SAINTS PRESERVE US

Questionable Awareness

Bristol was once an important manufacturing centre and a major English port. The speed and bigness of modern times quickly rendered its port, situated on the River Avon, inland from the Atlantic Ocean, and its inefficient factories obsolete. Too small. Too backward. The city thrives once more in a newer guise, as a university town and a hub for Britain’s insurance and IT industries.

My brother and I had spent the day traipsing around Bristol, trying to trace our grandfather’s footsteps in his hometown. We tried to imagine the city as it might have been in 1910 just before he booked steerage passage to Canada, his birthplace in decline, its slave trade heyday more than a century earlier. On Shaftesbury Avenue, a sloped, curving street of ancient terrace homes with triple chimney pots and crooked TV antennae, Bob said, “I don’t think Papa Moore was born next to a mosque.” No, just a few doors up.

We continued our investigations into the evening, mostly in pubs, notably the Robin Hood whose publican locked us inside after last orders and kept serving us. I still have the t-shirt. On our walk back to our lodgings a silver, autumn squall erupted, the likes of which I’ve never seen. We took shelter in the lee of a shallow doorway. We just stood there getting wet. Our view was a public green space, a park laid out before an immense grey neo-classical building. I don’t know if it was the town hall, a library or a university building. A huge banner was strung across its front, at the apex of the Doric columns: MAKE POVERTY HISTORY. I tried to light a cigarette through the waterfall. Bob contemplated the banner. Finally, he turned to me and said, “That’s probably not such a great idea.” Bob was a literal man.

Ann and I sat beside each other at the kitchen counter in the discombobulating Monday morning twilight of Sunday’s clock switch back to Mountain Standard Time. Our coffee mugs were brimming. Ann had the front section of The Globe and Mail before her while I had the business and the sports. We’d switch at second cups, our heads and our two cups steaming. The sound system in the living room was on: our background noise was CBC Radio One. The announcer said that November is Family Violence Month. Ann wound up to slapstick smack me like Moe going after Curly or Larry. “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time.” Yes, we laughed. We will hold hands in Hell.

Like every human being I have a heart. So far it’s all natural, no machinery or pig parts. For an organ about the size and weight of my left fist, I admit sometimes, some days or even some weeks, it feels awfully heavier than it should. And it’s been broken a few times but there were never any fragments strewn about. I store those pieces in a secret chamber near my left ventricle. Most people have some room to spare in their hearts. However, when Heart and Stroke Month arrives I don’t feel obligated to collect the set, have both.

And what about Diabetes Month? Are we all supposed to get it? Is it a contest or a competition? And who are the sponsors?

The cause marketing machine, complete with its poor phrasing, solicits for popular pathogens. Lesser known diseases are generally designated a day inside of a mainstream month. There’s always space for lupus in Movember. Honestly, I’d like to inflict a few of these one-in-a-million afflictions upon some bad actors around the globe and one or two closer to home although I guess that’s not the intent of a charitable fund-raising day of awareness. Still, even the simplest message can be twisted to its unintended opposite and, anyway, those horrible symptoms have got to hurt.

Monday evening Ann and I went to see Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, one of our favourite working bands, right up there with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. The show was a celebration of their twenty-fifth anniversary, performed Monday two years behind schedule for obvious reasons. Much like a pox, the coronavirus is leaving residual scars. The medical and scientific establishments agree that such a thing as long covid exists though its nature remains elusive.

The pandemic has been a grim teacher. Its staggering direct and indirect death toll has graphically illustrated that many of those we entrust with leadership and societal responsibility don’t know fuck all about many fucking things. As the dreadful aftermath unfolds, I’m certain some well-meaning person is contemplating some sort of benevolent cash grab memorial. Maybe something like Long Covid Month? And in the misguided spirit of ramping poverty up to a previously unheard of historic level, I’m praying they pick February.       

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of pedantry since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.