I recently started reading a novel by a highly rated writer – as a matter of courtesy I shouldn’t mention the name – with a warm sense of anticipation, having read her two previous stories. And then I went off the boil. Simply because the setting for the novel was England in the very early part of this decade. And for the first 30 pages all I kept reading was the word “lockdown” and all its complications and ramifications.
Why should I have groaned at the setting and repetition of all the minutiae of that time of the COVID-19 pandemic? There is no clear explanation other than what might perhaps emerge during ten minutes of hypnosis. But I guess it was simply that I had no wish to submerge myself within a first-class work of literature that reminded me of that dreadful period so soon after it occurred. In 20 years’ time, it will be interesting to read such a story and relive the experience but from a healthy distance, recapturing the period of hardship and worry. Or even a small degree of nostalgia for the camaraderie and fellow suffering that brought communities closer together. Well, not physically of course. But well into the future. Not now thanks.
For me this is borne out by the degree of interest I would experience in a novel set in the pandemic that was probably the closest to COVID-19; and that was the Spanish Flu which ravaged the human population from 1918. Its impact was far worse than COVID-19, until it faded a couple of years later. And, worst of all, it targeted the young of the population and with substantially weaker medical facilities. COVID-19 targeted the old and medically-challenged who, let’s face it, had hitherto benefitted from decades of life. And, interestingly, while the Spanish Flu clearly started during the later part of the First World War, it didn’t emerge first in Spain, which was a neutral country in that war. The virus will have spread in the trenches of battle, a place as traumatic for human beings as anything you could imagine. Unlike countries fighting the war, which did not wish to publicise any military weakness, Spain was not afraid to admit the damage. And that gave rise to being saddled with the infamous label.
The Spanish Flu was very severe and killed 40-60 million people. Imagine the fear it must have caused, and the depressing impact of it, emerging immediately after the War; and noone with an exemption certificate. But my father, who was a boy of ten years of age when that pandemic hit the world in 1918, never mentioned it to us; not once. When we caught the flu virus during our childhood he never said “you think this is bad; the Spanish Flu was far worse!” I’m sure people were more stoic in those days, remaining careful but accepting it as one of the serious hazards of life. Yet determined to beat it. As in – we busted the enemy on the battlefield; we’ll beat this one too.
Which is exactly what happened. Spanish Flu was overcome though didn’t disappear. It’s there today, and people still catch it but because it’s now so weak they may think it’s the ordinary flu or not even notice it, let alone get tested for it. And fading, rather than disappearing, seems to be what is happening with COVID-19. Indeed, it has reappeared quite recently in the UK, and nobody feels comfortable with that. COVID leaves damage. A big mate of mine – we both do the Park Run which is now a worldwide phenomenon which anyone could have invented, but didn’t – contracted COVID in 2021 and it promptly added seven minutes to his time for the 5km run round Mbabane Club golf course in Eswatini. He’s never managed to close that gap.
If you have an interest in social history, you will enjoy fictionalized accounts of life in the challenging times of the Spanish Flu and, indeed, of the First World War itself. They won’t have had the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in use in those days, but you can bet your bottom dollar on there having been hundreds of thousands so affected. Adding to the millions killed. A great deal of fiction and non-fiction has been written about that devastating period of human history. One effect of the war, about which very little has ever been written or spoken about relating to that period, was the generation of young women in England who lost a marriage and having a family because so many young Englishmen were killed in the War. And it was in the days when there were no jobs for women. A woman’s career was in the home, cleaning, cooking, washing and caring for her husband and children. Those thousands of women at least had a life but one of utter deprivation, resigned to live without a job and a proper life, and either with their parents or in a bedsit. And for the rest of their lives. You could write a very interesting novel based on that, and as a tribute to those thousands of uncomplaining spinsters.