Giovanni Boccaccio was a Renaissance writer and poet born in Florence some 700 years ago. His life was a rather turbulent one: he was forced into the banking profession which he disliked; he had to witness the exile and execution of his friends; he suffered the death of family members at a young age; and so on, so forth. But perhaps the worst hardship of all was the fact that he had to live through several heartaches and disappointments in love (google his image and you’ll realise why).

In any case, one of his most important works of literature is the classic The Decameron. It’s about a group of Florentines – seven young women and three young men – who escaped to a countryside villa outside the walls of Florence to wait out an epidemic of bubonic plague.

There they whiled away the time by telling each other stories. And they had quite a lot of it, because they told each other no less than a hundred tales.

I confess that I have never read the tales written in Chaucerian Italian, but this week Politico Magazine ran a piece about how Boccacio proved to be an inspiration for a young British team who produced a drama loosely-based on The Decameron.

This film crew is at the moment shooting the film in a secluded villa in Veneto and have unwittingly ended up living more or less like the characters in the book.

Because as we all know, Veneto has this week witnessed the outbreak and spread of the plague-like coronavirus. Which means that the crew cannot leave the villa and their location is dotted by villages in which some 50,000 people are quarantined.

“Getting into character is a lot easier that way when it’s actually happening to you in real life,” said one of the actors of the film, musing on how real life was imitating art. Presumably they are whiling away the time telling tales.

Of course, while this group is discussing the philosophical merits of life and art, back in Malta, we watched with big round eyes at the red blob flashing alarm on the map of Italy.  And we decided to tackle the matter head on: life is life. Survival of the fittest. Me Tarzan, Me Tarzan.

It is slightly baffling why this kind of flu triggered our islanders’ fight or flight mode more than, say, the one last year, or the one before that

I think it is best summed up in a photo doing the rounds on Facebook, which captured a heated moment in Lidl: a pile of men, and their, ahem, builder bums, all scrambling on top of each other, trying to be the first to get… toilet paper packs, and then proceed to wrangle the packs out of each others’ hands.

All this before the virus has even reached the islands.

And all this before we looked closely at the figures underneath the red dots.  There have been around 80,000 cases of coronavirus in total around the world which sadly resulted in 2,804 deaths. But every year an estimate of 600,000 (!) people worldwide die of seasonal flu.

It is slightly baffling why this kind of flu triggered our islanders’ fight or flight mode more than, say, the one last year, or the one before that.

Maybe it’s the fancy name? Let’s face it, ‘corona’ is way sexier than that boring old ‘swine flu’.

Or maybe some of the panic-buying people were planted in supermarkets by the government? “I need a front page which is not about corruption! Now!” Prime Minister Robert Abela barked at his staff. 

Whatever it is, please let us not feel silly about emptying all the possible stocks of toilet paper (most of which I suspect, is made in China). Many around the world are doing the same.

Fortune magazine said that coronavirus has made toilet paper a hot new currency. “It’s a better gift than wine now,” it said as it explained that companies in Asia are these days looking at wowing clients by handing out party packs with toilet paper, face masks, thermometers and bottles of Dettol antiseptic.

In short: no one will rejoice at getting a Petrus for their birthday these days – they’d rather be gifted with a six-pack of silky rolls.

I haven’t been to the supermarket this week, but I have it on the good authority of friends who have been, and who have had to queue for ages behind trolleys full of loo rolls, pasta, rice and Weetabix (and chicken-flavoured Twistees), and came back with a hundred tales worthy of Boccacio.

But hang on a second right there. What on earth is all that toilet paper for? Surely, all that starch and fibre is going to make everyone acutely constipated?

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti