Forensics, Reflections on Surveillance and Dressing Up

THIS MORNING- 7TH OCTOBER

Forensics, Reflections on Surveillance  and Dressing Up

I catch up with an artist friend this morning, she paints feathers and self-portraits and fruits. She is very prolific in times of covid, she remarks. Or is it plague? I let out that the surveillance did bother me despite the sombre but friendly policemen patrolling the parks, streets on their bikes or in groups. We conclude the conversation resolving  to read “Love in the time of chlora!” Or “The Plague!” Then a brief conversation with  friends from PTA ensue.  Ex PTA member or in some cases excommunicated PTA members? Parents can be so temperamental and sweary at times!  Haha. We brainstorm some fundraising ideas (once a PTA always a PTA); online quizzes, electric slides (online again)! All might be futile no doubt for no one is in the mood for fundraising yet.  Fleetingly, I think of a conversation I had with a doctor friend a few months earlier (online again)! How new PPEs were like a  heavy armour both shielding him from the disease and stifling him. He had to take  few showers in a day.

Therefore, I feel a rush of quilt in my skin for being so indulgent about surveillance belonging to a long gone era!

I wear a white skirt today; sourced from one of the most trendiest, cult Scandi Brand and a navy blue sweater. I feel the scorn of passers by, “Thou shall not compromise from style!” Later a friend calls: The forensic scientist, daughter in the same year group as my son. Could I teach non-verbal reasoning to her daughter? And what is my fee these days? She is calm and collective from maintaining a degree of normalcy in times of plague.  “Forensic hasn’t changed much”, she jokes. We better start thinking about secondaries. We both lament the fact that we can’t attend any at the moment. “How on earth are we to decide that they are the right places for our children?”

“Still archery is back at K…. Acedemy” I hear. I am philosophical today.  A PTA dad with an older child at K…. had informed me of it earlier this morning.