The boss sent an email the other day, demand that I write a cuff. This piece here, on this page, or on this space, is called ‘Off the Cuff’. So when the boss says ‘write a cuff’, he means write this piece or others like it. To fill this space.
Normally, I don’t have any issue thinking of pieces to write about. They normally flow. But not recently. I’m having a bit of writer’s block. I can’t think of stuff to write about that you, dear reader, and you — not so dear editor — might interest you. And I’ve been trying to figure out why.
I’m inclined to put this episode of writer’s block down to the temporary insanity of isolation. It’s one of the yet to be fully understood symptoms of coronavirus.
I checked all my files and since that date, I have written up to Sunday, May 10, 215,763 words relating to coronavirus. Talk about being sick with coronavirus — I’m sick of it.
I think you’ll find it down at the very bottom of the list that includes a dry, hacking cough, high temperature, severe chills and the like. It’s an extension of the symptom that described mental fatigue and an inability to focus.
For the past weeks I have been writing about little else than coronavirus, its effects, how people are reacting, the quirks and oddities of life.
As a matter of interest, I checked my files and the first time I typed the word ‘coronavirus’ was on January 25 — when the same bossy-boots editor who wants me to write this cuff demanded that I write a piece about the outbreak and containment of a virus in Wuhan. Imagine, that was on January 25 and it seems so long ago.
I checked all my files and since that date, I have written up to Sunday, May 10, 215,763 words relating to coronavirus. Talk about being sick with coronavirus — I’m sick of it.
I’ve had it up to here, to my tonsils, writing about coronavirus. It is any wonder then that coronavirus has severely constipated my ability to write and think about these cuffs — like this one you’re reading now.
I was going to write about how my imagination is a wonderful thing, how it’s able to transport me beyond the confines of the little fishing village in the southeast of Ireland where I’m living under lockdown. But I have to do that daily — all part of those 215,763 words filed up to that date. So I don’t think you’d be interested in that.
I was going to write too about the sea, the waves, the way the sun shines and rain pours and changes the seascape and landscape with every cloud that passes or every tide that laps on the sandy beach.
I don’t think you’d be interested in the way the gulls glide and seem to stand still in the breeze as they watch my every movement as I walk on their shore.
I could write about the hoarse horns that sound from the fishing trawlers that mark their coming and going from the local harbour, punctuating these days of lockdown as a reminder that men have taken to the seas for centuries.
It is a hard way to make a harder living, but there is a wonderful isolation too in riding those waves far from shores in search of shoals to earn a shilling.
Or maybe I could write about the hollow church bells that ring out twice a day, marking the noon hour and six in the evening. There are those who give thanks to those chimes and remember how good it is to be safe and well in these strangest of times. But because of my writer’s block now, I have nothing to write about today. Sorry.
Mick O’Reilly is the Gulf News Foreign Correspondent based in Europe
