Life Under Lockdown: Day 1, Montreal, March 24

Note: I'm hijacking my Microbiome blog to post about life in the time of the coronavirus. Check back every day for a post on how we're coping here in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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Tuesday, March 24, 7:44 a.m.

esterday was the day the premier of Quebec declared that "gatherings of more than two people will henceforth be banned."

I entered into a semantic argument with my chess pal Nathan, the frontline ER nurse, that "more than two does NOT equal two. Therefore you and I can still get together at the Second Cup and play chess as we have been doing at 7 a.m. twice a week for a year and a half."

After all, I argued, if the ban was for "more than two" it did not include two—only more than two. Alas, semantics notwithstanding, the entire point was brought to a screeching halt after I called the Côte des Neiges branch of the Second Cup coffee shop and was told by owner Hassan that his superiors, the coffee chain magnates, decreed that he could receive heavy fines for allowing us to play chess in the back room.

(No, the management didn't specifically mention Nathan and me by name—public surveillance has not yet reached that degree in Quebec—but Hassan had earlier yesterday informed me cheerily that "It will be okay if you and your friend play chess in the back room, away from any other customers!"

Now he realized he would have to be shuttering the entire shop—there was no way he was staying open just on the hope that a few people would be dropping by for takeout.

"Now I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay the rent," he mused almost tearfully over the phone.

I was speechless.

I called the Duke (Duc de Lorraine pastry shop) in the vain hope that they would be able to allow us to sit at their table and play chess while drinking coffee. "We're sorry," the girl on the other end of the line informed me, "we can only do takeout. The restaurant is closed."

So that seems to be that . . . no more early-morning chess for the foreseeable—and maybe even unseeable—future.

I was horrified.

Mind you, it might be for the best. You see, Nathan works as a triage nurse in an emergency room (ER) at a large hospital on the island. He's the one who will be the first medical worker to see the people off the street as they hack bits of their lungs over the Triage Desk while he takes down their vitals. It might not be in my supreme interest to be greeting Nathan a couple of hours after his shift with a bear hug and a "How ya doin'? The bug getcha yet?"

And it must be admitted that Brigitte too has greeted all this with a sigh of relief. After all, her immunocompromised lungs—she has a severe form of COPD that can't be treated, and is undergoing treatment for rheumatoid arthritis that leaves her immune system severely weakened—would be swiftly overwhelmed by the coronavirus.

She wouldn't last 24 hours.

So our Lockdown had begun.

Yesterday the count for the coronavirus in Quebec was 628 confirmed cases, one death and one recovered, but these numbers are sure to explode as more testing comes online, mirroring the experience in many other countries (although despite what some Quebecois would want you to think, it is not a country. Yet.)

So for me there was only one thing to do: go back to World War II and go walk in the cemetery.

So I turned on my earphones and prepared to go out, only to be horrified that only one ear of my earphones was working. This was truly bad news, because I listen to audiobooks throughout the day while either walking in the cemetery, shopping at the grocery or drug store for essentials, and then doing chores around the house.

I certainly could not survive all this without both earphones working.

No matter, thought I, I'll just order up a new pair on amazon.ca. They'll be here the day after tomorrow with my Prime service.

I went ahead and created the order for the exact same earphones and then prepared to go out. But a last-minute doubt prompted me to check the delivery date on the earphones.

April 21st? I was aghast. I double-checked. Yes, it was a "Prime 2-day shipping order." So why would it not be shipping for another month?

I checked other pairs of earphone brands.

All were the same: Prime delivery on April 21st.

I tried to call Amazon using their "call me at home" function. They called all right, but delivered a message about getting help on their website and hung up.

I tried again four times with the same result. "No one is answering," Brigitte commiserated. "The banks, the doctors, the stores, no one is answering their phones. You can't even leave a message."

Luckily I managed to rustle up an old pair of earphones I had discarded a year or so earlier because I had lost a collar clip for it. It worked fine. Pretty damned well, in fact.

So I was back in business . . . now I'm looking forward to a month or more of audiobooks about World War II—my current book is about Torpedo Squadron 8 in the Battle of Midway and next I plan on a 30-hour tome about the Battle of Saipan—so my downtime is already booked.

I'll go walk in the gorgeous cemetery across from my house and feed the crows while Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto gets his comeuppance for the 25,000th time and I lose myself in an age before the coronavirus came along to kill my chess game.

Here's to April 21st. May you speed to me my old life back, ASAP (As Soon As Prime).