Fortunately the choices of what to watch are rapidly approaching infinite, and there are more boxes available that I can recycle, as well as documentaries galore of all the old bands and dead rock stars. One of the latter was a “rockumentary” on the Boomtown Rats that barely mentioned either Paula Yates or Live Aid, although both were pivotal in the band’s initial break-up. “Tonic for the Troops” was the first decent album I bought with my own money, and Rat Trap describes my life at aged 15 better than anything I can imagine. The record was packed with unbelievable tracks like Howard Hughes, Eva Braun and Watch out for the Normal People.
Ah “Normal People” - another great series. All about being young and stupid. Just like we all were and some of us still are judging by the views of people regarding this pandemic on blogs and social media everywhere. You might think there is a complete vacuum of facts and data at the moment to listen to people opining their theories on Covid and its impact on society.
One such case in point is “the new normal”, a phrase I personally detest for a number of reasons. First I hate the evolution of language, if I had my way we’d all be speaking 9th century Anglo Saxon, but there you go, that’s just my outdated desire for something that has long since passed into my mistaken memories of a golden age that never existed. But I do hate jargon.
But there isn’t a new normal, aside from the fact that the phrase means a billion things, meaning it actually is meaningless, the only thing that is normal is a statistical average at a single moment. Time marches on like the rust on an unwashed steel cassette (this is the cycling reference for this post - if you’ve come for cycling, come back another day). I’m sure there were people in 1945 describing the election result as a blip or a mistake and that as soon as the people realised the error of their ways they’d be back to doffing their caps and asking for a job as a maid or a butler.
This pandemic has not been a “pause” life has gone on like a giant Severn Bore sweeping up the estuary, despite the death toll from the pandemic. In my view, life won’t be kinder or more humane afterwards either, there is too much endemic selfishness and too many vested interests manipulating our behaviour to ever make us go back to the Garden of Eden (which also didn’t exist).
But some things have changed. I do not believe work will be the same. Sure people need to meet and interact from time to time, but we don’t all need to do it everyday and spend hours travelling everywhere to do it. There’s a story about a US official saying there will come a time when one day, there will be a telephone in every town. Technology gets better, and soon it we will be able to communicate seamlessly from wherever we want to.
Great social change is underway economically too. Mainly because a lot of people are going to lose their jobs in the UK, And across the world and those that don’t will be paying the costs of the unprecedented government support for decades to come. There will be riots and there will be trouble. But hopefully, from that trouble, something better will emerge, not the gooey “Be kind” nonsense, or the vapid Thursday night clapping. I hope for a sensible relationship between owners and workers, with a bit more equity (in the broadest sense) about the rewards that value creation brings.
I’m watching and waiting on my own life too, trying desperately to be normal, whilst knowing I am not. Nor are you, and we should both stop aspiring to that normality. My Mother would have been 87 this week had she still been alive. I do wonder what she would have made of all this fuss about Covid, after all she lived through the Second World War, albeit as a child, and often told me how normal the wartime conditions became after a while.
I suppose that is my point. You can drift along with the tide, commenting from the sidelines if you like, but essentially you are a Helpless passenger on that tidal wave. Or you can look for the evidence, listen to people, observe what is going on, and either enjoy the ride, or maybe, swim against the current. In that way you can work out where you want to be or get to, and make progress towards it. Like cycling.
Maybe you might even enjoy NOT being normal.
