My work involves shaping words into stories, stories that become novels or dramas for stage and screen or talks on radio. I am experienced and capable. Most of the time. But not now. Now, I’m stumbling over words. I continue. In a crisis like this, words, and how we use them, matter.
I trip over the word ‘together’ in the phrase ‘we’re all in this together’. I see a self-isolating older woman, on tv, receiving a food box from a local charity. I see a self-isolating billionaire on his yacht. This woman and this man are both in it, but they are not ‘together’.
They experience the crisis under different conditions. Economic, social and political underlying conditions. An economist says that resources are limited. The economist has a meagre view of the word ‘resources’. He doesn’t see the billionaire on the yacht. Or the woman with the food box. He doesn’t know how political the word ‘resources’ is.
I dodge round the word ‘gazump’. It describes a deal where another buyer comes in, trumping the original buyer, taking the deal. This is happening with medical equipment today. The big economies out-bid the smaller ones. Ships with vital stocks are intercepted on the high seas. Our public representatives experience gazumping. They trawl the world for masks, aprons, gloves, drugs and ventilators. In the words of murderous Mafia Dons: It’s not personal. It’s just business.
I fall into the mire of the words ‘money’ and ‘power’.
I plough through a waste-land of war metaphors. Words like ‘front-line’, ‘victories’, ‘heroes’ and ‘invisible enemy’ are everywhere. In London, the source is World War Two. In Dublin, it’s nineteen sixteen. We are not in a war. We are in global public health crisis. The War on Terror and the War on Drugs are still running. Where are their successes?
Another war gears up. War-profiteers emerge. A well known political figure, prominent in the pro-Brexit push, profits from an investment fund that touts the ‘super normal’ returns from buying collapsing companies then selling them on.
The metaphor of falling and rising has particular importance this weekend. Friday marks the falling. Sunday marks the rising. Even for people who do not see the divine in the story, the metaphors are heartening.
I work with words, using my underlying conditions. I am fortunate. I have a good room to work in. I have pens, papers, a laptop, an internet connection, dictionaries, a phone line, food in the cupboard. I have loved ones, neighbours and friends. My underlying medical conditions are challenging. I got THE LETTER. I’m lying low, missing my children and grandchildren.
I continue to work. When I leave my desk for a break, I find an amaryllis plant in full bloom. The stem is tall. It bends gently under the weight of the blossoms adorning it. They are shaped like the amplifying horns of an old gramophone. They show the colours of a Spring early-dawn sky: cerise and pink, white and rose. I return to my desk, affirmed by an old word. Beauty. I continue.
Broadcast on BBC Foyle, Mark Patterson Show, Friday 10thApril 2020, Good Friday
Available on BBC Sounds
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