is in a room full of strangers, maybe easier. As Swami Bacteria Something-or-Other once said: “If you can find wonder in a cucumber, you can find it anywhere.”

iii. The Kids are Alright

While some things change others do not, or at least not so much. I step out onto the patio to catch the last of a blushing red sun disappearing behind a silhouette of rooftops. At the exact same moment Liam and Sam arrive on their last stop of the day before home; a kick about in the community centre garden.

“A-alright P-Paul,” Sam says, not making eye contact, sticking out a bony elbow for me to knock with my own.

“Sam! Nice to see you again. It’s been a while,” I add to Liam.

“Hasn’t it?” he says.

Over the summer Liam’s bought a matt-black electric bike to ferry Sam around on.

“Very nice,” I tell him.

“It’s a game changer,” he says, “an absolute game changer. No more trying to drag him around or him dragging me around, I just sit him on the back and away we go. He loves it. I love it.”

Sam’s had another growth spurt over the summer too. At last he’s starting to look more like a teenager than a child. He takes off his fuchsia pink No Fear skateboard helmet and shakes loose his now properly long hair. He reminds me of a young Malcolm Young from AC/DC.

Liam and I start catching up while kicking the ball between us. After a couple of minutes Sam stops us.

“P-Paul,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“I’m b-bored of you.”

Liam shrugs apologetically. Sam goes off and sits cross-legged on one of the patio benches.

“Sam?” Liam calls out after him.

“I’m bored,” Sam shouts back. “I’m bored!”

“Welcome to adulthood,” I mutter to Liam.

“Yeah right,” he replies in an equally low voice, “get used it. I’m bored most of the time,” he says, retrieving the football that Sam’s let roll into the bushes, looking out at his son sitting alone on the patio in the dark. “I’m bored of this. I got bored of this a long time ago. So what have you been doing all lockdown?” he asks me.

“Playing a lot of video games.”

“Right. Got you. Funnily enough, that’s what we’ve been doing with the kids in the home.” As well as having a son with learning difficulties Liam’s job is working with kids who have autism too. “Turns out they don’t want to be going out doing things all the time, they’re quite happy being left alone to play computer games. Although going out was alright during lockdown ‘cos there was no one else about. No cars, no people, nothing open. It was nice and quiet. They weren’t having to try and cope with a world that wasn’t designed for them, all that noise and simulation. I wish this one could keep his own brain occupied though. Geez!” he calls out to Sam. “Are you playing or not?”

Sam comes back to join us.

“Y-you have a r-rest,” he says to his dad, pushing Liam away. “P-Paul and me’ll p-play.”

“Sounds alright to me,” Liam says and leaves us to it.

Sam’s game involves him standing on the patio like a goal-keeper. I kick the ball up to him and he rolls it back to me. It’s getting dark though and he’s becoming harder to make out by the minute.

“Alright geez, five more kicks and we’re off home,” Liam tells him.

“Why?” asks Sam.

“Because we can hardly see you.”

“I’m here.”

“Oh, I know,” he tells him. “Believe me, I know.”