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LILACS BLOOMING

The news today could not be much grimmer, or more sad, without being fully tragic - a brilliant, charismatic, well-spoken and driven leader of a country facing a major crisis gone suddenly from public life - not Lincoln, or Kennedy, but Johnson. And not dead yet, to be British about it.

But my how this hurts. Since the bombshell news last night that the PM - Boris - had been admitted to the ICU - much of the world has been stunned. I felt as if my father had died; it was a gut-punch, and winded, I fought back tears. I feel shaken to the core.

Why? Because Johnson, along with the Queen, is the symbol of our nation, of Great Britain, now, in its hour of peril. He has been our robust, funny, energetic, boyish, mischievous, literate captain. He lives on, but it is a grim moment. If he can be felled, who cannot be? Who is safe? No one.

This virus unscrews the doors. Let's be frank. 50% of men over 50 who go into the ICU in the UK for Covid-19 and go onto ventilators, die, within 5-10 days. 50% survive. No one wants odds like that. The reality facing his family, fiancée, friends, and the nation, is that we may very well see one of our most dazzling political figures since Churchill die too soon.

I don't like seeking for pleasing things in tragic moments, but it is the case that should the worst happen, Boris will at least be emblazoned on the British mind like few other heroes since Nelson; a fate he would enjoy, though not this way won. His name will ring out for centuries, the true Brit. His bravery and refusal to stop working, killed him - like Bethune in China, he waded into the storm, and was overcome.

Here we should halt - rhetoric is too greedy for carrion. Love must temper poetic flow with kinder thoughts. It is too soon for eulogies, elegies, or obituaries. I am desperately hoping Boris is saved by the best doctors the UK has. His death would be too horrible and demoralising for us to easily bear. Only the Queen's would hit harder. History like a terrible scythe is over us now, casting a shadow no living figure needs. More light, let the lilacs bloom. We can only hope this Easter sees the great man rise.

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