The COVID-19 Diaries. Week 2

Monday 23rd

I’ve got ninety minutes until Boris Johnson addresses the nation. Its a Monday night and today hasn’t been a pleasant one. By rights it should be. Spring is my favourite time of the year and there’s one week in particular, the week before the clocks go forward when my 6am commute to work coincides with the sun coming up over Spen Valley. It might not sound much but after driving to work in the dark for nigh on six months the sight of the sky getting lighter in the east is one that presages good things to come. Then the clocks go forward and its gone for another year. This morning the sun was a huge red disc in a perfectly clear blue sky. It was bollock freezing and I’d had to scratch the frost off the car but I knew that as I drove along Windy Bank Lane the sun would be there to greet me and the year could begin in earnest.

Except its not. Which made going to work this morning slightly bizarre. After spending the last three days indoors [barring a food trip to Tescos to gaze at the empty shelving and nipping down the street to Luigis for two Sunday night takeaway pizzas] scraping frost off the car and going to a job of work didn’t seem like the right thing to do at all. Its not like they’re busy at work or that they make anything that could be of use in a time of crisis. And so it was that due to illness, self isolation and staff leaving for sunnier climes, I got roped in to making some underlay for outdoor cricket wickets. In the height of a pandemic I was involved in the making of a material that would be sat in a bag, outside on a pile, for months and months and months.

A part of me felt that I should be at home, a very small part of me thought that maybe carrying on as normal was part of the process. There were times that I forgot there was a pandemic going on but those moments were few and far between. At times I thought that maybe I was panicking too much, digging myself deeper into a self prophesying Twitter filled hole of CORVID-19 despair, from which it was impossible to escape without anything other than an impending sense of doom. Tempers amongst shop floor staff were frayed.  Everybody was asking ‘whats happening’ to which we got shrugs and the promise of more information as the day went on. None of which appeared. Small talk didn’t exist because shop floor topics of conversation, i.e. that weekends football/sports results and going to the pub, didn’t exist anymore. The only talk was of the virus and how long it would be before we were all sent home to see this thing out. After first break a rumour went round that there was to be a board meeting, Boris Johnson was making an announcement at eleven o’clock. My mood lifted. I’d soon be home. 

Nothing happened. There was no eleven o’clock press briefing. There was no announcement. The underlay continued to be made and my mood got fouler and fouler. When I left at four-thirty the staff car park was completely empty. They’d all left so as to work from home.

Heading to the car I took off my coat and sweatshirt. Two layers off for the first time since the end of last September. I picked Mrs Fisher up on the way home and as I waited in the car I wound down my window and listened to the radio, the suns rays fell across my face making me all sleepy and wishing things weren’t as shit. The traffic was almost non-existent. As we passed Cleckheaton bus station there was someone stood outside wearing a face mask.


Tuesday 24th.

I arrive at work and there’s several of us stood in a near deserted yard, all two meters apart asking each other what the fuck are we doing here. Johnson’s address to the nation has caused more confusion than clarity amongst those of us who deem making carpet non-essential. Don’t make unnecessary journeys. Don’t go out unless its to the shops or for exercise or to administer life saving potions to elderly relatives. What about making carpet? Having still had no word from the upper echelons of the company there’s a great sense that we’re all coming to work just to get ill or make someone else ill. By break time another one leaves after getting a text from the NHS telling him he’s in the vulnerable 1.5 million. This means I get moved from my own solitary, twenty meters from anyone job into a department with people in it with which I’m expected to work. My mood immediately goes from bad to murderous. I feel a very dark cloud descend. After an hour of this I have to stop myself wanting to grip the Village Idiot by the throat for dancing about to the Macarena and when the Sales Prevention Officer passes and brings something to my attention that I have so obviously missed I’m struggling to remain civil. I want to  say ‘Have you heard of the corona virus? Its in the news a lot at the moment’ and I start to feel all clammy and sweaty. I become convinced that this is the start of it and pick up my phone and stained mug and say I’m going home, I’ve got a fever, and just as quickly put it down again and make myself act like an adult and not some whining teenager. The bloke I’m working with hasn’t been there that long and doesn’t know me very well. He goes very quiet, doesn’t make eye contact and says nothing to me until I return from lunch break. It all seems so futile and pointless.

At break time I look at my phone to see I’ve received a supportive text from Mrs. Fisher whose in much the same boat as me. Then there’s the news that the sack of shit with a knot in the middle of it that is Tim Martin, has laid off 40 thousand Wetherspoons staff with no pay, and told them all to apply for jobs at Tescos. This makes me realise that there’s plenty worse off than me and that being a wimp and feeling sorry for myself never won any battles. This energizes me somewhat and for the first time in days I feel that dark cloud lifting. Being a twat isn’t going to get me anywhere I tell myself. Moaning about shit isn’t going to change things. Giving people grief for singing and for doing their job isn't on either, so I decide there and then to be much more positive. If this virus is with us for the next three months, for the next six months, the next year, then I’m going to see it out and come out of it the other side a better person for it.

At the fag end of the day I’m back at my own job and loafing around near an open fire exit. The warm spring air has a sweet smell to it that winter does its best to make you forget and I realise that its only because of the lack of traffic and pollution that its there at all. The sky is blue and the machine to the back of me does its pre-programmed thing. When it stops the silence is eerie. I work near a busy ‘A’ road that passes above my head unseen, the hum of traffic, ambulance sirens [the local hospital is only about two miles away] is a constant. As is the troop of school kids twice a day and those who like to hurl encouraging abuse and throw empty drink cans into the mess of brambles that encroaches on to the shed I work in. I’m given a start by the rat catcher who appears as if from nowhere to see if his contraptions have caught anything. ‘They’ve got you working too have they’, I say. ‘Aye, waste of bloody time, every where’s shut’. Except for here.


Wednesday 25th

Imagine if the corona virus had struck at the beginning of winter? A hideous thought. This got me thinking; the first decent spring weather of the year coincides with a statement from the government asking people to stay at home. Thousands of people ignore the plea and take off for Skeggy, Snowdonia and public parks all to have a jolly time in the sunshine spreading around an easily transmitted and deadly virus for which we don’t yet have a vaccine. If it had pissed it down that weekend nobody would have gone out and Monday nights speech by Boris Johnson would have happened a week later.

Its strange how in a time of crisis I soon find myself back in a routine. Things become normal to a certain degree. I get up and go to work. I come home cook some food sit in front of the PC for a couple of hours and then go to bed to do the same again tomorrow. My morning commute takes me ten minutes and the roads are never busy at that time anyway but the return journey can be hellish for such a short one. If I pick Mrs. Fisher up on the way home I have to pass through two sets of traffic lights after merging right on to a busy ‘A’ road. A journey of less than half a mile can take anything up to fifteen minutes. After picking up Mrs Fisher there’s the main traffic lights in Cleckheaton to navigate, traffic lights that can produce tailback queues that can take another fifteen minutes to get through. All gone. I can pick up Mrs. Fisher and drive straight to the lights and be first in the queue like its 4am Sunday morning. Except its hot and sunny. The balmy spring air, the stillness, the lack of traffic noise, the lack of people, the increase in bird sound and the feeling that things aren’t going to get back to normal any time soon.

My main job of work is put on hold so I can help out in other departments. I ask for a face mask to give myself more protection as there’s very little going on in the way of social distancing. The beard is going to have to come off so that its more effective. Last Friday morning I went to Tescos to do some shopping and it was only later in the day that I realized I’d been in the store during pensioner hour. Maybe I could glue a false one on? I wonder if you can get them on eBay.


Thursday 26th


Another stunning sunrise but its downhill from thereon in. Thankfully I’m left to my own devices for the day and catch up with a backlog of jobs. I’ve worked on my own for the last six years now and after working in pairs or in other working groups for most of my working life I’ve come to the conclusion that its the best working option there is. Especially when the virus is in town.

Thursday being the end of my working week I treat myself to a fish butty from the chippy across the road, which by some miracle is still trading. There are signs on the counter providing information as to queuing and payment. One server gets the food, the other takes your money while the fryer fries away. There’s only one customer in the shop so I wait outside in the sunshine where I’m soon joined by a bloke whose just got out of his car. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt and a protective mask and stands two meters away from me. ‘Its shit innit mate’ he says, arms folding looking at the empty road. The road that separates work from the chippy is virtually empty, some days you can be stood there five minutes waiting for a gap in traffic before eventually risking life and limb by half crossing the road while judging a gap in the traffic. There are three customers and three servers and I cant see this kind of operation lasting long. ‘Its good that you’re still open’ I say with what I hope is an encouraging smile, one of the servers looks at me coldly and says ‘Not for much longer’.


As the day progresses my mood swings from buoyant to downright depressed. This is not helped by the sight that greets me upon clocking out at 3.30pm, when a shift change out of the Keystone Cops book of organisation leaves six people virtually tripping up over each other as they do battle with several rolls of carpet. Not so much social distancing as social interaction. As the days go by there are more and more stories emerging of companies of a definite non-essential nature, determined to carry on trading during the current crisis with little or no regard as to their employees health. That’ll be me then.

Driving home my mood becomes even fouler as I pass dozens and dozens of people all out for a leisurely stroll in the spring sunshine. In theory they’re taking their allowance of daily exercise, in reality they’re ignoring the request to stay indoors so as to take advantage of some cracking weather. It seems one half of the country is towing its nuts off while the other goes on an extended holiday. 

Before getting in the shower I shave off what has become a rather large beard leaving a porn ‘tash for my own amusement. I’ve not had a bare chin for as long as I can remember and when I go back out in the car to pick up Mrs Fisher the feeling of fresh air upon my fizog is a strange but oddly invigorating one. I make a decision to grow a full on Nietzsche soup strainer for the COVID-19 duration.

Friday 27th

Seeing as how I don’t work Friday’s I decide to make it the day I go food shopping. The thinking behind this being that at least it’ll be a bit quieter than the weekend. Which I then realise is a stupid idea as hardly anybody is at work anymore. Its another beautiful sunny day so I decide to go for an early morning walk. Mrs Fisher deciding against it I walk at full pace up the cliff face that is Moorside. My thinking being that If you can walk up Moorside at pace then theres nothing wrong with you that will prevent you from going shopping and fighting off panic buyers. Its not yet  nine o’clock and there’s very few people about and very little traffic either, the occasional Fed Ex van, DPD, all the delivery drivers that are still out there bringing people that dress they order on ASOS while pissed up. I don’t pass anybody until I’m walking over the bridge that spans the M62 when I see a woman in the distance. As she approaches I walk as far to the kerb as I can, this is a wide pavement, more than two meters wide but as I get nearer she stops dead and pulls a tissue out of her pocket with which she quickly covers her face. ‘Morning’ I say as I March past but I detect no response.

When I get to Scholes I call in the Co-op to see if they have a paper. Which they do and which for some daft reason cheers me no end. I also buy a packet of Co-op own brand oat crackers because it seems the right thing to do. There’s some gaps on the shelves but they have fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and lots of milk. There are some two meter markers on the floor so I take my place behind the bloke whose being served and wait my turn. When I get to the till the woman shouts at a bloke whose just about to come in the door and I realise there’s a one in one out policy in place.

This is the same policy that Sainsbury's have adopted which is my supermarket of choice today hoping it will be a little less busy than the other two supermarkets in Brighouse. If it is quieter than elsewhere there’s still a queue which takes about twenty minutes to go down but once I’m in the shop its all fairly calm and again there’s plenty of fresh fruit and veg. There are gaps on the shelves where pasta, tinned tomatoes, toilet roll, flour etc used to be but I get pretty much all I came for and leave thinking that if this is as bad as its going to get at least we’re not going to starve. I drop my disposable gloves in the bin and wonder how long this is going to be the new norm.

Saturday 28th

I take my government endorsed exercise early again and walk down a deserted Westgate in a chill wind. There’s a few people outside Collins butchers and a man steps down a side street so as not to be near me. A fat man in flip flops and jogging pants gets out of a car outside the Nisa and walks in, probably fags or beer. As I approach town I could easily walk in the middle of the road and come to no harm such is the lack of traffic. I look in Tescos and they’ve cordoned off a section of the car park so that people can queue up with their trolleys but I decide against going in and visit the newsagents and the Pound Shop which has a spectacular amount of toilet paper on display but no old man with funny beard whose probably doing the right thing and staying indoors. Last week you could hardly see the shelves for people in here but today there's only one other person in the shop, a solitary bloke whose managed to fill about ten carrier bags with various produce that means he cant open the door, so I open it for him and realise the handle might be contaminated. I score a nine pack of three-ply, a bottle of Fairy Liquid and head off home feeling like I’ve found a wallet stuffed with tenners. Such riches.

In the afternoon I receive a text message from work telling me that Tuesday will be the last day of work for a month and that all wages will be paid in full. Now all I need to do is get Mrs Fisher home safe and sound.

At around ten o’clock I realise that I’ve not seen the news today and before going to bed flick on the 24 hour BBC news channel for an never ending doom and gloom update. A reporter is in Moscow telling us how the Russians are dealing with the virus. He interviews two women leaving a church service. ‘Aren’t you worried about catching the virus?’ he asks them, to which one replies, ‘Of course not, this is a house of God, the virus can not hurt us here’. He then tells us that this woman is a doctor.

God Pussy - Análise do Principo Informativo
4CDR/DL


Have you seen the footage of Brazilian President Bolsorano doing push ups in front of an adoring group of young and fit looking acolytes? It really is the very thing. He’s proud of being an athlete you see, its one of the reasons he says he’s not going to catch the virus. So he turns up with a couple of his people and they’re facing off towards this group of young lads all kitted out in matching shorts and vests and someone must say ‘hey, lets all drop and do some push-ups to prove how fit we all are’ so thats what they do and everybody is down doing them except for Bolsorano who’s just flexing his elbows slightly while his arse goes wild and his head goes up and down like its attached to his body with a length of rubber piping. And people take him seriously. Right now he’s raging against city governors who are urging people to stay indoors to stay alive saying that they’re deliberately wrecking the economy so as to make him look bad. There are bell-ends and there are bell-ends and then there’s Bolsorano.

Anyone up for four CD’s worth of Brazilian Noise? Whaddyamean no? There’s never been a better time to settle down with a four CDR noise set than now. Get yourself in to self isolation and purge those ear drums. Forget about the news for an hour, OK a couple of hours at least, put the apocalypse to the back of your mind and roll back the clock to a time pre C-virus, about 1995 maybe where this kind of noise was waiting for you at every turn. You couldn’t move for the stuff back then. If you laid out all the noise releases I received in a week they’d stretch from here to Collins butchers. Which makes me all nostalgic. Remember when you could walk in to a supermarket and get all the things you needed without having to risk your life? Oh happy days.

Sunday afternoon then. A beautiful sunny day. The warmest of the year so far, Spring has sprung and here am I in a darkened room listening to some noise made by God Pussy. Up until about thirty minutes a go I never knew this existed but an Instagram message meant I could drown out my day with some prime mid 90’s noise. Think prime era Merzbow, Pain Jerk, a table full of noise boxes and a passion for noise.


Hits - Sediment Seen
Cassette/DL
Paisley Shirt Records

After you’ve been transported back in time to the golden age of noise you can transport yourself further back in time to the late 70’s and bands like The Raincoats, Kleenex and singers like Honey Bane and Poly Styrene where the sound was as basic as a beans on toast and as pure as a nuns thoughts.

Hits are an Oakland trio fronted by Jen Weisberg and its her vocals, a Shaggs-like plaintive sing/talk that sends this back to 1978. That and Max Nordile’s bass that has only two strings and Brian Tester’s drums of which there are but three, all of which sound much better for being on cassette. Especially the one I got which had a bit of stretch making for a slight wobble for proper late 70’s authenticity. ‘Bottom Feeder’ comes drenched in Weisenberg’s tremulous electric guitar and its to the fore too on ‘Cash Only’. Everything here sounds like it was recorded in an empty warehouse in Macclesfield during the dark days of 70’s industrial strife which is no mean feat for something thats originated in California in 2020. The instrumental ‘Human Sacrifice’ sounds like a Bauhaus b-side.

Look I’ve no idea whats going on in Oakland, I’ve never been further west than New York but something is happening. I’m here to relate the story. You know where to go.


Grey Park - Railroads/Fight Fire With Rifle
Recycled cassette/DL
10 copies



I wonder how they’re getting on in Finland? There cant be a shortage of bog roll over there surely? Imagine being surrounded by ten billion trees and running out of bog roll. If they do run out they can always wipe their bums on moss, or snow, or old copies of the trashy tabloids that seem to proliferate over there. I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Grey Park has been a favourite here for many years now and seems to have been doing the dictaphone, cassette thing for longer than most. I have no idea who’s behind the project, not that it matters, but about once a year, maybe twice a year a cassette or a CDR arrives, usually wrapped in something outrageous [I have a Grey Park release that comes wrapped in an inverted coffee bean bag] but this time a good old fashioned cassette with paper insert. And now a web presence via Bandcamp where but two Grey Park releases reside. Time to get listening.

Here then two all too brief twelve minute-ish tracks of joy with enough reverse tape squish and loop lunacy to keep your average Dicta-naut happy for the best part of a decent lockdown. First track ‘Railroads’ is a reworking of the Clangers theme tune as found going backwards through a filter of pots, pans and synths made from margarine tubs, a Kaossilator with the batteries running down and then there emerges, on a lolloping breeze as fresh as mountain air, some ultra slow tape mulch before a two second African funk loop of something Fela-Kuta-ish takes over. ‘Fight Fire With Rifle’ is a loop of a sixties sounding up beat pop song, just the bass line that pumps over and over again until it disappears and you’re left with tinkling and an old man speaking very softly in Finnish which morphs in to tribal chanting which morphs into an instrumental reggae loop like Dandy Livingstone or somebody like that.


Matt Robidoux - Brief Candles
NULL ZØNE.
Cassette



Before the world turned to squishy shit I played this Matt Robidoux tape a couple of times and made a note in my notebook that said ‘Matt Robidoux is the new Jim O’Rourke, lots of tracks that sound like intros that never get going, decent improv and catchy tunes’. After listening to it again a couple of times more, from sanctuary of my self isolating back room of course, I can add wild Faust like honking jams, 60’s melancholic pop, shortwave buzz, somewhere approaching Pavement and with ‘Sunny Rain’ a gloriously upbeat single thats on a par with Kevin Ayers first single ‘Singing a Song in the Morning’, in which Robidoux sings nothing but the words ‘sunny rain’ over and over again to tune thats as infectious as certain viruses. As a joyous pick-me-up it did more to lift my spirits than the sight of shelves full of toilet rolls.

The way Robidoux mixes his improv with actual strong structure gives Brief Candles a cherished ‘infinite number of plays’ status. His involvement with Sunburned Hand of the Man and the underground noise and improv scenes of Massachusetts may have something to do with this. Maybe he’s moving from this background into pure song writing and Brief Candles is the release that finds him midway on his journey. Either way I wish him luck. Anybody that can put a smile on this face at this time of year deserves some support.

Reflection Space has a driving Neu! like beat to it with a drop-out filled with squealing sax, Robidoux’s vocals are a yearning flat wail that fit perfectly. ‘Lime Green’ is the dreamiest he gets to O’Rourke with a languid, spacey almost Gong like sax, guitar fest and then ‘Sunny Rain’. Ladies and Gentlemen I have been transported.  


LINKS:


God Pussy

 
Paisley Shirt Records


Grey Park



Matt Robidoux