Missing it all

Scanning media headlines can be a dispiriting thing to do. Sitting here with my mug of tea, gazing out at the garden while thinking “do I really want to know?”

The tediously familiar exaggerations, distortions, celebrity prattle, and pumped up drama isn’t inspiring. Not even inspiring enough for me to finish my tea and wander into the kitchen to make coffee. It’s tempting to consider ignoring it all by much more restrictive and selective internet browsing.

Yet it could be difficult. How difficult isn’t easy to judge without actually doing it, as the fictional conversation below attempts to highlight –


Missing it all

The other day I met up with my old pal Dr Baz Broxtowe of Fradley University. We met at Cromford and toddled off for a short walk through the woods before the steady climb up to Hearthstone Lane.

Naturally enough I asked Dr Baz about his media isolation research as up until then I’d heard nothing about it.

“It didn’t really come to anything,” Dr Baz began as we paused for a breather by an old stone wall overlooking Cromford. “I isolated myself from the media shortly before the pandemic, stayed in an isolated cottage on the coast owned by a mate of mine.”

“How isolated?”

“Oh very isolated, no TV or WiFi. I had to use my phone for online grocery orders but was very strict about not using it for anything else, I just got on with my book and went out for quiet walks. I never knew what it was all about until my book was finished and I left the cottage and ended the experiment. By then it was mostly over and people were only interested in getting rid of Boris.”

“So you missed all the lockdown stuff with masks and daily briefings on TV?”

“All of it. I knew something was going off obviously.”

“What about all the signs and notices?”

“I didn’t see many and didn’t pay too much attention to those I did see,” replied Dr Baz, “and didn’t seem to make that much difference to me really. Online deliveries didn’t change much although I knew something was going on because I saw very few people on my rambles. Those I did see tended to avoid me.”

“So you knew something was going on but what on earth did you think it was?” I asked as we resumed our walk onto Hearthstone Lane.

“I’d no idea, but one of my wilder notions was an experiment in population control designed to make people more malleable and more reliant on government expertise. All done through the media of course and this was my working hypothesis. I made copious notes about it.”

“Oh…”

“Later I realised my wild notion wasn’t outrageously wild.”

“No… no it wasn’t.”

“And it was certainly experimental,” mused Dr Baz.