Day 11: Chemical farts
And FFP2 underwear
Another sunny day, and my cactus is dying. Don’t worry, it’s not the first one, so unlike pandemics I am better prepared to deal with this equally grave situation. Apparently tomorrow it will rain, and I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. But it’s Friday, so I should be probably be happy, because my plans to go out won’t be ruined (because I don’t plan on going out), and we also get to stream another live DJ set to our now also locked down friends in other countries, and have a lie-in at the end of it. One of the blessings of working from home is that lie-ins are still a thing, and one to be cherished.
Today was no meetings day at work, which means I only had five meetings. We had lunch, watched another episode of The US Office and I spent some more time producing Vitamin D on the balcony. The neighbour played his 6pm tune, this time opting for Con Te Partirò. I missed most of it, because I was in one of five meetings, but the main moshpit of the old ladies on balconies across the road was still active, so it was another successful performance. I can’t wait to see what else he has in store, and the great thing is, he’ll get to play at least another fifteen songs until all of this is over.
The number of cases in Italy is still not going down and is predicted to keep increasing in the coming days, mostly because of all the people who thought it was a smart idea to leave Lombardy in hoards when the lockdown was announced, only to take the virus as a souvenir to their families down south. This was about as smart as being told not to drink and jump in strangers’ cars, yet doing it anyway, which I may have done one time in Paris, but that’s a different story.
I keep getting loads of questions from friends who don’t live in Italy on whether we are still allowed to go out for a walk or not, and the honest answer is: who knows. The Italians managed to leave a grey area even in their strict lockdown rules, which is simultaneously charming and alarming. However, the social stigma that is associated with it at the moment is the same as farting loudly in public, so I would say everyone avoids it unless it’s getting really, really uncomfortable.
Speaking of farting, apparently farting can transmit diseases, but only if you are not covering your bum. From the relevant research: "Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed.” Though this may sound like a Monty Python quote, it was actually the result of scientific work, which makes me wonder how this question popped up to begin with.
The moral of the story is: you should keep your pants on when you leave the house, but it’s better if you don’t leave the house at all, mostly because you never know whose unprotected fart you are inhaling. This is probably why UK nightclubs were among the first to close down following the first confirmed cases; if you’ve never been inside a chemical fart storm in a confined space, then consider yourself lucky.
In general, life in lockdown is turning out to be ok, as long as you have a working internet connection and a camera to socialise with and to prove to others that you are not slowly disintegrating. I wonder what else people are using their cameras for these days. The Pornhub marketing team is definitely having the time of its life. Though the company is obviously capitalising on everyone’s inability to date (though the issue probably extends beyond the physical ban), they are also turning out to be everyone’s Boris Johnson: promising a happy ending and giving you something to laugh about, though at the end you will probably just end up feeling deeply sorry for yourself.
At least, it could always be worse. We could be trapped in an otherwise pleasant four-star hotel, where we have to change our own bedsheets and eat a dry toasted sandwich every day. True quarantine story. It’s essentially like prison, but with a nice shower and an orthopedic mattress, where your only salvation is to say you are feeling ill so you can momentarily get out in the real world, and get transferred to an already heavily-infected hospital (Cyprus, I’m looking at you).
This is starting to feel like that one time I got stuck in Heathrow during the not-so-great snow of 2010. It was the week before Christmas, and a young international crowd had gathered at the airport on Saturday morning to make their way home. The snow that started to gently fall at 9am had developed into a snowstorm by 10, when we had already boarded the plane. Yet, heroic pilots refused to accept the fact that this was going to go on for a while. At 6pm, they let us off the plane, by which point all modes of transport back to London were shut and our only option was to spend the night at the airport and hope the snow would subside.
We thought we were going to be stuck there for so long, we bought a Christmas cake.
In similar fashion, I have a bottle of Serragghia (the foodie world’s natural wine of choice) in the fridge and we’ve been meaning to open it in the middle of quarantine, but we don’t know when that will actually be.
Lunch: Piadina (basically an Italian wrap, because everything eventually needs to have an Italian name) with cheese, prosciutto cotto, cavolo nero and tomatoes, with the fusion element of homemade tahini sauce.
Song of the day: Apparently no one is streaming music these days, so… Video killed the radio star