Beat the Devil (2021) - full transcript

I'm waking...

and I'm trying to wash...

the taste of sewage...

out of my mouth.

It isn't easy...

to do.

My doctor...

had warned me...

I might lose...

my sense of taste...

and smell.

They say...

it's a common symptom.

I don't have that symptom.

I have a different symptom.

Everything tastes of sewage.

When I go to the tap

at five in the morning

to drink the fresh water...

all I can taste is sewage.

Maybe I'm not keeping up

with developments,

but I haven't yet seen

this symptom listed as common.

When I ask questions

of medical professionals,

I'm getting used to the answer,

We don't yet know.

A couple of weeks before,

sometime in early March,

a piece of bad news arrived

wrapped in protein.

On Monday, I'd gone into the

editing room off Oxford Circus

to help deal with episode two

of Roadkill,

a new TV series I've written

about a Conservative politician

who is forward-looking,

intelligent,

charismatic and popular.

It's not based

on anyone in real life.

Television screenwriters

will tell you

that in any four-part structure,

episode two is always

the most difficult.

This one has severe bruising

from a producers' pile-on,

with a lot of people

from all over the place

giving contradictory notes.

The result is a bugger's muddle.

I've become convinced

the whole thing will benefit

from my mature

and steadying hand.

All cutting rooms are foetid.

Space is at a premium

in the West End,

and the complex machinery

thrums ominously warm,

not enough to fry an egg,

but maybe to coddle one.

The three of us -

director, editor and I -

squeeze into the attic space

and do an honourable day's work.

At some point, the director,

Michael Keillor,

a strong, rangy young man

from Dundee,

with Billy Connolly hair,

makes us all

a welcome cup of tea.

We share a plate of biscuits.

On Tuesday,

Michael rings to tell me

that the previous night,

without warning,

when he got home,

he collapsed.

And this morning

he can't move...

and he can't breathe.

This thing is kicking around

like I've swallowed

a Catherine Wheel.

I don't know from day to day

what to expect.

As soon as Michael told me

he had got it,

I knew I had to self-isolate.

But first,

I had to come to my studio

to take home my work.

I noticed,

as soon as I started walking,

that I was...

air hungry.

Uh-oh.

It's that quick.

Already I'm...

I'm not breathing so well.

From the little I've read,

I've understood

that this is a disease

which attacks the lungs.

Whatever happens, people say,

don't let it go to your lungs.

Even I, who know nothing,

know that we have

five vital signs.

At some point, probably

researching some play or film -

that's the only way

I learn anything -

I picked them up by heart.

Temperature, heart rate,

blood pressure, respiratory rate

and oxygen saturation -

that's the measure of how much

oxygen the blood is carrying.

In a normal person,

it's around 100%.

So, when it drops below 100,

when the blood isn't carrying

enough oxygen to the lung...

you start to worry.

Except, and this is

where things get weird,

doctors are already noticing

that with this virus

the rules don't apply.

Doctors normally feel compelled

to resort to ventilators

when patients have

oxygen saturation counts

in the eighties,

because by then

they are gasping for air.

Only with this disease,

they're not.

One doctor in New York

has taken a picture of a woman

lying on her belly

with oxygen saturation of 54,

and she's chattering away

on her mobile phone.

What the hell is going on?

People who should look ill

are looking fine,

and nobody understands why.

There's no correlation

between oxygen saturation

and how much oxygen

is reaching the vital organs.

What the fuck?

Another doctor

is quoted as saying,

The question is

whether this vital sign

we've been relying on

for decades

has been lying to us.

He adds, It's very humbling

in the 21st century

with all the scientific

advances we've made

and we just don't really know

the answer.

OK, so it may be humbling

for the medics,

but for me and people like me,

a better word is alarming.

It doesn't resemble

any other disease,

says another doctor.

You have to go back to HIV/AIDS

to find a virus

so little understood.

Mm.

I mooch around our house

for a couple of days,

pretending to work,

but by Friday

I'm feeling really terrible.

In the pageant

of random symptoms

which will soon follow,

there's only one symptom

that will remain permanent

throughout.

And that's exhaustion.

By nightfall,

I've crawled into bed

and forgotten what energy is.

At the beginning,

the illness isn't too bad -

some coughing and a weird

furriness around my lungs.

I've also lost the willpower

to do anything at all.

But then, I'm thinking,

well, that can be quite nice.

At this stage,

I'm looking forward

to what you might call

a Platonic illness -

lots of black-and-white

war films in the afternoon

with Noel Coward in white shorts

pretending to be

Lord Mountbatten,

rallying the men

and shooting at submarines,

while my wife Nicole brings me

hot lemon, honey and ginger.

My GP, Jonathan Sheldon,

has begun to Facetime me

twice a day,

though he says he can tell

much more from my voice

than from my appearance.

Because I'm confused

by the mildness of the onset,

I say to him,

Well, maybe I haven't got it.

He replies darkly,

Oh, you've got it.

But the question is,

what have I got?

A third of the patients admitted

to hospital with Covid-19 die.

And half of those admitted

to intensive care don't make it.

But what exactly

are they dying of?

This question isn't as simple

as it seems.

The rush to put people

on ventilators

is already slowing.

With this disease,

ventilators aren't doing

the job they're meant to do.

Blood is coming into the lungs

without much oxygen,

and then it's leaving

without much oxygen.

What's the point?

And people are having to stay

on ventilators

far longer than normal.

Doctors are becoming aware

that a lot of people

who go on ventilators

may never come off.

In fact, Covid-19 seems to be

a sort of dirty bomb,

thrown into the body

to cause havoc.

A lot of patients are actually

dying of kidney failure.

There's muscle inflammation

in nearly everybody.

In some cases,

patients are delirious

or suffering

inflammation of the brain.

But all this is less pervasive

than the blood clotting.

Beverley Hunt,

a Professor of Thrombosis -

I didn't know

there was such a thing -

at Kings College, London,

is telling us that she's noticed

an awful lot of sticky blood.

In fact, she's seeing

the stickiest blood

of her career.

And when you've got

sticky blood, she says,

you're much more prone

to having deep vein thrombosis

and pulmonary embolism,

which is when one

of the deep vein thromboses

travels around and blocks

the blood supply to the lungs,

which adds to the problem

of pneumonia.

Professor Hunt

uses an unexpected phrase.

It's almost medieval

in what we're seeing.

After five days in bed,

I get up and do something

phenomenally stupid.

I reach for the wok to make

Nicole and me Chinese lunch.

My whole family love

my chicken in black bean sauce

with bean sprouts.

It's my set piece.

So that's what I do,

in my dressing gown,

in the kitchen,

to prove that I'm putting Covid

behind me.

Nicole even takes a photo

for WhatsApp.

But I must have misremembered

the recipe,

because this is the first time

it's ever tasted of sewage.

From the first mouthful

I'm wondering

who made this godawful muck?

And the fact

that two hours later

I am rolling around in agony,

rushing to the lavatory,

spluttering,

coughing and groaning,

suggests that the disease

has just been waiting

for a beansprout cue

to get its notorious

second wind.

On the Friday

when I first went to bed,

the Prime Minister,

Boris Johnson,

has made the first

of two decisive interventions,

which will take the whole

United Kingdom towards lockdown.

Later, his allies in the press

will claim that

critics of his performance

are enjoying the benefit

of hindsight.

Not me.

From the moment the pandemic

was headed this way,

the Prime Minister scares me

because I keep thinking,

Johnson doesn't quite seem

on top of this.

He has spent the middle of

February on a twelve-day holiday

among the 530 acres

of mixed woodland at Chevening -

time, it later turns out,

divided between celebrating

his girlfriend's pregnancy,

negotiating the final details

of his most recent divorce,

and skipping National Security

emergency meetings.

He leaves it until 23rd March

reluctantly to announce

the full measures.

He seems to be struggling

with his own instincts.

I do accept that what

we're doing is extraordinary.

We are taking away

the ancient, inalienable right

of free-born people of the

United Kingdom to go to the pub,

and I can understand

how people feel about that.

Well, in fact, of course,

I hardly need point out,

no such right exists.

It's a piece of

journalistic invention.

Inns and public houses have been

regulated in the kingdom

since the 15th century.

A friend of mine, a journalist,

once said to me,

I'm a journalist.

I like journalists.

But, Christ,

I'd never put a journalist

in charge

of running the country.

It's on the evening

of Chinese lunch

that my regulator goes crazy.

Since neither Nicole and I

are confident

of successfully

using a thermometer,

we assume

that my bedtime reading

of 40 degrees and then some

is down to the thermometer

not having been used for years.

But then, when I wake

in the middle of the night,

not in a puddle,

but in a lake of sweat -

I have to change

both pyjamas and sheets -

we decide

maybe it was 40 after all.

It feels like it.

Nicole has thus far

defied medical advice.

We're meant to sleep

in separate rooms, but we don't.

We share a bathroom, too.

She's convinced

she's indestructible.

She always refers to her mother

dying too soon,

and she lived to 102.

Toward dawn,

my fever has headed dramatically

in the opposite direction,

and I start to shake

with Arctic cold.

Not even extra bedclothes,

two thick pullovers

and a hot water bottle

are doing anything to help.

But I can't help feeling

maybe Nicole is pushing her luck

with her own immunity

to this virus

when she climbs on top of me,

stretches her whole body

against mine and says,

Don't worry, I'll get you warm.

My wife doesn't seem

to have grasped

the notion of social distancing.

So...

unknowingly, we've slipped

into the mad phase,

and it will be with me

for the next eleven days.

Mad meaning any symptom

can appear at any time.

One day it's conjunctivitis,

next day it's diarrhea.

Then it's coughing.

Then it's friendly herpes.

But just as my illness

enters its mad phase,

so does

the Conservative government.

They're exquisitely timed

to happen together.

The problems in the UK start

when politicians fail

to use the space

granted by the westward spread

of the virus

to make preparation

for its arrival.

On 12th March,

even Jeremy Hunt, a former

Tory Health Minister himself,

calls the government's

lack of action

surprising and concerning.

The country remains

mysteriously open

to visitors from viral centres

like Italy and Spain,

who pour in at airports

unchecked and unquarantined.

At a National Security meeting,

also on 12th March,

the government

is still indulging

their more fanciful advisors.

They have been flirting

with a policy of herd immunity -

the happy-go-lucky notion that

if the most vulnerable among us

sheltered and hid indefinitely,

it might be possible

for everyone else

to carry on

and take their chances.

Not until the very day,

16th March,

that I contract the disease -

and now

this is a happy chance -

do our rulers realise

that although the theory

of herd immunity

is conveniently allowing them

to let mass gatherings

like the Cheltenham Races

go ahead,

it may unfortunately one day

lead to 250,000 deaths.

The government

immediately throws itself

into a desperate U-turn

by opting instead for

a conspicuously late lockdown.

No wonder I'm feeling I didn't

need to get this bloody thing.

It's somebody's fault.

And I can tell you

exactly whose.

I'm lying in bed sweating,

equally bewildered

by why our government has chosen

to ignore the World Health

Organization's urgent advice

that it's essential

to combine any lockdown

with widespread testing,

not just among

health professionals,

but among the population

at large.

The government is instead -

hello, have I got this right? -

suspending contact tracing -

are they crazy or what?

-

claiming it's not

scientifically necessary.

Yet how the hell are they ever

going to control the disease

unless they know who's got it?

It doesn't make sense.

In fact, I mean,

nothing makes sense.

At this point, I'm not sure

whether to put this down

to my delirium or theirs.

I keep waking in the night

firmly convinced

that right now -

usually around 2am -

is the perfect time

for me to fulfill my mission.

What is this mission?

Is it military?

Is it diplomatic?

Is it artistic?

I haven't the slightest idea.

That's why I'm up and out of bed

and standing in the middle

of the bedroom, ready to go.

Go where exactly?

Who knows?

One morning,

in the middle of this week,

Nicole has asked me

how I'm feeling.

I have replied,

One of my bodies is fine,

but the others aren't great.

I have gone on

painstakingly to explain

that the virus has divided me

into several separate identities

which all sleep in the bed

together side by side.

Clearly, I'm off my head,

though, as always

when you're off your head,

it doesn't feel that way to you.

But am I any more off my head

than a government

which can't admit

that they are dispatching

front-line staff

into work

with Covid-infected patients

without suitable protective

clothing or equipment,

in spite of

the impassioned testimony

of those same front line workers

that they are being sent

naked to work?

And why can nobody who speaks

for the government confess

that because they were so keen

to monitor

the dangers to the NHS,

they neglected the equal danger

to workers and residents

in the care home sector,

where deaths are set to rise

to alarming levels?

Why are we moving our most

vulnerable out of hospitals,

where they are protected,

into care homes

where they aren't?

Can anyone explain?

I can see this devilish virus

seems to be cleverly retrofitted

to find Johnson out.

It's smart.

It knows how to play

to all his worst weaknesses.

The virus is nothing

if not adaptable,

because it's meanwhile

outwitting the leader

of the United States

by targeting his quite different

shortcomings.

In his book The Art of the Deal,

Donald Trump has revealed

that the best way to do a deal

is by denigrating your opponent.

This is man

who speaks nostalgically

of punching

his high school music teacher

and giving him a black eye.

He has spent February

denigrating Covid-19:

You're not as bad as the flu.

Few Americans are at risk.

But the morale of the virus

seems strangely undaunted

by his tactics.

Perhaps it's read his book.

Trump is a man with a life-time

fear of contamination.

That's why he always has

wet wipes to hand.

He has a special horror

of women's bodily functions.

During the election campaign

in 2016,

he has referred to one of

his interviewers, Megyn Kelly,

having blood

coming out of her wherever.

He has also repeatedly

characterised

Hillary Clinton's bathroom break

during a Democratic debate

as disgusting.

You may predict

that this president

is not ideally equipped

to cope with something

which breaks into your body

and violently disrupts it.

Trump can't conquer

his natural disdain

for anyone who gets ill.

Sick people are

what he calls losers.

When he later

contracts the disease himself,

he is flown by helicopter

to the Walter Reed Center

where his treatment costs

$100,000.

But I've noticed

among some of my friends

that a similar attitude,

though not articulated,

is not far from the surface.

A famous film director

remarks to me

that I'm the only person

he knows who's got it.

Do I detect

an undercurrent of rebuke,

as though

it's not the sort of thing

the middle classes

are meant to get?

Apparently,

I've crossed class lines

by carelessly catching a disease

which generally attacks

manual workers

and ethnic minorities.

After all,

it's already becoming clear

that you are twice as likely

to die if you're poor.

Diseases follow

the social gradient.

And skin colour.

In England and Wales,

you are four times

as likely to die...

if you're black.

But, again, am I dying?

This is another

very good question.

I've entered the vomiting phase,

and I'd say

it's the worst so far.

Six times daily, I'm beating

a track to the bathroom.

I can't keep anything down,

and the result is

I'm losing strength.

Nicole is horrified

because I'm the colour

of Dracula,

but also frustrated

because I won't eat anything.

But what's the point, I ask,

if it just comes up again

in an hour?

And for the first time,

my doctor is seriously worried.

I don't like the sound of you.

You need to go into hospital

for them to take care of you.

I say, I won't go.

It's too dangerous.

Hospitals are full of people

with Covid-19.

You've already got Covid-19,

he replies.

How can it be worse in hospital?

I don't know, I say.

I just feel it is.

All right, he says,

but I'm not letting this go on

much longer.

The doctor is bombarding me

with horse pills,

antibiotics

of industrial strength,

which he says may explain

the permanent taste in my mouth.

Next morning,

I wake after a torrid night,

convinced that Polos

will solve the problem.

Nicole is so relieved

that there's something

I actually want to eat

that she buys me ten packets.

Unfortunately, it's some time

since I had a Polo,

and in the interval it's obvious

from the first one I pop in

that the manufacturers

have changed the formula.

They are now

flavoured with sewage.

On the tenth day,

my sole diary entry reads...

Total despair.

'But we have

to get through this together,

'and we are getting

through it together.'

My mood is aggravated

by the dense blizzard of cliché

which is fogging up

my television.

You would think, given

that soon, the UK death rate

will be higher than

in any other country in Europe,

and the UK

testing and tracing system

the least successful in Europe,

you would think

a note of contrition

might begin to be heard

in the public realm.

But no, the preferred route

through the crisis is bullshit.

Government ministers must now,

every man and woman,

toil their way doggedly

down the centre

of the bullshit highway.

Words like failure

or mistake are forbidden

and replaced

by the anodyne challenge.

Yes, we faced challenges

is government-speak

for Yes, we failed.

Ramping up is government-speak

for finally doing something

that we forgot to do.

We followed the science

is government-speak

for Don't blame us.

The word that's getting

beaten up worst is mediocrity.

The only qualification

for being in Johnson's cabinet

is that you must possess

a mind vacant of all doubt

about Johnson's scorched-earth

approach to Brexit.

If you have any reservations,

you're excluded.

And this has left

the Prime Minister

with as good

a statistical chance

of forming

a strong administration

as if he were to insist

that all ministers

must have ginger hair,

or stand in their socks

at over six foot ten.

Everywhere, as one

unknown minister after another

stutters and stumbles

on the airwaves,

people complain that this is

a cabinet of mediocrities.

But this does violence

to the word.

Mediocrity suggests

middling ability.

You and I are mediocrities.

These people are incompetents.

Ministers like

Robert Jendrick...

Dominic Raab...

and Helen Whately,

the hapless Minister of State

for Social Care,

who comes across

like a quiz contestant

who's forgotten

the name of the fourth Beatle -

and who is, by the way,

in charge of care homes -

such people don't begin to meet

my definition of mediocrity.

The nadir of the government's

performance comes from...

the Home Secretary, Priti Patel.

Patel has been recklessly

reinstated by Johnson

after being driven out of

government for trying, in 2017,

to pioneer a one-woman guerrilla

British foreign policy

in the Middle East.

She has taken

twelve secret meetings

with Israeli politicians,

including the Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu,

while being careful not

to inform the Foreign Office -

an omission which she later

denies to a newspaper.

Plucked from disgrace,

she is today asked

by a journalist

at the regular press briefing

if she will apologize

for the failings

of resources and equipment

which NHS staff

and their families

blame on the government.

Patel replies that she's sorry -

if people feel

there have been failings.

The journalist,

a little taken aback -

everyone except Patel

knows the facts -

gives Patel a second chance,

and asks,

But are you apologising

for the lack of

Personal Protective Equipment

which has led to mass infections

and the deaths

of several nurses and doctors?

Patel replies,

I'm sorry

that people feel that way.

All right, maybe watching

television in my condition

is a mistake.

My mind is racing back

to Suez and to Iraq

to recall instances of any

public figure trying to get away

with a formula of words

as despicable as this.

But at least, as I sweat,

shiver and vomit,

it gives me an insight

into what the medical profession

have to put up with,

answering to their masters.

Come virus time,

the Conservative Party

has discovered

a hitherto undisclosed

admiration for nurses.

But in June 2017,

Johnson, Patel and Matt Hancock

had been among the 313

Conservative MPs

who were seen cheering

when a motion suggesting

the lifting of a pay cap

which kept nurses' rises

down to 1%

was, with the help

of their votes,

defeated

in the House of Commons.

If I wasn't gagging anyway...

I'd gag.

At least, now that Johnson

himself has come down with it,

Conservatives have stopped

downplaying Covid-19

and recognised that it is

ten times as deadly as flu.

For the first time

in the right-wing press,

the disease has acquired

a heroic dimension.

Can't think why,

but for some reason it's

no longer a disease for losers.

Suddenly Covid is for men,

in particular, blond white men

who have extraordinary

resources of character

with which to fight.

Our Prime Minister

turns out to be one of these.

Although he will later pay

due tribute to the very nurses

whose pay rise he opposed

three years previously,

Johnson will also remember

to tip his hat

to his own natural buoyancy

and refusal to give in.

Gosh, how I wish I had

Johnson's character.

I've been foolishly assuming

that my own survival

would be down

to a mixture of good luck,

the care of my wife,

and the expertise

of my wonderful GP.

My character, thank God,

doesn't come into it.

On the fifteenth day,

much to Nicole's alarm,

I've lost six kilos in ten days.

I've got the voice of an old man

and the body of

a Bosnian prisoner of war.

But then, for no obvious reason,

Day 16 is different.

I'll never know why.

6th April 2020

was always going to be a date

of special significance.

All right, I'll tell you:

it's the 50th anniversary

of my first full-length play

premiering at Hampstead Theatre.

In other words, today I've been

a playwright for fifty years.

Because this is an anniversary

which only I had noticed,

celebrations were always

going to be muted.

I hadn't heard

of street parties -

and in the circumstances

they're non-existent.

And yet 6th April

is also the day -

inexplicable and unexplained -

when I stop being ill.

I wake up and say to Nicole

that I quite fancy a croissant.

I might as well

have come out of a coma

to judge by her reaction.

Are you having

one of your delusions?

No, I really

do want a croissant.

But you haven't wanted

anything for a week.

No, but I would

quite like a croissant.

I look around.

I smell the air.

It doesn't smell of sewage.

When later I speak

to my friend Howard Brenton,

who has also had it,

he says that the disease departs

like a demon leaving your body.

You see?

Medieval, again.

It's going to take a long time

to get better.

I know that,

and I know not to rush it.

I'm very weak.

I know to take it easy.

Not, for instance, to go back

to running the country.

But I'm overwhelmed

by a sense of the arbitrary.

I admit

that later that afternoon,

when it is clear

than I am indeed clear...

I begin to cry -

not altogether selfishly,

not just at my own good fortune,

but at how unfair it all is.

So many people,

many younger than me,

fitter than me,

better than me,

poorer than me,

are going to die

when they don't need to.

Liam Donaldson,

the one-time Chief Medical

Officer in England, said,

To err is human,

to cover up is unforgivable,

and to fail to learn

is inexcusable.

I don't have survivor's guilt.

I have survivor's rage.

Not long

after I started writing,

in the late 1970s...

I made a television film

called Licking Hitler,

which was about

a black propaganda unit

run from an English

country house

during the Second World War.

Because very few people had

heard about the unit's existence

and the filthy work it did,

and because the fight

against the Nazis had, in myth,

always been portrayed as

an exclusively noble endeavour,

fought with impeccable

high principle,

the film caused quite a stink.

People were shocked.

Who would have thought

the British, of all people,

would need to sink

to lying and libelling

in order to the fight

a just war?

Why was it necessary?

In 1978, that question

still meant something.

Since then,

I've kept up my interest

in the relationship

between public life and untruth.

When the website PolitiFact

established by careful research

that only 4% of claims

made by Donald Trump were true,

I was taken aback.

Really?

Was it as much as that?

But after years of thinking

about these things,

I am still bewildered

by the British handling

of this latest chapter

in our island's story.

Surely, looking abroad

to the examples

of Angela Merkel in Germany

or Jacinda Ardern

in New Zealand,

something must have stirred

inside the head

of at least one thinker

in Downing Street.

Given how well

those two leaders were doing,

and how badly we were doing,

did it really never occur

to anyone in power

that possibly

following their example

and levelling with the public

might be a more fruitful

political tactic?

Not necessarily

for the virtue of it -

let's be realistic -

but - hey! -

just for the efficiency.

Explain, please.

What is stopping the government

from admitting...

Since 2010,

we underfunded the NHS.

Our attempts to introduce

competition between hospitals

have been a catastrophe.

Our denigration of junior

doctors and nurses

was a public relations disaster.

When the virus came,

we were slow to react

because we took a wrong road,

and the Prime Minister's mind

was elsewhere.

We were wrong when we pretended

contract tracing

was suspended in March

for scientific reasons,

when in fact it was because of

a testing capacity shortage.

We have been short of PPE

throughout,

we've neglected care homes,

we should've closed

the airports?

What...

What would it actually cost

to confess that we were

talking through our hats

when we claimed,

at a press conference,

to be an international exemplar

in preparedness?

Apart from anything,

wouldn't it be so much easier?

Is the labour of lying

really worth the effort?

Isn't it draining

on everyone's ingenuity,

conscience and resources?

Wouldn't Johnson himself

look and feel far less exhausted

if he were liberated

from a narrative

scarcely anyone believes?

With one bound,

wouldn't he be free?

Does it never occur to the

great minds of British politics

that there is

a direct connection

between honesty and popularity?

Why is that idea

so hard to grasp?

Has no one

in the current government

ever met the bereaved?

Do they not remember

Hillsborough?

Or Bloody Sunday?

Or the residents

of Grenfell Tower?

Have they really not yet learned

that the most soothing

possible bandage

for the wounds

inflicted by grief...

is the truth?

Do the families and friends

of the dead not deserve it?

I'm tired of reading

that people want to be spoken to

like adults.

In my experience,

it's adults who lie.

I want to be spoken to

like a child.

It's to children

all decent people

tell the truth.

Perhaps this desire is in line

with my new personality.

I'm so glad to be alive

that I wake every morning

wanting to thank the universe

for continuing to host me.

In recovery,

I am suffused with joy.

Unexpectedly,

my character now allows me

to say things like,

This is a beautiful

glass of water.

I'm startled to come

out of this experience a hippy.

I call my exercise teacher,

Matt Bamford,

and ask him what exercise

I should take to recover.

He says, None.

You can't exercise

your way out of this.

And sure enough, he's right.

One of the most moving

experiences of my life

is to sit and feel my body

mend itself.

It regains strength,

independent of anything

I bring to the process.

I do nothing.

It knows what to do.

My wife, by contrast,

has also developed

a new personality.

Her saintliness has apparently

vanished with her fears.

When she sees me walking

unsteadily along the corridor,

greeting her with a croak,

she exclaims, Oh, my God,

it's like you are ninety.

I'm not staying married

to a ninety-year-old man.

I've been very ill, I say,

I'm convalescing.

Well, convalesce quicker.

Nicole notices that in recovery

I've developed a newfound

over-sensitivity to movies.

When, in a film we're watching,

John C. Reilly whacks Gwyneth

Paltrow hard across the face,

Nicole asks me if I am aware

that I've just shouted,

Don't do that.

When Edward Kennedy

drives Mary Joe Kopechne

off a bridge in Chappaquiddick,

then swims to safety

without rescuing her,

do I realise that

I've just shouted Bastard?

Yes.

I guess the virus is in me...

and always will be.

The day will come

when Covid-19 will be forgotten,

just as Spanish flu

is forgotten.

Already, after a period

of fierce forbearance

and self-censorship,

the culture warriors

are rearming.

Sir Graham Brady,

a Conservative backbencher,

has been lecturing the workers,

telling them to improve their

attitude to the end of lockdown.

He tells the public

they're a little too willing

to stay at home.

Conservative MPs are settling

back into their comfort zone,

making their timeless complaint

that the public are once more

letting the politicians down.

I'm walking round the garden,

wondering whether Sir Graham

ever asks himself

why anyone should trust

a government

which refuses to trust them.

I think of...

the great James Baldwin:

Allegiance, after all,

has to work two ways,

and one can grow weary

of an allegiance

which is not reciprocal.

I go back into the house.

I make tea.

Right now I can only do

the simple things.

But by doing

simple things right,

my plan...

is to beat the devil.