Now is a good time to dump your long distance lover
If you live in Lombardia (and several other regions in the Italian north) and you’re in a long-distance relationship that has gotten lacklustre, now is a good time to end it. Because as of last night these regions are on lock-down . So, you and lover boy won’t be seeing each other until at least April 3 anyway. You might as well end it here and blame Coronavirus. It certainly beats having to tell him that you are just not that into him anymore.
The news came like a shock wave. An unsigned draft of a government act announcing the lockdown of Lombardy and 14 other regions in the Italian north (an area with 16 million inhabitants) was leaked to the press and the news spread like Australian bushfire. Confusion ensued. Thousands of panicked people promptly ran to the train stations to try to get the hell out of town. The news was clearly handled very badly. (Can the Italian government please hire some communications experts to help? PLEASE) And so, the reaction was equally poor. Why do people keep acting like we are facing Nuclear War? I don’t think I am being unfair when I say that Italians are a nation of individualists who do not consider the collective good. But now more than ever, I urge my compatriots (all humankind actually) to develop a sense of civic duty. Don’t think about how you can pass under the radar of the Carabinieri to get to your beach house in Liguria. Think about why staying put is the right thing to do at this moment. Believe me, I get it. I also wish I were at the beach feeling the sea breeze and smelling the salt. But alas, we are stuck in this landlocked Lombardia here so let’s make the best of it.
On a separate though not unrelated topic, I’d like to thank my friend Naomi for helping me to get to the bottom of why people, the British in particular, stockpile loo paper in times of crisis. Apparently, according to an article in Sky News that quotes a certain Dr Dimitrios Tsivrikos, an expert in consumer and behavioural science at the University College London, people panic buy toilet paper because it has a longer shelf-life than many food items and is prominently featured in aisles and is big in size. (Once again, size matters people!). According to Dr Tsivrikos "The bigger they are, the more important we think they are. If we had an international sign for panic it would be a traffic warning sign with a toilet paper roll in the middle." Interesting!