Suffer little children..

by Pseud O'Nym

The news goes from bad to worse, with the announcement of schools being closed from Friday, for two weeks initially, but in all probability longer. Much longer.

The powers that be clearly haven’t though this through, either that or their experience of being a parent was to let a nanny do all the work, leaving them free to do grown up things and have minimal unscheduled interaction with their children. Unless if it was strictly necessary or an emergency. Why am I thinking about Jacob Rees-Mogg?

This plus the Easter Holidays equals multiple mass murders across the country. I’m talking triple figures here. You think the deaths caused by the coronavirus are bad? Wait till the deaths caused the school closure start to mount? That’ll be loss of life on a biblical scale. Not just numbers of deaths, but the sheer depravity of the way they were killed. Holed up 24hrs a day, driving each other increasingly mad, with no food and less respite?Think ofa remake of ‘The Texas Chainshaw Massacre’ directed by Hieronymus Bosch. Think of the Old Testament. You get the idea.

Which leads me neatly on to an incident today whereby I had such an unexpectedly sudden thought out of nowhere I made an involuntarily loud noise, such that my friend remarked on it. ‘It’s just me being misanthropic.’ I explained. For some reason, self isolating made me think of an anchorite who Wikipedia describe as.

someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, or Eucharist-focused life. Whilst anchorites are frequently considered to be a type of religious hermit,[5] unlike hermits they were required to take a vow of stability of place, opting for permanent enclosure in cells often attached to churches. Also unlike hermits, anchorites were subject to a religious rite of consecration that closely resembled the funeral rite, following which they would be considered dead to the world, a type of living saint.

This was popular in 13th -16th Century Europe. Time for a return?