Iso-la-tion Across De-Na-tion.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was a Broadway musical,(1962) and a Hollywood film,(1966).  Inspired by the farces of Ancient Rome’s equivalent of Woody Allen, a playwright called Plautus (251-183 BC). His bawdy tale tells of a slave and his attempt to win freedom by helping his master woo the girl next door. Using puns, slapstick, mistaken identity and satire he comments on the social classes of the time. I wonder what old Plautus would’ve made of the deadly farce entitled ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to COVID19’, we all find ourselves playing a bit part in?

Who can we blame? The current Coronavirus pandemic has made us all a tad jumpy. A desperate search for answers has spread across continents, wanting to uncover the reasons for what’s turned our routine-filled lives, upside down. Finger-pointing headlines like ‘Yellow Peril’, ‘Chinese Panda-monium!’ and ‘China kids stay home’, have appeared in newspapers around the world. Our lives might be f***ed for the foreseeable future but does that mean we have to lose our sense of humour and our humanity at the same time?

Rebuild a broken world? We’ve done it before.  Around the year 1600 the planet endured, what Game of Thrones portrayed on the small screen. ‘Winter Is Coming’ actually came to the earth. Europe cooled to such an extent that this period is known as ‘The Little Ice Age’. It lasted a staggering 300 years! Winters were brutal, summers damp and cold. Crops were ruined and populations starved. But the situation that we found ourselves in stimulated us to think differently. Needs must and all that!

Problem solving. It’s what we do. This ‘Little Ice Age’ forced the people of Europe to ‘out-think’ the problem they were faced with. Technology reached out to meet the problem. Adversity has always forced human beings to innovate. The Coronavirus pandemic is no different. New innovative learning platforms have popped up to teach kids while they ‘home school’. Easy to use, cheap to produce Bluetooth smart thermometers have come to light. Transmitting a person’s fever and geolocation to a database. A Symphony Orchestra digitally perform together from 29 different locations, curtesy of their smartphones. We are f***ing amazing!

Time is Money! How many times have you heard that? Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the goal for many has been to increase productivity. Coupled with a time-equals-money philosophy and voila, you arrive at our modern ‘goal-getting’ use of time. Resulting in crazy-arsed lifestyles, where every wasted minute is a minute we can’t bank. From dawn to dusk we make every second count and then inevitably...we die. Sad but true. I’ll just get my Stradivarius.

Slow the f*** down! The great COVID19 pandemic of the early 2020s, might give us an opportunity to hit the brake pedal a little. Would actually living a less hurried life be such a bad thing? A university study has found that a human being’s walking speed has increased by 10% in just 10 years. We go from calm to blowing a gasket in record time. We get agitated if the traffic light Gods are against us. We have to be connected to the grid 24/7. Fall out, even for an hour is simply not acceptable. We read texts at the dinner table and emails at swanky restaurants. We are stimulation junkies and slaves to the technologies we created. Maybe it’s time to take stock and breathe. Enjoy.