How Are We?

It’s a Friday morning and outside in the garden half a dozen three and four year olds in high-visibility vests are playing in the January sunshine. A little boy stirs up a magic potion of leaves and twigs and rainwater in the garden’s birdbath while the others tear around on the grass; I’m literally being blinded by the dazzling light reflectling off the silver strips of their jackets. You’d be forgiven for thinking that everything is back to normal if it wasn’t for the children all having their temperatures taken upon arrival every morning. Today one of them has brought in a cuddly toy rabbit called Charlie.

“Shall we take Charlie’s temperature too?” asks Tara, one of the nursery workers. “Ah, good, Charlie’s nice and healthy, he can come in,” she tells the child, “shall we take yours now?”

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As far as the centre is concerned, we’re open as usual but the number of groups, classes and attendees remains greatly diminished compared to before the pandemic. For those who are returning, things remain much as they were.

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Colin remains inexplicably up-beat, despite working six days a week keeping the centre open. Which is probably why he remains up-beat; he doesn’t have time to think, which is something we all know he hates to do. Instead he wakes up in the middle of the night worrying about loose door handles and yoga mats. When not running the centre, he runs, runs some more and when he can’t run he does early morning spin-classes where he is the only man amidst a sea of women’s buttocks, raised above their static saddles in pursuit of gluteal perfection. Make of his inexplicable up-beatness what you will. I’m just telling you what I know.

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AstralFalcon, meanwhile, continues on his mating quest. This week I find him ensconced in the office in his coat and scarf, with the heating turned up to sweltering, listening to Leo Sayer on YouTube whilst reading a paperback called ‘Earn What You Deserve‘. Although he is still unemployed, his recent disability-benefit interview went smoothly and he has also finally managed to secure a first date with someone. He’s meeting her this weekend. He’s very excited. Things are looking up for AstralFalcon.

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In contrast, the other night I encountered a bearded Irishman called Dermot sat on one of the benches outside drinking cans of Heineken. He asked if I had a light and during the course of a brief conversation told me how he had met his last girlfriend at a meditation group at the centre. Unfortunately she turned out to be a police informer and he ended up going to prison.

“What were you in prison for?” I asked.

“You really want to know?” he replied.

“Only if you feel like telling me.”

“I hit her.”

“Oh.”

“But she bottled me first.”

I guess meditation doesn’t work for everyone.

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Jack, the Over 60s Tai Chi teacher, puts his head around the office door.

“Just passing on a message from the ladies in the group,” he says, “they’re saying the floor is very slippy.”

“Slippy?”

“Yeah. Come and have a look, I’ll show you.”

I follow him into the hall to find a group of women in their seventies skating around the floor. I burst out laughing and am instantly met with glowering looks of disapproval.

“You may find it amusing,” one of the ladies scolds me, “but it’s very serious.”

I apologise and try to make sense of why the floor is so slippy. “Oh,” I say, “I think it might be sand from the nursery. The kids were in here earlier.”

One of the ladies strokes her hand along the floor and shows her fingers to me.

“That’s not sand,” she says.

I touch the fine dust on her fingers and try to make sense of the texture.

“You touched my hand!” she exclaims, in disgust.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, “I did it instinctively. Shall I get you some hand sanitiser?”

“Don’t bother,” she grumbles, shooing me away.

Through gritted teeth, in a low voice, with his back to the class, Jack tells me “This is what I have to deal with every fucking week…”

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Apparently Romana, the previous centre manager, notorious for her fiery temper, had very little time or patience for old ladies. In one famous episode she burst in upon a room of them, veins in her neck bulging, and shouted “You old ladies! You’re nothing but trouble! All the problems of the centre are because of you!”

Which was harsh. But fair.

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Gail, the yoga teacher, tells me on Wednesday about her New Years Eve where she and her friend had tried to get into one of the local pubs only to be confronted by a bouncer requesting their vaccination passport. Poor guy, he had no idea what he was letting himself in for. Gail continues to regard the pandemic as a hoax, and has never once worn a mask, let alone had a vaccine jab. Gail believes that vaccines are the real reason people are getting sick. It’s no use pointing out that a year ago she didn’t believe anyone was getting sick. All that matters now is that they are and it’s the vaccines’ fault. Needless to say, she gave the pub bouncer an earful and went to a different venue where no questions were asked and she was propositioned by a guy in his twenties who told her how nice it was to “meet a more mature woman”. Gail is in her late fifties, but I guess if you’ve had a few pints… Anyway, she and her friend left this pub too and – after stopping off at one more pub that a drag queen in the doorway had pulled them in to – found themselves on the beach, drinking bottles of wine and dancing to Brazilian techno with all the other outdoor revellers.

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Rami stayed at home with his ninety year old mum on New Years Eve. Despite all their precautions, both managed to catch Covid in December. Rami thinks he caught it off his mum, even though he’s the one who goes out and she hasn’t left their flat in two years. Either way he’s continuing to wear his mask when he goes out and is still claiming that the human race is in spiritual transition and everything that’s happening in the world is a consequence of this fact. To which end, he tells me a story that he first heard from an American channeler he follows on Facebook:

“So there is a mama pigeon standing on top of a building with all her children, teaching them how to fly. ‘Just jump,’ she tells them, ‘and your wings will open and you’ll fly’. So one by one the baby pigeons all jump off the top of the building until there is only one left. ‘Go on,’ the mama pigeon tells the last of her offspring. ‘No thanks,’ the young pigeon says, ‘I could fall to my death’. ‘Don’t be silly,’ the mama pigeon says, ‘jump off like the others and you’ll fly’. ‘But what if I don’t?’ the young pigeon asks, ‘how do you know I’ll fly?’ The mama pigeon does her best to convince the young pigeon that all will be well – that pigeons have been learning to fly by jumping off rooftops for centuries – but still the young pigeon refuses to jump. So the mama pigeon gets a few of the other pigeons to try and convince them but still the young pigeon refuses. So she sends the young pigeon to a psychiatrist…”

“A psychiatrist pigeon?”

“Yeah.”

“What, like pigeon therapy?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok.”

“And the psychiatrist pigeon also tries to reassure the young pigeon that if they jump everything will be fine and they’ll fly, but still they refuse. So then the mama pigeon gets a scientist pigeon to talk to them -“

I let this one pass. If I can buy into psychiatrist pigeons, I can buy into anything at this point.

“- and the scientist explains to the young pigeon the science of aerodynamics et cetera, but still the young pigeon won’t jump off the roof. Nothing that any of the other pigeons say can persuade them. Until one day, out of the blue, the young pigeon steps up to the edge and jumps.”

“What happens?”

“They fly. And when they come back, the mama bird asks them ‘What happened? What made you jump?’ ‘I gave it a lot of thought,’ the young pigeon says. And that pigeon became the first pigeon to make the jump consciously.”

“Ahhh…”

Rami nods wisely as I’m left wondering if in this pigeon society there are pigeons who claim to be channeling non-pigeon entities from other dimensions and what the other pigeons think when those pigeons tell them stories like this.