Four years ago today this happened:
Disaster means many things. Until today I didn't realise it is also a beanbag busting open on a windy day and sending thousands of tiny static-charged white balls around your garden where rabbits roam and eat so you have to catch them all. Enjoy the schadenfreude my friends.
Facebook update
The changing meaning of disaster, eh? The downside of looking back to a past when the worst thing was a polystyrene snowstorm in the backyard. So many social media updates are going to come back to bite me in the arse over this.
And yet…
I started this diary to document things that were changing too fast to keep up with, but also as a letter to the future. I wonder how it will read in a year. And there have been some morbid times when I've wondered: will these be the last words I write? Best make them good, eh?
I write also because I wonder if we won't forget what it was like to shake hands, hug and hang out together in pubs and cafés. Maybe those fundamental things from 'before' will slide into the past for a long time to come – long after lockdown ends. Will we be too traumatised by this virus to return to our pasts and, if so, what will we do instead for our social contact?
Yesterday, a person who shall be nameless (Paul) posted a few 2019 reactions to 2020 things, eg:
1) Can someone go to the supermarket for me and buy all my shopping?
– Fuck off!!!!
I asked for the 2020 reactions to 2019 things, such as Moselele's long-running uke sessions in the pub:
Join me and 40 others in a tight stuffy bothy every two weeks…
– Fuck Off!!!!!!
It was a chill moment when someone said:
It’s never going to happen ever again, is it?
The future is being rewritten. Which reminds me of some amazing manager-speak that came across my desk this week, advising that we need to do some "horizon scanning using hindsight lenses placed on decisions taken now".
That's past, present and future all in one shark-jumping phrase, baby.
Today I am thankful for… my mum's camellia, flowering late this year, but now in vigorous bloom.
Hire/commission me: fiona [at] fionacullinan.com
Xx
Oh I could do with some hindsight lenses!
I'm now using this phrase.