Monday 5 July 2021

Face-mask (The Movie)

 

We can now (in certain circumstances) take off our face-masks outside, but I am not sure that all of us are going to take up that offer.

In my case, it’s good to be able to breathe properly once again after eighteen months behind the gauze, and the mask is without doubt an uncomfortable garment to wear (women say that now we men finally begin to understand the discomfort that the ladies must undergo from a brassiere). It also fogs up my glasses when I’m trying to read the tiny words on the screen of my android. The mask tickles, too.

However, there are some good reasons to continue to wear one while outside the house.

The obvious one is that the Covid is still around. Youngsters seem to be catching it more than the elderly – probably because they ‘party’ harder, and also because we’ve had our shots. Nevertheless, there are new variants and, perhaps in our ignorance / perhaps in our wisdom, we don’t want to mess with them.

Enough people have gotten sick from this dreadful virus.

Enough people have died.

I find a few other good reasons to wear a face-mask:

I can privately smile or even laugh at some of the outfits worn by people that I cross paths with, the tee-shirt or the tattoo.

I can confuse those intrusive face-recognition cameras which were filling up the streets just before the pandemic started.

It keeps the hot Spanish sol from burning my sensitive nose, a regular victim of sun-burn.

It has been easier for me than for many others – I live in the country on a horse-farm, so when other people weren’t about, or during the worst of the quarantine, I could spend time outside, and better still, without a mask. It must have been terrible for those who live in tiny apartments, locked away from the outside. No wonder they’ve had enough.

Wearing the face-mask isn’t really to protect oneself from infection, as much as protecting others from catching something that you yourself might be carrying – so it’s simply a question of good manners and responsible citizenship.

All this, plus I had bought 144 masks at a great price in the local market only last week…

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