Tara Flynn: Trying to stay positive, even with a positive Covid-19 test

Comedian Tara Flynn wants to tell us about how to find nuggets of happiness in these strange times

Tara Flynn. Photograph Moya Nolan

I can’t tell you that everything is going to be all right. Wait! Don’t leave! I know that’s not what you want to hear right now. 

Well, I can’t tell you that. There I was, as we entered this unfortunately necessary lockdown, myself already locked down, locked in, by a positive Covid-19 test. 

I had no symptoms. Not a sniffle. Not a degree over normal temperature. I was offered the test as a precaution for a job. I sauntered in, masked-up, sanitised, and distant as usual, confident I’d done everything “right”. Turns out this lad is so contagious it can slip through whatever crack it slipped through. 

I’m lucky. I wasn’t ill, but still had to stay in to keep others safe. So I’m not the one to tell you everything is going to be all right.

I can tell you though that people will fall in love, even eejits. Even people who jump queues, or block footpaths, or refuse to wear masks just because they’re uncomfortable (not for medical reasons). Even thoughtless people will elbow their way to magnificent things, will spy each other while parking on a pavement and infect each other not just with microbes, but desire. They will fall, recklessly, bare-facedly, head over heels and then hopefully find they naturally want to spend more time at home. 

If they can find each other, then it’s surely possible for love to find you, too.

I can tell you that the internet exists. 

Imagine lockdown with the whole family queuing for the one phone in the hall, after six when it’s cheaper and The Angelus bongs no longer drown out gossip. International contact once a week. 

Photos developing at the chemist, photos taken by someone else, with a camera the size of your head. No chat you’re unwilling for your father to overhear. No texting. No sexting. OnlyFans only a fantasy.

I can tell you that online shopping has never been easier. In early internet times, once you recovered from the screech of the dial-up, there weren’t any shops on there. Just polite message boards with people discussing particular blades for particular gardening shears, or impossible yoga postures, or films. Oh, they fought; there was plenty of discord (the shears-nerd community is notoriously testy). But the putdowns and saltiness were not their raison d’etre. We had that internet before. We can have it again.

I can tell you that we won’t take spontaneity for granted. Except we will, we have short memories. Soon (in the grand scheme of things — because life is short but also very long) we will bump into someone in town, someone we haven’t seen in ages but who makes us smile to see them, we will put our arms around each other and say “Feck it, let’s go for a pint.” And the hours will melt and years too, and it’s like you only saw each other yesterday. And you swear you’ll do it again, once a month maybe? And you mean it, but you won’t. I can tell you that in what will seem, looking back, like a blink, we will do that again. Then regret it the morning after, too old for daytime drinks and next-day productivity.

I can tell you that there’s too much news. It’s noise. We’ve accepted far too many people fighting for their own relevance when all we need are facts to make up our own minds. I can tell you it didn’t used to be this way. 

There have always been slants and takes and agendas. But there was also a kind of social agreement that lies would be laid bare, called out. Public fibbing was cause for blushes, tarnished a good name, was seen for the danger it is. Now it’s part of discourse. “Ha ha,” they say, “that’s just his way!”

“Telling it like it is” is taken to mean “telling it like it isn’t, but loud.” It wasn’t always like this. We can ask for it to change.

I can tell you that it’s not your fault you always feel exhausted, overwhelmed. I can tell you that, in feeling it, you’re not alone.

I can tell you that that one stray eyebrow hair is seen only by you.

I can tell you that taking action to make someone’s life better, or just their day, is not “virtue-signalling”, it's not weak.

I can tell you that now, right now, this very second, someone is thinking about you.

Someone is thinking about you and it’s making them smile.

I can tell you that emojis may seem facile, but they’re really very useful if you’re too overwhelmed for words.

I can tell you that TV has never been better. There are lots and lots of channels and streaming services and no waiting for next week and no box sets to dust. No one has to hold an aerial just right and not move for the night. No one has to cycle down to the video shop, only to witness the worst neighbour — the kind of a fella who’d pavement park — taking out the last copy of the film your household voted to watch.

I can tell you that everything passes. That what doesn’t kill you mightn’t make you stronger, just more tired, but it still means you’re alive. You’re here. You count.

I can’t tell you everything is going to be all right. But there’s lots more to tell you than that.