The Plague Diaries 1: The Freddy
My new home is Room 406 of a Freddy Mercury-themed hotel in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux. 11 people are dead worldwide from the outbreak of a new form of respiratory virus, and the borders are closed. The Montreux hospitality school, my client, who kindly provided me with a (temporary) penthouse suite, has sent the students packing. But they seem to have forgotten about me.
I like it here. I dont want to go back to England. Lockdowns are lax here, and the sun is shining.
It’s been a week since the evacuations, since the panicked morning meetings, and the masks. Inside the hotel, posters of Freddy festoon the walls; his moustache is never out of sight. I sit and wait and watch. Yesterday I saw a fat child with a pink face like a glazed ham, skipping across the street.
“Merci Coronavirus! Merci!” he squealed, puffing with effort as he propelled his rotundity across the concrete. Presumably, he had just got the news that schools had closed (or a hated enemy of his had been killed by the merciless virus). Today the streets are empty, the only activity is a gaggle of jubilant students drinking beers by the lake.
Outside, roving bands of Swiss go from shop to shop, hoarding the essentials needed for human survival: wheat beer, Lindt Easter eggs, pain au chocolat, and seven-ply organic toilet paper sourced from evergreen pine glades. For now, they are polite enough, but who knows where the coming weeks will lead – even the thick lacquer of Swiss civility may begin to chip.
If things go Mad Max, I will fortify the hotel as best I can. If this is how I die, isolated, impaled by a racelette fork in a Freddy Mercury-themed hotel, this blog will be my final message to the world.
I have a collection of black and white French movies downloaded on my brother’s recommendation, two bottles of white wine from the UNESCO heritage site vineyards that stretch around Montreux, some CBD pills, and a Red Bull. Enough to survive a week or two, probably not enough to establish my dominance as a warlord in the cantons of Neo-Switzerland – but I will make do.
I hear the cuckoo clocks chiming. The Swiss are up to something. I must resume my vigil by the window. May Freddy be with you – I am leaving my laptop now.