Look, don’t touch

Look, don’t touch

Since the barber shut, I grew a dank mop of dull, grey hair.

No, not a mop, a tangled skein. A vicious wiry spiral, resistant to any attempts by the hairbrush to tame it after restless tussles with half bitten pillow slips.

Sleep doesn’t come easy.

A yawn. Erase half remembered dreams of smiling face and ghost caresses.

Pad in bare feet, over to the laptop, slopping hot coffee down jeans, resisting the urge to rub bloodshot eyes because touching is forbidden. They feel sore, a cat o nine tails, all lashes and flashes.

Let’s shoot off a couple of Tweets. Blank bullets - less warning shots across bows; more distress flares.

Woken up at 4. Answered a couple of messages and I was touched, thought about it then no, and now it's 7.30. Derek will be thinking porridge's been cancelled.

E Mail. Spam Tray. Amazon - Payment declined, like yes of course I'll send all my credit card details but please later and phish off, bye.

Maybe a wry smirk shadows my face as they wing intangible around the globe. Featherlight. Will anyone like? Retweet? Respond? The whole world is watching. Looking but not touching.

Shock. Boris is in hospital. No, don’t think that.

Somewhere in the background, the Al Jazeera, recording, reporting. Locked down, locked in, single, solitary hearts, peering at us through screens, like they were windows into our souls. And the soothing psychologist with her prognosis of ‘without touching, we fall apart’ because it releases a chemical you see? Oh, don’t ask me about the Science, I deal in spellings. Some sort of witches’ brew; like that solution we slop onto our wrists and palms every time we remember.

Not much news on Qatar. What’s what with Doha?

And the sunlight shanks black shadowy bars through the webbed curtains, running its fingers through your grey as it rises on another day.

But, look, now, here’s life!

Picture by picture in manic dream pixels, faces appear, square by square until the screen resembles some sort of flashing pinball chessboard.

Let battle commence.

But wait. Just a quick rewind, here.

When I was told to teach via video, I had reservations. Well, you know, I always have reservations.

Oh, there was hue and cry across the teaching community. Wailing and gnashing. Unprecedented. Simply not possible. Virtual teaching? Virtually impossible.

Strange how resentment builds like a virus, isn’t it? A resistance to change, a herd immunity to originality, spark or thought, seasoned professionals using only the reptile part of the brain. Fight or flight. Understandable, though. Some of us faced this before – don’t die of ignorance, icebergs and all that.

But when the children disappeared, the classrooms emptied, and our school became now a vast, reverberating cavern where the only sound was the slight echo of footfall on tiled flooring. A sad note, that.

Or so I thought.

But here’s Rafan, grinning, all teeth and curls, peering impudently at me through the screen. That shy fellow there? Oh, that’s Muhammed Ali, ready for a twelve round dust up with metaphors; look there’s his mate, Abdullah. Nice fellah, Abdullah, quiet but excellent sense of humour – ah, yes, this one? Well, Abdelaziz of course, hasn’t even brushed his teeth by the look of him. His hair is as bedraggled as mine.

“All, right lads?” I cry in my faux cockney. It slips. My dialect and accent, I mean. Mostly I can manage a passable Standard English, with a serious tone and semi-formal register but I have been known to lapse into black country or even stray north of the border to Scotland. Well, it knows no frontiers, does it?

No, not that - dialects, accents, peoples – we’re all one, jammed together inside virtual squares, a template, looking at each other. Qatari, Indian, Lebanese, Egyptian…yes, even British.

“Yes, Mister, yes, Sir, yes, yes, yes.”

I clear my throat, “Now, lads, I’ll do the register later, I don’t know how, but we’ll muddle through it, eh? Now I must tell you, there has been…er…how can I say…some complaints about the use of the chat room. Some boys have been writing unflattering comments about our Principal, Doctor Wycherley…”

“Sir! I know who it was, sir!”

I try to look grave, but we were all young once, weren’t we? In my day, there were blackboards - big rolling screeds of chalk that the teacher would yank down with much huffing and puffing only to discover, too late and in dismay, some wag had written ‘wobble-bottom’ on the reverse side in multi coloured capitals.

I raise my eyebrows for quiet. I can do that, you know, they’re pretty impressive. Hush descends across the city. “We all know who it was, Sherlock,” I rumble, trying not to titter, “because the chat displays your name, doesn’t it?”

They hadn’t considered that.

I continue. “Now, see here. Any repetition of such rambunctious revelry and I will not only disable the chat function from my end but…” pause for effect…”bring down upon your heads such punishments that have even yet to be devised, so awful will they be.”

The silence is thunderous.

“So…let’s continue with exploring this very exciting poem, ‘IF’ by Mr Kipling.”

A square flash which indicates that someone wants to speak - Camren. Clever boy; sometimes works at the tennis during the Doha Open. “Sir? Sir?”

“Yes, Camren.”

“Doesn’t he make cakes, Sir?”

“No Camren. He does not make cakes.”

“He does, Sir. Fondant Fancies. My mum buys them.”

“That’s an entirely different Mr Kipling, Camren.”

Now here’s another flashing square and some grinning teeth. “I’ve been thinking, Sir,” says Ahmed. “If the punishment has yet to be even devised, it’s not much of one is it?”

“Not much of one what?” I sigh, rumbled by a keener mind than my own.

“Punishment, sir. Basically, it’s like saying ‘if you do this thing, then you’ll be punished with something that doesn’t exist’, Sir. Invisible.”

“Well, that may be true, but it’ll be terrible, anyway, and are you prepared to risk it?”

Well, yes, it seems. And now they’re all at the chat screen again, fighting over it, because they do like a struggle if truth be told. Shooting hoops, kicking footballs, jostling joyously, bundling over park greenery, piling on top of one another, screaming and kicking. Kings of each and every castle where a virtual scrap is better than none. It’s called growing up.

So, I disable it and continue. “Yes. If you do this thing, then this will happen boys. And, that’s what ‘IF’ is all about. It’s all conditionals. If you do this, then you’ll grow to be a man, my son.”

There is a pause and then a terrible thought. “Will we, Mister?” says a voice. “Will we grow up?”

And thirty sets of eyes look from the screen. Touching.

I’m sitting on the grey couch. Matches my hair. 

In front of me, the flatscreen and the Al Jazeera chant evening statistics in soothing susurrations like throat medicine; cool water on hot skin.

I chopped a salad earlier. Fresh tomato, cucumber, crisp lettuce and I seasoned it with rumours. If you eat garlic, if you munch raw onions, if, if, if.

Ah, what will be, will be. I’ll have mine with those sweet lamb chops from the Turkish butcher on Al Sadd Street, thank you. Some company would be nice but that would involve touch, lack of distancing when we’re locked in.

Check my tweets. Not much on the timeline, just an endless comfort chain ‘name your top ten books’ from around the globe and a message from an old friend I wish I’d spent more time with lately, but I hadn’t.

           

I don’t want to die here.

Tsk tsk. Ah, you’re not going to die, you nana. You’ll be fine. You’ve those two lads to bring up. Eat more garlic.

Does that work?

Halfway across the globe, pictures of Primrose Hill, London where people frolic like lambs and a grim reporter looks on, like a teacher. I shiver. Think of punishments so awful that have yet to even be devised. Invisible.

But look, here’s a young girl picking a flower in sheer joy at being out in the Spring sunshine, blossom of the new year, delighting in life and growth and renewal. And I’m reminded of somebody who said once, ‘for every flower that dies, a flower must surely grow.’

It won’t last forever.

The sun sets, taking with him his blank shadowy bars and as night falls, on television, our psychologist mutters something about getting in touch with ex partners, comfort and such.

So, alone, I tweet one final thought.

In times of crisis I want to touch my X, although maybe I should consider Y.