The Interviewee (2045)

'So, is it switched on? ‘, I ask Angela, the manager of this place.

I am having a test of the Skype link beforehand, as I have never been comfortable with technology, we are going through all this palaver before it all starts.

‘I think they will be able to hear and see you’ , says Angela, in her usual crisp and efficient manner.

The  ‘they’  in question is Jennifer who’s coming to interview me today, she’s got long dark hair and reminds me a bit of my niece Emma when she was younger, full of vim and vigour, a bright and intelligent individual, and there is also  David, you might have seen him before on TV, he’s a really good interviewer , who I recall interviewed Nicola Sturgeon a few times during 2020, and he'll be talking from Apardion TV’s studio.

I spoke to Jennifer on the phone a couple of days ago, and this whole thing was arranged for later on today.

She is coming to interview me at home, here in Marischal House.

Marischal is a really nice place, it is what used to call ‘sheltered housing ‘ back in the day.

Now they call it ‘social distance housing’, we can talk to our neighbours in the next room, but we still must observe the two metre social distancing thing even after 25 years, it’s a real faff, but we’re all used to it after all this time.

Anyway, Jennifer is a journalist with Apardion, our local TV station, who are currently looking back in time to 2020, when the Coronavirus hit the world and things changed irrevocably.

They are producing a programme to commemorate those who died of the virus back in 2020.

She said that this would be an ‘old school’ interview, in the sense that she will actually be here physically talking to me, rather than by way of a video conference link, as they did back in those days on TV , in court and such like.  If I have got it right, she will be here, and we are ‘Skyping’, as they say, to Apardion’s studios, which are not far from here, in what used to be a  Co-op supermarket many years ago.

Anyway, I well remember the world prior to Coronavirus, Covid-19, the Global Pandemic, whatever you want to call it, the world B.C, before Corona.

The world is a very different place Post-Corona, if I can put it like that, I say this from the point of view of an 80 year old, albeit one who is still very much in command of his mind and memory, my body and health may not be what they once were , but there’s a few years life left in this old dog yet.

 

During 2020, I clearly remember the desolation of the empty streets of Aberdeen, the closed shops, boarded up eating establishments, weeds sprouting everywhere, untended gardens, gangs of unruly street drinkers and  multitudes of birds which had seemingly descended upon the city during the Lockdown.

I took photographs of the scenes in the city centre, what I called ‘Aberdoom’ or ‘Dystoperdeen’ then, you will probably find them on some old website or other these days as I shared them up on a thing called ‘Facebook’, which some people might remember was on ‘Social Media’, which was very popular back then.

 

At the time, I cycled to and from work  between spells of being furloughed.

The  job I did at that time was not one I really liked , but one I had been in for many years, and to be honest in my fifties, it really seemed too late to do anything else with my life.

Once I felt that work was my life, my very raison d’etre, but as time wore on , I realized that I was woefully wrong , the workplace  didn’t need me, and as somebody of that time said to me , nobody is indispensable.

I did have my ambitions as a writer, but I never really had the confidence to take that any further than publishing online in those days, though I did self-publish a wee booklet of poems once upon a time, with the help of the poetry group I was then a member of.

Anyway, I digress,  the job was turned on its head, just like the rest of the world, and it seemed in all walks of life, that things were changing on a daily basis, so you never knew if you were coming or going.

I recall the hymn ‘Through All the Changing Scenes of Life’ from my days as a choir boy back in the early 1970s, and I think the words of that hymn are entirely apposite for 2020.

Perhaps to paraphrase the words of that hymn, 2020 was a year more of trouble than of joy!

Work aside, I coped quite well with being in Lockdown, being a single man, I just got on with my life, did what the Government prescribed and went about my business , in what was seen as the ‘New Normal’ . Having all this time at my disposal gave me time to think, not something I often had during my working life; I concentrated on my writing, trying to improve my craft in poetry and prose. I had attended a college course prior to the Lockdown, and really thought of myself as a writer now, I had been writing for about 25 years, albeit under the radar, as it were, so maybe now was the time to make my appearance on the radar.

Anyhow, I will maybe ask Jennifer to discuss my poetry, get a little bit of publicity, imagine that, ‘Aberdeen Octogenarian is undiscovered poet’, being on the telly!

As my old mate Andy used to say, ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’.

Good Lord, I have hidden my light under a bushel for long enough, as we used to say.

Last century, when I was a child, I was taught that ‘self-praise is no honour’, but then I am no longer a child and times have changed several times over since then, so its meaning really is meaningless.

Anyway, I digress, there are many things which people did BC , that might be considered inappropriate now, for example, at the weekends , people used to go to ‘pubs’ , that of course was the shortened version of ‘public house’ , back in the 1980s, I used to go to the pub and drink several pints of beer ; ‘lager’ it was called , and maybe a whisky or two, I would sometimes get ‘drunk’, which would involve losing control of my inhibitions sometimes , speaking nonsense, generally getting up to no good, staggering home unsteadily, and of course waking the following morning with a ‘hangover’ , which was the headache that one got from drinking too much, and of course not remembering what happened the previous night. I stopped drinking during the Lockdown, as at that time, I really did not see the point in alcohol anymore.

Back then, I never understood why or how appearance and image were so important thing to people, especially females. I lived through the punk and goth era where people went out to shock with wildly coloured hair, ripped clothing, gaudy white makeup, and tattoos, image was a big part of that time, but not a trend I followed.

At the time before Corona, what had once been shocking or rebellious at one time, had become ‘mainstream’, that is everything became acceptable by the society of the time, body piercing, multi-coloured hair, fake tans, tattoos, you name it anything went, not that I have or had a problem with that , you understand, but I am just trying to illustrate how the world was.

Of course, nowadays most people look the same, the same dark clothing worn most of the time, suits are no longer worn by workers. There are no outlandish looking folk these days, the days of hairdressers, tanning parlours, beauty therapists and all that malarkey are long gone, consigned to the dustbin of history.

Back then, people were more, as they said in those days ‘touchy-feely’, folk were more tactile, they hugged one another, shook hands when meeting and greeting, some people even kissed others, usually when they were lovers. Closeness was popular then, but Corona stopped all that to a certain extent.

Once upon a time, if you had people skills in the workplace, it was seen to be something good, as you could communicate with people, speak to them and all that.

Especially if you worked in a shop or an office, it was all about the personal touch, some of the viewers might remember shops and offices, yet another thing of the past.

This was when you spoke to people on a one-to-one basis, not like now, when you speak to them across a ten-foot divide.

 

We also went to concerts by our favourite rock bands, that was something I thoroughly enjoyed back from the late 70’s right up until about 2019, it was absolutely brilliant to see your favourite band on stage, belting out the songs you had previously heard on CDs or vinyl records, if you were older. You would buy souvenirs of the ‘gig’, maybe a T-shirt, a poster, commemorative badge for the tour, something like that, but that all disappeared due to Corona. All the festivals, Download,  Glastonbury, Tea in the Park and so on, they all died a death because of social distancing.

You can still play music like you used to , but You Tube, and its new variations, are the only place you can see and hear musicians performing these days, it’s a really sad state of affairs, especially to a music lover like me.

You can still buy music online, but the joys of the record shop and the social aspect of that have long gone, something else consigned to history.

There is still radio in various forms, which is good , especially the ‘Oldies’ stations, which is most excellent.

Everyone is so much nicer to one another since Corona, it almost as if folk have learned how to be kind again, it’s not  case of everyone for his or herself, as it seemed to be BC , and religion is on the upturn again.

The online worship throughout the Lockdown were instrumental in this increase.

Churches are open again, and there is talk of a new one being built in the Centre of Aberdeen, who would have thought, the Centre of the city being used again!

Of course, I always believed in God back in those days , it just wasn’t something you often spoke about as political correctness, remember that, had killed everything , and any one minority was marginalized to appease whatever other minority the politicians were supporting on a given week.

 Anyway, my old Mother always said it would take something like a war to get folk back into church and she was not far wrong!

So, that is my rehearsal, that is what I will say when Jennifer comes in ….

‘Ok, does that sound ok, was I ranting a bit, was I too judgmental? ‘ , I say.

Angela gives me the thumbs up; I have done it right, it’s taken me until the age of 80 to handle technology, there’s hope for me yet!!