Lessons

by Ian McEwan

He was woken at two thirty by the pressure in his bladder. That never used to happen. He wondered, as he stood draining into the bowl, whether he should be worried that his stream was so weak. He thought of Joyce, of Stephen and Bloom at the end of their day, pissing side by side at night in the garden. Ithaca. Once Roland had possessed Stephen’s trajectory, ‘higher, more sibilant’. Now he had Bloom’s, ‘longer, less irruent’.

the world was wobbling badly on its axis, ruled in too many places by shameless ignorant men, while freedom of expression was in retreat and digital public spaces resounded with the shouts of delirious masses. Truth had no consensus.

In the new year, 2021, in a post-solstice eclipse, the third lockdown began, the US president was replaced amid turmoil and at midnight on 31 January Europe was left behind.