Do you feel like you are living in a 1950s British science fiction novel? I do. Something by John Wyndham, such a brilliant storyteller. If you've not read him you've probably seen the films, The Day of the Triffids, Village of the Damned, I think that's about it for movies. My favourite novel is The Kraken Wakes. I won't spoil it for you by giving away the plot (you should read it) but it seems so fantastical and yet so realistic at the same time.
Fantastical, like a virus keeping us in our homes, too scared to see our family and friends.
Fantastical, like the pubs and most shops closing with no idea when they might open again.
Fantastical, like being paid, not for working, but simply staying home (stay at home FFS as they say).
Fantastical, because we walk around (when we have too) scared of getting too close (two meters please) to another human being.
Fantastical, like a virus keeping us in our homes, too scared to see our family and friends.
Fantastical, like the pubs and most shops closing with no idea when they might open again.
Fantastical, like being paid, not for working, but simply staying home (stay at home FFS as they say).
Fantastical, because we walk around (when we have too) scared of getting too close (two meters please) to another human being.
I'm sure that you have your own list of fantastical. I'm sure that you are as frightened and worried as I am. Yes, fantastical - but it's not fantastic, is it? It's shit.
Of course, in a Wyndham story, we would all be blinded by comets and then eaten by carnivorous plants, or maybe Sea Tanks would come out of the sea (the clue is in the name) and destroy us and our world as we know it. In a Wyndham novel, strange children would be born that could control us with their minds and who all looked and acted the same.
I bet he wished he'd thought of this alien (animal) virus, that appeared from nowhere and slowly destroyed everything we'd previously taken for granted.
If this were a novel (and in true Wyndham style) I might find a remote sanctuary to protect myself and mine from the man-eating plants/sea monsters/rising sea levels/and spooky children who look all the same and can control us with their minds. maybe I'll go and steal Bear Grills island just off Abersoch and fortify it. Or perhaps I could build an electrified fence and stay behind it whilst the chattering Triffids watch my every move. I could probably do it, I'm pretty self-reliant (I can even hang a picture). But it wouldn't stop the virus. Viruses don't work like that, it's not quite as simple as that.
So here we all are living in a nineteen-fifties science fiction novel. I wonder how it will end?
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