When the World Wore Masks. Chapter 7 Standing With Harry

Dear Dad:

After my release from the hospital, I was marooned. My apartment was my deserted island. Those first weeks and months of my recovery were an experience of utter desolation. Covid stormed across society with the fury of a never-ending blizzard that forced everyone to bunker down alone or in small units to wait out the storm. I was physically and emotionally distant from others when the pandemic locked down society. I lived in a monochrome reality because all I had for companionship was the television, a streaming music service and memories of a more normal past. At the beginning of Covid and for months afterwards, anyone not part of a household was compelled to keep six feet apart from others as per government and health regulations. You were supposed to confine yourself to home, except for necessary activities like exercise, trips to the doctor or shopping forays. 

I didn’t really mind at that point being alone because I was still too sick to venture outside of my apartment for long. Going outside of my apartment during those early days seemed as precarious to me as a spacewalk for an astronaut. I was frightened of catching covid. I was frightened that I’d shit myself because for some time after my return from the hospital I was going to the toilet up to twenty times a day. I only left my apartment for a few reasons. Emptying my rubbish down the shoot at the end of my hallway was one of them because otherwise, the apartment reeked from the stench of disposable wipes covered in my excrement. At first, I did my laundry in the bathtub. It was only towels from my frequent baths to clean myself and underwear because I needed to change them at least eight times a day. But in time, I despaired of the constant wet damp smell emanating from drying towels and underwear. 

I decided it was worth the risk of Covid to do my laundry in one of the machines located on the lower floor of my apartment. I tried to do my laundry during times when I believed other tenants wouldn’t be using the laundry room. It physically hurt to carry my laundry down the stairs to the ground floor, and I was concerned that as my wounds were freshly healing that the strain would produce a hernia. When I did encounter other tenants in the laundry room many were still in denial about Covid and refused to wear a mask. Even when I told them I was recovering from cancer surgery most just shrugged it off as “my problem,” not theirs.

When I began to run out of my heart medications, I had no choice but to leave the safety of my apartment and shuffle slowly up the street to my pharmacy. There, I suffered a panic attack because I was not used to being in close company with strangers and the incessant news reports about Covid’s spread were dire and left little room for optimism. Physically weak after my surgery. I was terrified that being in the company of others was like a game of Russian roulette. In the proximity of others, I was as anxious as the mad medieval king Charles the Sixth, who believed he was made from glass. 

During those early months of Covid, I wasn’t alone in my fear of being in the company of others. Most people were then fearful. There was no vaccine. Ordinary human interactions like brushing up too close to someone, being in a building with poor circulation, and laughing among people without masks could put you quickly in an ICU if you encountered someone with the virus.

The only people not afraid of Covid were those who took their news from Facebook and Reddit conspiracy chats that stoked terror about governments seeking to enslave their populations through lockdown measures for a hoax virus. Sadly, some people who; I once called friends became vociferous anti-mask and anti-vaccine proponents. I can’t rationalise this rank stupidity because the illogic of the mob is beyond my comprehension. I just don’t empathise with dumb thinking. A lot of the blowback against coronavirus restrictions stemmed from people’s anger, selfishness, and disappointments created long before the pandemic by inequalities in our economic system. These endemic dissatisfactions were channelled by businesses and right-wing political forces throughout Covid to create societal discord and chaos. You see, compliance with lockdowns and government programs that paid workers to stay home was an attack on the profits of the 1%. The great fear of the rich was that society could become more equal due to the pandemic meaning their wealth was under threat. The entitled were terrified that covid would usher in an actual political reset where workers saw real wage growth and an end to the housing crisis.

Since the era of Thatcher and Reagan, ordinary people were wound up by politicians and much of the news media to believe that socialism destroys prosperity and relocates ordinary workers to a drab life without prospects or material comforts. It is a lie and the working class from your generation knew this because they benefited from socialism in 1945 when Britain rebuilt itself for their benefit as well as the benefit of the middle class through public healthcare, housing, and free post-secondary education. 

But most of your generation is dead, so we forgot; the lessons you taught us. Nothing proves better how led by the nose the average citizen is today than the results of the 2019 British General Election. The electors stuck with the Tories despite nine years of harsh austerity, Brexit, and the politics of division because Labour’s message under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of economic and social inclusion was framed by the news media as unrealistic or the socialism of Venezuela. More to the point, voting for a Labour under a Corbyn premiership was equated by the press and pundits as either unpatriotic or even anti-Semitic owing to the views of a small minority of party members whose racism had not been properly dealt with by the leadership. The animosity against Labour and Corbyn during that election was hysterical and generated not by facts but by a well-fed media class. 

During that election, I manned, for a day, a Labour information booth on the high street of a small town in Lancashire. There, I observed- a hell of a lot of anger from working- and middle-class residents against Labour fuelled by general ignorance of Corbyn’s politics or economic goals. On that day, I encountered a man around my age. He went out of his way to approach me at that booth to give me a bollocking. At the end of his tirade, he spat out of his mouth words that were as rancid as meat that had gone off. “I’ve got nothing. So, fuck you all; I am voting for the conservatives.” 

I wondered then what could build such anger in a person. I don’t have that rage to destroy others because my life didn’t turn out as planned. Yet I encountered many people during that election who had the urge to vote for the extreme politics of the Tories, not because they thought it would bring about a better country for them but because it would exact revenge on those they believed had destroyed their ambitions for a good life. I suppose- it all comes down to whether you understand that love, even if it is gone out the door and will never return, ennobles us. 

As I had no one in those months after my cancer operation to urge me on, I did it myself- by capturing our past and setting it down on paper. I told myself that I would struggle to endure, no matter what obstacles were placed before me, if it meant my efforts allowed others to learn and understand from our trials and triumphs. Survival for me was about ensuring our work and lives weren’t easily forgotten. 

I figured if I kept you alive after Peter died by having you tell me the story of your youth, I could do the same for myself by putting down on paper; the story of our family and Harry’s Last Stand. It was the purpose I needed to overcome the emotional austerity covid produced while recovering from this wretched cancer.

***********

When our aeroplane arrived from Glasgow, Toronto was covered in a late spring snowfall. It clung delicately to the sides of buildings, trees and the pavements like icing sugar. 

When we arrived home, our apartment was heavy with dust and memories of our rapid departure from it after Pete died. I made us a cup of tea, prepared a light meal, and changed the sheets on your bed. When you went to sleep, I took a shower, and while hot water rained down on my tired body, I began to cry in terror at what faced us. I had no solid idea as to; how we could alter the trajectory of our lives because it was heading for more tragedy. 

After you were sufficiently recovered from your blood clot in Portugal, I informed you that our finances were inadequate but not yet catastrophic. I said there were two ways to dig ourselves out of this situation.

Thank you for reading this excerpt from Standing with Harry a memoir on how Harry Leslie Smith became the World’s Oldest Rebel. As always, thank you for reading because I really need your help this month. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. This month is proving to be real scramble to get next months together. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John