Afloat, adrift and sometimes in tune: Of Death Chants, Lockdowns and Military Waltzes Part 1

A Fellini inspired Casanova

Casanova, Trifenia del Fellini-Satyricon & a mad bishop from Roma

"Hi dad, are you ok? Have you been caught up in the lockdown?"

This was the message I received last week the day after arriving in Venice for Carnevale di Venezia 2020. Until that point I knew nothing about the spread of COVID-19 in Italy and had not heard that there were whole towns in the north of the country where people were confined to quarters for most of the time. It was a shock. The previous few days had been much of a whirlwind in France, whizzing up and down the A41 to The Divine Miss M's apartment where she and P had already been working on their masks and costumes for weeks. After I arrived from England, P had still been teaching during the day and we were working on our costumes and masks at night, usually not getting home till three in the morning. Although I had only had one week of this I felt exhausted. Keeping up with the news was not much of a priority.

Naturally, we turned to the web to find out what was going on. One person in our shared apartment on the fifth floor above one of the smaller canals near San Marco switched on the television and turned to the BBC news channel. Looking for real news is where the problems began. Finding hard information was difficult. The reports we found were highly coloured and sensational. It sounded as though we were all about to die. Within the hour the reports came through that the authorities were ending carnevale that evening, two days earlier than planned, stopping all sporting fixtures and concerts and even church services including funerals! The news was apocalyptic.

Would the weeks and months spent toiling away on our beautiful creations be for nothing? Of course, if the emergency turned out to be a real thing, we would have no choice but to comply with whatever we were being told to do. Unfortunately, no one anywhere seemed to be equipped with definitive instructions. Nature abhorring that vacuum, people began preparing their own scenes. Under the circumstances the best we felt able to do was to dress up and go out in our finery for possibly the last time. That was what we did and carnevale closed that night, Sunday. Like ghosts we slipped through the nearly deserted piazzas and along the quayside. The public were staying away in droves. Sunday evening during Carnevale should not look like this. We wafted by little huddles of polizia, carabinieri, esercito and what I took to be private security operators. These latter were the ones who had been issued with some pretty impressive protective face masks. Not one member of any of these armed security forces was interested in us, breaking curfew or not.

As the days went on more information became available, as well as more evidence of misinformation. It was difficult sorting wheat from chaff, sheep from goats. I should have been back in the UK two days ago and preparing hard for gigs coming up tomorrow and Saturday. I had to make a decision so, last week, I contacted the organisers and withdrew from the bookings. I also had to turn away a last minute request to lead a drum workshop yesterday with a group of adults with learning disabilities. Many of them also lived with conditions that would render them an at-risk group if I did turn out to be a carrier of the disease. We had an NHS nurse in our apartment. She is the sister of one of the founder members of our French costume group and works in a hospital on the south coast of England in A&E. She talked a lot of common sense while we were struggling to work it all out. It was very helpful having her with us.

I hate letting people down. If I make a commitment to do something I do it. Of course there has to be a priority made to protect people from contracting a vile contagion, but there is a balance to be struck. I was in Venice. The closest place in lockdown was an hour away on the other side of the region of Veneto. Admittedly an hour is not long as a virus ticks, but far enough away, I would imagine, to be less dangerous than taking five trains back to England - each a sealed tube with hundreds of unknown travel companions. However the level of public concern has been so great that any knowledge that I had been to Italy would soon spread at a gig and someone would be almost certain to make an issue of it. I did not want the rest of Friday's band, or the the organisers of any of the gigs, to come under fire for me being there. That was the reason I pulled out of those bookings. If I had to go into quarantine anyway, I might as well do it in France, where I would at least be warm and where I would have some company. The difficult thing about making the choice I did is that, as time passes, the number of cases in both France and the UK is rising. Who knows how greatly increased my chances of contracting the virus will be in a fortnight's time on the journey home? Who knows how the quarantine instructions will change during the coming fortnight.

The instructions to UK travellers from the end of last week until today have been that anyone who had been in the northern area of Italy does not need to go into self-imposed isolation unless they have the symptoms of Covid-19 namely, a cough, shortness of breath or a temperature. In addition, anyone who has been in any of the locked down towns should also quarantine themselves. What I have chosen to do goes beyond the requirement and is, or was, done with perhaps an over-developed sense of responsibility, but with the best of intentions. Today, the Northern Italy-plus-symptoms area has (according to BBC news) been expanded to include the whole of Italy. Today the first patient in the UK has died. This was an older person in Reading who had been in and out of hospital for some time with other problems. This is, of course, very sad for all who were close to that person. However, in the larger picture it is still fewer deaths than the number who have died from influenza this winter and according to the Department for Work and Pensions, certainly fewer than the sixty disabled people who have died each month after having a personal independence payment (PIP) claim rejected. I know I am not comparing like with like, but I quote those figures for comparison. Which circumstance connected with death is getting all the attention at the moment?

Covid-19 is a new disease in the same way that SARS was once a new disease or, in the 1980s, AIDS. Misinformation breeds hysteria. Hysterical public reaction looks for people to blame. I have seen reports of racist attacks on people perceived to be "Chinese". Wuhan is the city in China where the disease was first identified. I believe that while we do need to make ourselves aware of the issues surrounding Covid-19, we do not need to lose our humanity in order to protect ourselves. In a country that has been split and polarised by an unnecessary political situation since 2016 the United Kingdom does not need another excuse to hurt fellow citizens. I have seen close up how harsh responses from one friend to another can be made when each carries a different perception of how we are responding to this disease. Now is not the time to turn on each other. I want to talk to my friends and make sure they are okay. If I start lecturing them or judging them somebody stop me.

This was supposed to be about carnevale. Here's a picture of how my costume and mask turned out. This is the first time in three carnevales I had made such a large contribution to my mask (which was moulded to my head from plaster) and the crown. Our inspiration this time was the films of Federico Fellini who would have been one hundred this year. P was one of the mad bishops from Roma, the Divine Miss M was a character from Satyricon while I was ... Casanova!