MY CONSUMPTION of media this week has been irregular and random, a thing of shreds and patches.  

I limit corona coverage and won’t watch junk, which rules out most TV — except for Devs on BBC2, excellent. I concentrate instead on live streaming and the feeling of collective consciousness, singling out a play reading of Somebody Else by Jonathan Chadwick.

With actors Laura Lake Adebisi and Ruth Lass, it’s about the relationship between a refugee and her helper, and it has great emotional truth as each actor zooms in at us, as if we were the other character.

The intimacy of that was extraordinarily right for this time of lockdown and really made the best of Zoom — unlike the National Theatre’s live streaming, which I’ve experienced as theatre coming through the wrong medium. Stage theatre, like love, needs pheromones.  

Best bit of radio drama was catching the end of the Today programme and a Matt Hancock “work in progress” interview, with Nick Robinson interrupting him yet again. “Please, PLEASE let me finish,” said the Sec of State, his voice cracking with latent rage.  

Robinson said that he’d interrupted to make a point about clarity. Yet MH was actually being very clear about not being able to be… clear.

And then a feature on Beethoven’s 250th, or rather his ninth, and I thought I heard — or misheard — one of the musicians call it Beethoven ninth sympathy (read that again please). As the great isolate and humanitarian, Beethoven would have understood what we’re going through. This symphony is one of the most defiant and joyful pieces of art on the planet.

I washed my hands in my red leather gloves. Oh well.

Eastertime, I enjoyed listening to religious leaders sounding like bolsheviks: peace, land and bread and all that (well, not land, as the church still owns so much of it) but the drive of the Easter messages were clear — stop wars, feed the people.  

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s address from his kitchen was a nice bit of theatre. I thought the dresser looked like a triptych altarpiece.

Meanwhile, I rearrange stuff in a house that used to be a social space, chairs that no-one else will sit on are shoved under the table. At one time, a long, long time ago, I would only tidy up if people were coming round, yet here I am, being what my mum would have called house-proud.  Shouldn’t there be a furniture polish called Self-Estsheen?    

Things take longer to do as the brain resets itself but then, there is more to do. Or is it the other way around? More attention is paid as time spools out. My fingers are greener and I’m looking at objects for recycling in the same way a Filipino fisherman might once have looked at a shell.   

Is this needs must? Or a new creative way of living? May others discover that too.

I loved this: “My today’s all right” from 99-year-old Captain Tom walking round and round his house to raise funds for the NHS. Er yes, but shouldn’t the government be doing that?  
I don’t want to be uncharitable but the media politics around this are very dodgy.  

I imagine Captain Tom badges of merit, as folk are asked to fundraise for what is their right. I heard on Radio 4 today from a football pundit that “the sport will resume after the NHS steers the country to safety.” Such clarity. We mustn’t let “them” privatise any of it.

There is an ancient Vedic saying: “The present is the future in the making.” And, for social and political change to occur, vastly more people need to experience the happiness of giving to people rather than of making money.  

The organisation 38 Degrees take its name from the angle required to start an avalanche. It only takes a slight tip. As I file this piece, the news out there is unbelievably awful. I want to weep.  

Jan Woolf is writer-in-residence at Pentameters Theatre in London and her new collection of short stories Stormlight is published by Riversmeet Press. This article first appeared in International Times, internationaltimes.it.