EDITORIAL

THE ISOLATED OIK

“Self-isolating? That’s what I do all the time.” Most Oik writers say this and there are distinguished precedents: Boethius, Gramsci, Genet, Solzhensitsyn – perhaps not strictly self isolating – more banged up by the govt. As are we, one might add but at least we’re in our own gaff surrounded by books, art and music not to mention endless reruns of TV soaps.

It could be worse. You could be in London, Madrid or New York. We have had New Yorker contributors (eg Eric Buckley Oiks 26-30) and further afield: Fred Whitehead (Kansas) Oiks 17, 24, 28, 29) Colin Whatmough (Annapolis)  Oik 9  Kayti Doolittle (Kansas). Although they’re on track to have more casualties than China most Yanks will be reassured they’re guided by the great epidemiologist who promises it’ll soon pass. “How come you know so much about this stuff?” his sycophants ask.

Our own metropolitan contributor David Erdos (Uxbridge) isn’t so sanguine and excoriates King Boris who also happens to be his MP (see p 68 ) A bit further east ex Manc John Lee describes the hell of Maldon (which looks quite a nice place to me) and the lower circle of hell Estepona where he is currently marooned (which also looks like paradise and within sight of Gibraltar), Things are so bad there his English pal has to drape his wife’s fur coat over a pillow in a plastic bag and attach a lead so he can look like he’s taking the dog for a walk. This would never have happened under Franco. Under Franco you’d have long ago eaten the dog. For the details see p 63.

Some complain about the lock-down’s attack on freedom and hypothesise, paraphrasing Oscar, that we’ve moved from Johnsonian fascism to Corbynite communism without an intervening period of civilisation. Has the man no principles?... actually no. The Oik, however, maintains its internationalist stance and although the Yank contributors have disappeared we add to our project to translate all Proust’s pastiches with the one on Henri de Regnier. Henri may appear to be a precious old fart but this entry from Leautaud’s Journal Littéraire may humanise the ethereal symbolist poet somewhat.

Friday 26 October 1906

Régnier recounts two personal anecdotes. Looking for an apartment with his mother, when he was still a boy. Going up the stairs behind him, a janitor pinches his buttocks. Another time, standing one evening on the platform of the Hôtel-de-Ville-Porte-Maillot omnibus, standing, smoking, hands crossed behind his back, he suddenly feels something cold.  It was the man behind who had gently put his cock in his hands. Régnier is shocked. The man rushes to get off. Régnier questions the driver, who calmly replies : “It’s not the first time. He spends his whole life doing this kind of thing. ”

One wonders what Ron Horsefield’s uncle would have done (read about the eminent Chief Inspector in The Malletts p 11) But Paris! Could they ever lock down that place? Apparently they can. I recall a similar incident as I took a drink on the Boulevard St Germain. A stunning young lady rushing up from a subterranean lavatory which was closed displays her obvious agitation to an approaching flaneur who responds by holding out … his cupped hand. Them frogs! What are they like?

We attach another exotic with an extract from Witold Gombrowicz’s Diary. Witold felt greatly isolated in Buenos Aires 1939. Out there on a visit he decided to stay when the Nazis invaded his native Poland. Not quite as drastic as Corona Britain under Boris but comparable.

-----------------------------