There is, quite naturally, a lot of doom and gloom throughout the land these days and now the Government is turning its concern to the devastation the pandemic has heaped upon the economy. The Minister for Finance has been equating this to the eighties recession in what has been described as a “sobering” briefing to those involved in the Government formation talks.
My mind has been on other matters, in particular the death on May 9th of Little Richard. Such an outrageous figure that he can rightly be called the King & Queen of Rock n’Roll. His life performances were electric. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones remembered his appearance with the singer as “ the most exciting moment of my life”. The truth is one way or another Rock n’Roll is intertwined with my life. That really started in 1981 when many things including the Hunger Strikes cast a dark shadow over Ireland. That first show at Slane headlined by Thin Lizzie and supported by U2 shook things up, shone a light and gave people hope. Next year will be the 40th anniversary of the first Slane. My family want to celebrate this. How can this be possible ? A Mosh Pit and Social Distancing doesn’t quite work.
Now this brings me to a gentleman with whom I share an unusual Christian name, Professor Adrian Vivian Sinton Hill. He was born in Dublin and educated at Belvedere College and Trinity before taking a PhD in Philosophy at Oxford. He is currently Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford. In other words a seriously smart dude. Most importantly he is now the Team Leader in search for a vaccine for Covid-19. Over the last while he has been appearing on CNN, raising my, and I’m sure many other’s, hopes that a vaccine will be available before the year is out. Then on 30th April AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical giant announced a “landmark agreement for a Covod-19 vaccine”. Now this I said to myself is getting serious, and I am saying so to all I encounter, which is pretty limited, as in my condition I am cocooning and the only trip I make outside my Meath bolt-hole are to St. James’s Hospital for blood tests, etc. Now I can start to dream again of glory days by the banks of the Boyne when Rock n’Roll reigns supreme. More importantly, I can hope that there might be a more rapid recovery to the economy than the gloomy headlines have been predicting. I have lived long enough to understand how important it is to have hope and this time I really do think that Professor Hill and his colleagues will get this through the gate because this social distancing stuff feels unnatural. So for once, I can’t wait to have that needle in my arm.
Now boosted by hope I feel like kicking the eejits who are trying to form a government. A friend of mine has a solution. Forget the Greens, go for Labour and the “muck savages”. You would get a better government.