Rob’s CV diaries 1: Eruption

I’m sure that lots of people are, or will be, writing about the corona virus epidemic: not surprisingly since the news is chock-a-block with articles, reports, opinions and so forth. I am no expert of course (there seem to be more than enough of those around) but thought it would be worth recording my own experiences and feeling whilst the crisis unwinds. If you’ve had enough of this whole topic then ignore the CV diaries: normal service will be resumed … as soon as possible.

News of the outbreak of the infection came in December 2019, its origin being in Wuhan, China, a city that my wife and I visited during one of out teaching stints in that country. Known as the oven of China it was certainly a hot place, but I have no strong memories of it and cannot find my notes on that visit. When we heard the news I was already arranging our travel details for a trip to Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia. Should we have abandoned that trip in the light of the news? That really never occurred to us. The Wuhan virus seemed to be something local to China and, though we had a very brief stopover in Beijing en route to Taiwan, no precautions were even suggested as we took off on the sixth of January 2020.

As our trip progressed, awareness of the virus could be tracked by the proportion of people wearing face masks. These are not uncommon in Asia anyway, but during January and February their use grew and grew so that even I tried to purchase some in Ho Chi Min City. This was not easy, many convenience stores had sold out by that time. Nonetheless I was derided for wearing one in a hotel in Phnom Penh by a fellow visitor and one Cambodian told me that his country was too hot for the virus! In Australia we heard that only one person had tested positive for the infection and the only people wearing masks there were Chinese.

How things can change is such a short time. We returned to the UK at the beginning of March and found the country pretty much unfazed, but fear was growing - albeit quietly.  The first death from the disease was reported a few days after our return and another soon followed: both had what soon became a common term ‘underlying health conditions’ and were in their late seventies and early eighties. Two things followed that. On a personal front I decided that the sooner I contacted the disease and got the whole thing over with, one way or the other, the better. Then the government and its advisers became more engaged and seem to agree with me: the sooner sufficient people became immune the better - even though some would die in the process.

That initiative did not last long, it was followed by serious warnings to those most at risk to isolate themselves and for those likely to be a load on the NHS (particularly the over 70s) to take similar precautions – that included myself and Margaret.  Meanwhile my main activities in Oxford were being wiped out by the virus and through government warnings. Tours were being cancelled at an exponential rate, I only took out two groups in Oxford after our return from Australia, and the last, on the 15^th of March, was for just three people rather than the usual 15-19! It was also clear that my Samaritan shifts would have to go; I did my last on the same day as that final tour. That was also my final weekend in Oxford – and it was great. We attended a wonderful concert featuring the music of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Borodin on the Saturday evening and a great open-mike night at the Harcourt Arms on the Sunday. Next day we moved down to our house in Stow-on-the-Wold for no one knows how long.

How did I feel? Mixed emotions really. Though I prefer to spend much of my time in Oxford, we do have a very nice house in Stow and, with the vegetable garden and our very own field I would have plenty to do. And, though I realise that for many social isolation is a frightening and depressing prospect, for me it seemed a little bit of an adventure.

Rob's best reads of 2019

As I’ve written here before, I get most of my reading material via Bookbub and so it is quite arbitrary stuff. Also, I almost always read on my Kindle and that can influence what I read because of the ridiculously high prices imposed on eBooks by the big five publishers. That said here’s the best of my best from books read last year.

I rarely read a book twice, but last year I did just that. I had forgotten entirely that I had read Tony Parson’s Man and Boy some years before as a paper book and hence bought it cheaply as an eBook. Some pages in I realised my mistake, but was so entranced by the sad story and the recollection of how much I had enjoyed it that I ploughed on. It is a fictional account of a marriage break up involving a very young son and the tussles between his mum and dad for custody. In the end the father steps back for the sake of his son and finds a solution that works even though his lawyer assures him that he could have won custody. An interesting and moving tale – very well written.

In the biography department, I read Frank Gardner’s Blood and Sand. His life, first as a banker then as BBC reporter, nearly ended as he was repeatedly and cruelly shot at close range in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  Almost miraculously he survived and, though disabled, returned to journalism. It is a harrowing story, but leavened by his early successes in life and his courageous recovery.  Altogether a riveting read.

That’s a couple of mainstreamers, now for some odd balls.  Metropole by Ferenc Krinthy is a strange novel where this middle-aged linguist takes a plane to a conference somewhere in Scandinavia. But he lands in a strange city where the people speak a language that has no relationship to any that he knows. He is rushed to a hotel and given some money and a room. He cannot read any of the signs or communicate with anyone – and so the tale gets stranger and stranger. There seems to be no escape from this packed citadel where everyone is in a rush and all transport is overloaded. It is a weird scene, yet portrayed believably through the eyes of the confused yet rational Budai, the main character.

Then there’s another glimpse into a strange world, this one real. In To the Moon and Back, I gained some idea of what it might be like to be a Moonie. Lisa Kohn spent her childhood as a member of the Unification Church, that strange movement founded by South Korean Sun Myung Moon. In describing her life, including the long period when her mother left her to serve the church, I began to understand the silken chains that tie people to such communities, how they can be so happy within it and how difficult it is to leave.

Back to fiction, glorious fiction, with The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I love magic and this book is magical, really magical. The night circus is exactly what its name suggests and more. Many of the acts and displays are beyond physics, beyond trickery, and even the transport of the vast tented circus is magical: it appears overnight very suddenly, without sound or fuss. Within this strangely entertaining book there is an even stranger love story and a plethora of odd, but interesting characters.

As an Oxford guide I often mention the Rhodes Scholarship and its founder, Cecil. So, I thought I ought to delve into his life a little more by reading Rhodes: The Race for Africa by Antony Thomas. It’s an interesting and sometimes shocking biography of a driven man who seemed to exert power over so many during his short, but influential, life. It certainly adds fuel to the campaign by students who demand the removal of the man’s statue from the fascia of his Oxford College – Oriel – though I still do not think that is the correct course of action. One disappointment in life for Rhodes (and for me) is that he concluded that there was no-one whom he could not buy. I think that’s a double negative, but you know what I mean.

Finishing this much curtailed list with another fictional book, I did enjoy A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne. This is an intriguing tale of an amoral young man who has two ambitions: to be a famous writer and a father. In pursuing the former he has a major weakness, though he writes well he is unable to create a great story line – so he steals them from the people who love him. He is a very attractive man, sexually ambivalent, and entirely without conscience; so it is shocking, but perhaps inevitable, that his thefts lead to the deaths of many who become trapped in his web. I think I’ve written enough already about this book since anything more would spoil a gripping tale which is very well written and capable of making the unthinkable tenable. John Boyne certainly does not have his main character’s weakness.

Oh, but just a mention of the rather zany What’s Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges. How could I forget Gilbert’s gargantuan mother?

And so, on to 2020 which has a nice ring to it: provided each of the four ‘t’s are clearly enunciated. This coming year will undoubtedly provide me with another feast of fiction, and it looks like I’m going to need it whilst sequestered in my country retreat for who knows how long.