I can’t work out if ministers want me to eat more or less
Like every proud patriot during a time of crisis, I stand ready to help my country in any way I can. Anything to get this great nation of ours back on her feet. I’m willing to do whatever the Government wants me to. There’s only one problem. I don’t know what that is.
It’s terribly confusing. Boris Johnson, for example, wants us to help save the NHS by eating less. Yesterday, I read that he wants to ban special offers on junk food, to stop supermarkets stocking sweets beside the checkout, and to add calorie counts to restaurant menus.
Yet, at the same time, Rishi Sunak wants us to help save the economy by eating more. He’s offering the entire country a discount of up to £10 a head on every meal out, Monday to Wednesday, for the whole of August. The Chancellor is hoping that this will get us back into the habit of eating out, thus keeping restaurants in business. As far as he’s concerned, we should eat out as often as possible – and order as much food as possible. After all, the greedier we are, the more money we’ll spend, and the more jobs we’ll save.
Honestly. I do want to support the national effort but it’s not easy. As far as I can make out, it’s now my patriotic duty to buy a half-price Big Mac – and then to chuck it straight in the bin, untouched.
But that makes no sense. So I’ve got to choose. In which case, I think I’d rather serve my country by eating more than by eating less. And I suspect most people will feel the same.
Then again, once this crisis is finally over, all this eating out will lead to some very odd conversations.
“What did you do in the great pandemic, daddy?”
“Hush, darling, leave daddy alone. He doesn’t like talking about it. None of the men do. Not after what they all went through.”
“It’s all right, love. I’ll talk. The children have a right to know.”
“Oh, daddy, daddy! What was it like, daddy?”
“Well, child, it was a dark and desperate time. We were fighting tooth and nail to save the economy. I saw things that no one should ever have to see.”
“Like what, daddy? Like what?” “Like a man eating a breakfast of two Double Whopper sandwiches with extra cheese and bacon, large fries, onion rings, hash browns, chicken nuggets, an Oreo shake, a Chocolate Brownie Hottie and a large Coke. It was awful. But we all had to do it. Three meals out a day, every day. The powers-that-be ordered us to go over the top. So we did.” “Oh, daddy. It sounds terrible.”
“Aye. It was. I lost a lot of good friends in that battle. Heart disease, mostly.”
My other question is: does the Government want me to wear a mask, or not?
So far the messaging has been vague and half-hearted, at least in England. I know we’re meant to wear one on public transport, but lots of people still don’t. Boris Johnson is now saying he intends to be “stricter” with us. But most ministers themselves have rarely been seen wearing masks, even when pictured in crowded places indoors (e.g. Rishi Sunak’s restaurant photo op this week). So they can hardly complain if the rest of us haven’t been wearing them.
Of course, the hardest people to persuade will be men. It’s male insecurity. We’re scared that wearing a mask will make us look weak.
There is a way round it, though. Appeal to our vanity. Tell us that a mask will make us look dashing and mysterious. For ages, Donald Trump railed against masks. But last week he suddenly announced they were fine, after trying one on and deciding that he looked, in his words, “like the Lone Ranger”.
Then again, the Lone Ranger wore a mask round his eyes, rather than over his nose and mouth, so it’s possible that Trump had put it on wrong.
For millions of us – billions of us
– this may prove to be the defining period of our lives. It’s likely to change our society, our economy and our politics in all manner of ways. But will we actually remember it? It sounds a bizarre question. But it is worth asking, because there is a precedent. The Spanish flu was the most lethal disease ever to hit mankind. In just two years, it’s believed to have killed more people than the two World Wars combined.
Yet, most of us know little about it – mainly, I suspect, because it was almost entirely ignored by the arts, both in its immediate aftermath and in the century since. As Laura Spinney notes in Pale Rider, her history of the Spanish flu, there have been precious few novels about it, or plays, poems, films, TV dramas. Whereas there are countless novels, plays, poems, films and TV dramas about the World Wars.
One reason is that, unlike a war, a pandemic isn’t easy to dramatise. The enemy is both invisible and silent. The scope for narrative excitement is limited. A character can either fall ill and die, or fall ill and recover. That’s about it. The battle against a viral disease involves little in the way of romance or glory. No dog fights, no explosions, no hand-to-hand combat – and certainly no kissing.
Another possible reason for this cultural lacuna, though, is that after the Spanish flu pandemic was over, most people just wanted to forget about it. And I have a feeling that, once Covid-19 is finally overcome, we might feel the same. I for one will not want to read any novels, or watch any films, about social distancing or swab tests or PPE shortages or the struggle to develop a workable contact tracing app. Nor will I be queuing for tickets to see Matt Hancock: the Musical, or binge watching any box sets with titles like Van-tam or Dr Jenny.
This pandemic may well be the most significant global event in my lifetime. But – assuming I survive it – I’ll probably act as if it never happened.