NOT being a binge-watcher, I’ve only managed to catch the first episode of Russell T Davies’ new Channel 4 drama It’s a Sin, the second episode of which airs tonight (although the entire series is available on demand).
Even so, that was enough to remind me of the horror of Aids in the 1980s. And of its uncomfortable resonances for the time we are living through now.
In one scene in the first episode a character, based on Davies’ own ex-boyfriend, had to kit himself out in a 1980s version of PPE to visit a colleague who was dying of Aids in hospital. Watching the scene, I, like I’m sure everyone else, immediately flashed onto the images of Covid-19 wards that fill our news bulletins today.
As a country – for reasons of homophobia mainly, let’s be honest – we have never properly grappled with the legacy of HIV.
Maybe these things take time. Davies himself has admitted that when it came to Aids and the impact it has had on the LGBT community, he looked the other way for years.
It’s a reminder of how trauma can sometimes silence us. And we can see that impulse at play right now with the coronavirus.
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This week’s awful news that the death rate in the UK has topped 100,000 was duly marked and yet, a couple of days later, one of the main news stories is about the Prime Minister’s latest planned route out of lockdown. It’s as if we don’t want to think too much about the current awful reality.
There is clearly a collective need to look ahead, to latch onto any bit of hope that’s passing. But there’s something else going on here too, perhaps. A sense that the loss we are seeing every day is too traumatic to come to terms with yet.
The number 100,000 is difficult to compute. What does that amount to? Roughly the equivalent of everyone in Ayr and Kilmarnock disappearing?
So, how do we cope with it? Well, anger is one response. If, as Michael Gove claims, the Prime Minister should get the credit for the “world-beating” vaccination roll-out, then shouldn’t he also take the blame for the “world-beating” death toll too?
But for many, the stark daily figures are simply numbing. To think about the names behind every number, the families grieving their loss, is too painful right now.
Sometimes we look away and never look back, of course. There is no national monument to the victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed nearly 230,000 people in the UK after all.
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As you probably know, The Herald has launched a campaign to build a memorial garden for coronavirus victims in Pollok Park in Glasgow, but one wonders how as a country we will eventually acknowledge what is taking place. Will it be another 30 or 40 years before we take the measure of what we’re going through?
Watching It’s a Sin is to see the country we once were in all its incomprehension and ignorance and love. That’s not so very far away from today. Not so very far at all.
For details of The Herald Memorial Garden campaign, visit gofundme.com/f/herald-garden-of-remembrance
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