Geneva, Friday 20 March 2020

I’m not sure I do much faith these days except in evidence i.e., science. But the other two of the trilogy, namely hope and love (ref. First Book of Corinthians, 13) are fine by me. This morning, I read what the poet Seamus Heaney has said about hope in the time of Covid-19: “Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.” Top bloke! And here’s a little bit of love to you all…

It is 12.30. Just as I take this photo on our balcony (on the putting mat!) the whole neighbourhood once again erupts into applause. I LOVE it! What an extraordinary heart-warming feeling of solidarity it brings (albeit eight and a half hours early today.)

Now about the science…. I was thinking. The number of cases per country is what we all – including politicians and the media – are hung up on. But wouldn’t it make sense to bring in what epidemiologists call the denominator? In this case the denominator would be the total population of the countries concerned. So if I divide the number of cases per country (source: Johns Hopkins) by the population of that country (source: WorldFacts citing CIA data,) I come up with a different and maybe more meaningful figure – the proportion of the population affected – for the current top ten countries. This changes the ranking to: Italy 0.07%, Switzerland 0.05%, Spain 0.04%, France 0.02%, Germany 0.02%, South Korea 0.02%, Iran 0.02%, China 0.006%, UK 0.004%, USA 0.004%. As a Brit living in Switzerland this piques my interest somewhat.

Being prepared for a national catastrophe is in the Swiss DNA. They are very good at it. They are conditioned from an early age to pull together in an orderly fashion. If rules are made, then rules are respected. This morning, I went to the Coop. I arrived at 08.30. I was shocked (and I mean shocked and rather frightened) to see a queue of 200 metres winding back from the doors. I presumed this meant that the place was already jammed with frenzied shoppers brawling over remaining packets of bircher-muesli. But then I realised just how organised everything was. We all waited quietly two metres apart. Anyone that went straight to the door not realising us regularly-spaced dudes did in fact constitute a queue were politely asked to go to the back. No fuss. As people came out, those at the head of the queue were let in. The whole entry process was controlled by the most polite of man-mountains. This guy was a Matterhorn with arms and legs. I figured as a baby he’d been breast fed fondu. And he was on the ball. To be sure, the Swiss would never leave such an important job to the pimply work experience lad. I noticed adaptation; the nice lady who normally sells and, if you want, gift-wraps the flowers with a smile was busily cleaning the handles of the trolleys with disinfectant. By observing what people coming out had in their trolleys and bags, I judged that within there was an ample supply of toilet paper. Yay! 

When, after 40 minutes, my turn to enter came, the first thing I saw was a hand sanitiser set-up which everyone was using. And after that, laid out before me was a calm, fully stocked supermarket; something I will never take for granted again. I was able to buy everything on my list. Impeccable! Bravo, Coop! Now, not that I want to go on about the bizarre phenomenon of buying toilet paper in bulk at such a time, but I found myself looking at a palette full of the stuff. My co-shoppers could and did help themselves. It occurred to me that maybe all these nice, ordinary and reasonable folk knew something that I did not. And so I bought a modest little pack of twelve rolls. Forgive me!

Today’s putting match: All square after eighteen putts each. Madame won on the second play-off hole. Her stats at 2.2 metres – 16/20 (80%); mine – 15/20 /75%).

Geneva, Thursday 19 March 2020

I can’t escape a feeling of being caught in a bizarre dream. The news about the pandemic gets worse. Whole countries in lockdown. And yet we can sit on our balcony in perfect quiet (bar birdsong.) It is 21 degrees. Clear blue sky. Nice lunch à deux. I find it difficult to stay connected to the reality of the situation. I know others feel the same.

I am fascinated by reports of how the massive global slowing of human activity has already brought about environmental change. Jet-stream generated clouds are non-existent. Satellite detectable markers for pollution have disappeared over much of China and Northern Italy. The waters of Venice are clear now for the first time in living memory; people can see fish! I wonder if this crisis might ultimately generate a series of new bench marks by which economic well-being can be measured against its ecological impact. 

We went to the supermarket this morning. The Swiss clearly don’t do panic buying or at least not in the frenzy we’ve seen in other countries. One exception…. you’ve guessed it: toilet paper. It’s a difficult one to explain. I can understand that in a state of emergency – as declared by Switzerland two days ago – people stock up on pasta, rice, tinned food and soap. But toilet paper, as far as I know, has never been an essential for survival. And surely you don’t need that much. Do you? I mean, for ladies, one square for number ones and, for all of us, two squares for number twos. Anyway, I have a theory for the phenomenon of panic buying toilet rolls. It’s all because of the world wide web.

Before I elaborate on this theory, I would like to establish my credentials in this domain. I went to an all-boy school in England. The source of most humour and indeed a number of emergencies was firmly based in poo, bums or toilets. My boyhood fascination for the most basic workings of the human body was only amplified in adult life when I found myself working as surgical registrar at a colo-rectal clinic in central London. (And didn’t we see some stuff there?!)  I am therefore firm in the belief that I can speak to the matter of people’s dependence on toilet paper with considerable authority. So… we used to buy newspapers. Most households would have several copies of old editions lying around. Now, we get our news and most other information via the web and so have no emergency back-up for when we might run out of toilet paper. Indeed, I have stayed in a mountain hut in remotest New Zealand and found the “long drop” (as the kiwis call their conveniences) equipped with carefully torn – and quite effective – squares of newsprint hanging on a rusty nail. So that’s my theory: in the modern world, there’s no alternative to toilet paper therefore we are terrified of running out of it so we have to buy tons of it. The only publications we might have going spare in any quantity these days are luxurious fashion magazines. OK…. I now what you’re thinking: that glossy paper, well…… it’s not really up to the job…. if you know what I mean. 

On a more serious matter: today’s putting competition (matchplay format over 18 holes): Wife beats husband 4 and 3. (She holed 100% puts from 2.2 metres.)

À demain.

Geneva, Wednesday 18 March 2020

Today, I wake up and reach for a big mixing bowl, flour, oil, salt and yeast. There’s something almost primal about making bread. It’s not cooking; it’s about handling a living thing. It’s somewhere between brewing and owning a pet. To knead (pétrir) the dough is to feel the gluten fibres forming. It relaxes me and, by producing an essential foodstuff, puts me in the spirit of swimming against the current of doom-laden news. Today, especially, It appeals to the survivalist in me.

This morning’s loaf is particularly satisfying. We’re going to get through this (both the loaf and the crisis!)

Yeast. Now there’s something that tells stories; human stories. Yeast – the microbe Saccharomyces cerevisiae – when warm and wet, digests carbohydrates such as sugar and starch turning them into alcohol (as discovered by Louis Pasteur, the clever dude who also gave us pasteurised milk…. I digress!) and carbon dioxide. Both chemicals make the bubbles in risen dough that when baked makes bread. Both chemicals have profound importance for humans. (Don’t they just!) And consider this: I take some dormant commercially produced little yeasty-beasties from my fridge. I warm them up in water and give them a huge food source in the form of flour. They binge on the starch therein giving no thought to whether this resource might be limited; they multiply and fart as they go. After a while when they’ve done their job, I cook ’em up. They die. Lovely loaf. Thanks, guys! If we were to plot their numbers in the hour that the dough took to rise, we would see a classic exponential population growth curve that, non-coincidentally, is exactly the same as the up-phase of an epidemic curve (with which we are now all so familiar!) But…. without cooking and just leaving the dough in the bowl, they would continue to multiply for a while. Then, as they run out of resources and poison themselves with their own waste products such as lactic and acetic acids, their numbers would level off and then fall. This also is non-coincidentally similar to the peak and recovery phase of the epidemic curve (which we are hoping to see soon.) The dough would eventually collapse and putrify having been overtaken by all sorts of other microbes because the refined YBs can’t cope. How about that! Yeast. Nutritional resources. Beer. Wine. Global warming. Population growth. Overcrowding. Pollution. Epidemics. All in one bowl! Perhaps that’s why I thought of making some bread this morning.

I listen to the BBC news. Few things nauseate more than a British politician stating that us natives of that soggy little Atlantic island are doing so well (presumably in comparison with other nearby nations) because we have some unique and inherent national quality for survival as evidenced by our resilience in World War II. After all, we will as usual keep calm and carry on. I wish the BBC would filter out this kind of opinion. I would love to ask this booze-faced, old-school-tied piece of baggage – for the record – if he really believes that there is some national characteristic (or even gene!!) that gives us an edge over the virus. Not wanting to admit to such beliefs he would then do the politician’s deflection from the question to how awful the situation is in other nearby nations as if this makes the case. He would then chuff off to his club – that is still open for members – for luncheon and gabble-guffaw to his pals that the French are just bloody hopeless, the Italians are going to sing it all away (well they would wouldn’t they?) and ha! ha! ha! the Germans are going to march around in step to loud military music. From my perspective and living in Switzerland, every nation has its back to the wall in the face of a unique and terrifying situation. The UK response is likely to be just as effective or just as useless as that of any of our neighbours. Sorry…. bit of a rant. Well, it is just a diary.

Today’s lunchtime balcony putting match: The Mr (me) 16/20 (80%) The Mrs 12/20 (60%). Changing to matchplay tomorrow.