Trumpet on Toast

18.03.2022

Trumpet on Toast

I hope all’s well with you in these…interesting times.

I arrived in the UK on Monday at 5am, on a flight where the tone of passengers seemed subdued. It was a packed flight on which, it turned out, more than a few people had cut-short their extended stay, or holiday in Australia, to rush back to the “safety” of their homeland. The Norwegian woman seated beside me—an after-school carer—was returning to her small town outside Oslo, where her employer at the time of her decision to return had already reduced her duties to workplace cleaning, her young charges ordered into home isolation.

Perhaps it was the heightening of sensitivity, but what coughing and sneezing was evident on the flight, took on a more profound meaning in the still-developing circumstances. Masks were being worn by only a very few passengers, and British Airways cabin crew seemed to be making extra efforts to keep the mood up. Announcements from the flight deck were more frequent than I’d experienced on previous flights. The hubbub of passenger conversation most definitely quieted on these occasions. The Captain’s note on the critical nature of hand washing rang out like a klaxon.

I’ve been writing this variously while riding a bus to sort a SIM card, get cash from an ATM, and while waiting for my lunch to be served at a local cafe.

It’s good quick service at Marina's in Willesden Green on a grey, icy day (10 degrees, feels like 5 degrees), and the quality of my haloumi and charred pepper burger is matched by a generously large cup of hot black coffee. But it’s not just my belly that needs comforting. The cafe has only modest trade, and is surprisingly quiet, with music set to conversation-level—a rare treat. The Russian waitress goes about her work efficiently.

A tall fellow in his late-twenties wanders in. He remains behind his sunglasses and strikes up with the barista, whom, it appears, he’s acquainted with. And very soon his loud US accent interrupts our convivial setting. We learn that his circumstances—as with everybody’s circumstances today—have been infected. But he’s intent on making a stand (for something or other), and all of Marina’s customers will hear about it. He’s been destabilised, it seems, and is thrashing about to these sudden new times. In his opinion, the problem, the whole problem is that the POTUS isn’t being given a chance! He’s done so much good stuff!… A crisp chip on my fork goes limp. And now into this greyness steps up a dead parrot, to take the reins of this tall-talker, and sets him off on a rant: “It’s the media”; “It’s the ignorant” (oh, brother); “It’s“… ”It’s“… My haloumi burger objects to the chill wind blowing on it from two metres away. His friend at the coffee machine is trying quietly, earnestly, to give him the hint that this is not cool, but cannot bring himself to say it straight to his visiting pal, and order him to cease and desist.

I tell my lunch to wait, and address the Trumpet, letting him know it’s OK to have an opinion, but not here, where I’d prefer to eat my lunch in peace. After several seconds of silence, he attempts a negotiation. Diplomatically (those who know me are likely laughing now), I inform him that this isn’t a negotiation, and that I and everybody else here at Marina’s Café would prefer he departed. Of course, since even before embarking on this course, and through the whole of this event––so far only a matter of thirty seconds, or so––I am aware of the can-of-worms I’ve opened up, a can I did not lightly take a hold of, or so I thought.

The other day, a friend said "Your grandparents were called to war, and now you’re being called to sit on the couch. You can do this!”… Indeed. But anybody can be rattled, especially the vulnerable, and my sense now of this fellow in the cafe is that he is very likely feeling vulnerable, if not already acutely affected by these new and unexpected circumstances that we are all in. And now, here, hiding out in public behind his sunglasses, he might just simply have been hoping to get a sympathetic hearing from his friend who makes coffee, but who was too busy working. The tall guy may simply have been calling for help, although I didn’t come to that thought until after he had walked out and I, after the fact, had spent some time thinking it through. The thing is, I, too, may have been rattled, and, sadly, did not realise it. The fact is, I might have handled it another way. Perhaps, I ought to have.

A week before departure, one of my clients had cancelled a project, and recalled staff from across the globe to stage emergency logistics for his company’s operations. In a grim intonation, he had said to me: “This thing could knock us over…stone dead.”

My flight for Ireland leaves in 24-hours. That’s the plan because it's printed on an itinerary. But all plans now are vulnerable.

Look after yourself, and your neighbour, if they need it.

Cheers from over here.

A face mask lies on an upholstered seat.

TA