Friday 27 March 2020

Building in a time of Corona


Continuing the herd immunity conceit I notice that here in Ireland the building trade is being allowed to continue operating. One politician deplores this and offers the example of a site with 200 workers and one tap to wash their hands. To begin with I doubt this report - how could you keep that many builders in tea with one source of water. In any case builders are a keystone species of worker with needs which ramify through the whole economy. To pause their work would be to take away a major source of the borrowing that fuels our society. The altruistic building site injunction - THINK OF THE NEXT MAN - is apt. "Keep her going Shawnie, don't stall the digger'.

Meanwhile I press on with the Spring, digging over the garden and finishing off a kitchen cabinet. My son is learning the fine art of mitred nosing. 'Put away that square, it will not help.' I'm reading essays by Prabhat Mishra on 'Vritti' also known as 'mental modifications' or psychosis. My anthakarana also takes the form of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe - great book and picture . Dipping into A Journal of a Plague Year by Defoe. Very nasty dose, that bubonic plague. Ironically a lot of people were saved by staying on ships moored in the Pool of London and being victualled by watermen.

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