Living out in the country is a blessing

My hens lay eggs and crowds are not a concern, but who knows where all this will lead?

To each his or her own panic. For many, running out of toilet paper seems to be concern numero uno. For others, its pasta, chicken, eggs. For me, it’s something else completely.

I don’t need to worry about eggs: my five hens give me five eggs everyday. At the end of the week, that’s 35 eggs for three people. We’re not going to starve. But we could overdose on cholesterol, or has that theory been debunked? It had been, but then new concerns were raised; it’s hard to keep up. In any case, between slow starvation and a flash heart attack, I’ll take the heart attack.

I know how to make most things: bread, butter, even mayonnaise (a must for egg salad sandwiches). My kind neighbours, most of whom are farmers, have meat, milk, even feed for my hens if my own supply dwindles. In any case, hens eat anything. And if push comes to shove, they can be eaten.

Living in the country in these dark days of pandemic is a blessing. All the things closing down in the city — theatres, music venues, cinemas, swimming pools — don’t exist in my neck of the woods, so I won’t miss them.

Our restaurants? For the most part, they are best avoided by healthy people anyway. Nobody moves to a rural area for the gastronomy, with some exceptions. Easy access to cafés and decent restaurants that serve dishes other than wraps, pizza, poutine, clubs, burgers and Caesar

Right now, I am happy to dwell on the edge of civilization.

salad swimming in Kraft dressing is the one thing I miss the most about living in Montreal.

But right now, I am happy to dwell on the edge of civilization: the only neighbours I can see from my house are two horses enjoying their retirement in the field next door. I can still feed them apples and carrots while we chat.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m living on Mars: my local newspaper’s above-the-fold headline this week is “Masses cancelled.”

And I work from home anyway, “tethered to a ringing telephone,” as Joni Mitchell sang in Free Man in Paris.

Speaking of Paris, it is shutting down: only supermarkets, pharmacies, banks, gas stations and the “tabacs,” a cross between a dépanneur and a tobacconist of old, will remain open. Bars and cafés will close: now that sounds to me like a national emergency for the French!

God knows where this will lead us. We’ve never faced anything like this since 1918-19, when the Spanish flu killed between 50 million and 100 million people. It wasn’t until 1933 that science identified that a virus had caused such devastation and not before 2005 that we figured out it was the H1N1 virus.

In 2009, a new strain of the same H1N1 virus killed an estimated 284,000 people worldwide. Too many, but a lot fewer than a century ago. Today, a vaccine exists for H1N1 and one hopes a vaccine will soon exist for this SARS-COV-2 virus. Anti-vaccination militants are already getting a head start on social media telling people not to accept vaccination should a vaccine against COVID-19 become available. Please, not now. Have some compassion. Despite the madness, I am having a hard time being anxious. I am not stupid, I know the current situation harbours the seeds of disaster, but there is little I can do other than follow orders and relax. I must say that I find Premier François Legault’s daily press conferences, with Health Minister Danielle Mccann and Public Health Director Horacio Arruda, very comforting.

So what do I panic about, you ask?

I have to prepare five columns a week for radio and write one for this paper. What the heck am I going to talk and write about, given that there is now only one topic on Earth at the moment?

Yes, let that be my worst problem.