7

After seven weeks of seven days, she counted.

7 is a singer from Nashville. A short little fella with a strong voice, cowboy boots and a white-leather, fringed jacket. 7 drinks whiskey straight but never gets hangovers and if you want company to a party or a wedding, 7’s your man. But don’t expect 7 to read a story to the kids, change the sheets or clean up the kitchen. 7’s not interested in domestic routines because 7 loves the road. 7 is a magical prime number, everybody’s favourite, a wonder and delight.

Yesterday at Feeding Time, I thought about celebrities.

I used to love those celebrity magazines filled with news and gossip and scandal. I didn’t care one hoot if it was true or not, I just loved hearing what the sources close to the star thought about their new beau, baby, house or film. Strangely, I loved reading them most of all when I used to fly on aeroplanes, but the gossip is flat now. Sure it was nice seeing the inside of Gwyneth’s house, Madonna’s bathroom or Posh’s backyard, but I need them to do more for me than just stay indoors if I’m to envy them properly. I need to see Ange and the kids arrive in LAX or wear a new frock or go heliskiing. Otherwise, she’s just like me, and that’s a little dull at the moment.

It’s just another thing to get upset about.

The current president of the United States is also upsetting me at the moment, and causing me much wrath. I’m so bored by the blond-haired psycho killer and the fact that he’s likely to get in for a second term hurts my pride, as I’m obviously taking it personally. It’s hard to know what was worse last weekend: the bleach comment, the lie about the bleach comment or the fact that he doesn’t know the difference between irony and sarcasm. He’s just a filthy old joke, told by a drunk at a party you didn’t want to go to.

Imagine going to a party now? Even one you didn’t want to go to. Do you remember parties? Do you remember offices? They seem so anthropocentric now don’t they, especially when you walk around the city centre of Dublin and see how much space was given over to them. Rooms filled with desks where people would silently send messages to other people at other desks. The silence broken only to discuss the heating, lighting or unholy mess in the kitchen. Sometimes there was cake.

Bless us all.

I don’t miss the office but of course I miss my colleagues and talking to them. Talking to anyone. I miss the magic of conversation, and the alchemy of multisensory exchanges that require more than just audio-visual and two-dimensional interactions. I sound like a robot on Zoom, and not a very clever one: “hello, how are you, I am fine, I trust your family is also fine, that is good, thank you, goodbye”.

It’s no surprise that we Irish, especially we Dubliners, are missing talking and conversation and the craic something mighty. Have you ever been to Grogan’s? It’s full of people furiously agreeing with one another with different words. We will say the same thing over and over again until someone gives up and goes home. Pint after pint, toasted sandwich after toasted sandwich. Wasn’t it Freud who said the Irish were impervious to analysis because we liked to espouse both of the sides of the same argument? You can see that in evidence in just a few hours in Grogan’s. No, apologies, on reflection that’s not a fair comment to make, I’ll erase that.

I miss talking with words and the sounds they made.

I think I’m starting to hear things. I think I can hear someone in my building tuning in their electric base guitar, but I don’t know where it’s coming from so I don’t know who to accuse. I lurk in the hallway trying to catch which apartment the sounds are coming from, but I haven’t got time to monitor this situation all day. I’m busy. And I can’t randomly start knocking on doors looking for the evil doers.

“Hi, it’s me again. Yes, can you please stop tuning in your electric base guitar all through the evening as it’s very distracting”.
“I don’t have an electric base guitar”.
“Well, do you have any instruments here at all? Some woodwind perhaps?”
“No, no musical instruments at all”.
“OK, well that’s very good to hear. Just checking. Keep safe!”

It seems that sound, along with space and time is slipping through the silence.

I’m so full of sloth this week and I don’t know why, as obviously I’m not doing 12 hour shifts in ICU! It might be the existential worry and monkey brain activity. Yesterday, for example, during Exercise Time I saw some new businesses had opened up and I was delighted. Before I got to the end of the street I was suddenly terrified and in panic that we were easing restrictions too quickly and taking too many new risks.

Happy. Frightened. Delighted. Afraid. Happy. Frightened. Delighted. Afraid.

One step for one thought, one for another.

Where is Artificial Intelligence when you need it most? I hoped it might have developed a vaccine by now and copied it 7.7 billion times on a 3D printer and I don’t fully understand where the delay is? It’s all very disappointing, and so terribly exhausting.

7.7 billion of us waiting to resume play. You and me and 7.7 billion other people breathing in and breathing out, for 49 rises of the sun and 49 sets again.

7 weeks of 7 days.

7 is a magical prime number, everybody’s favourite, a wonder and a delight.