The other morning I observed Archie, our youngest feline family member, now approaching his second birthday (which brings him to the equivalent of twenty-four human years in age..a young man in fact!) having fun with something. It turned out to be a mouse, that ‘wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie’ beloved of Robbie Burns. One part of me said ‘let him have his bit of fun – it’s his instinct anyway’; the other part felt sorry for the teeny rodent and so, after a few minutes and a few extra paw strikes from Archie, I took the petrified thing, which was playing dead, into my palm and transported it to a safer part of the garden and let it scurry off into the adjoining wood’s undergrowth.

I just wonder what happened to the poor creature; at least it had a couple more hours added to its brief existence.

I thought about how we too are placed in that tiny field mouse’s situation for a larger part of our lives than we care to remember. We too are being watched by predators and our greatest spots of vulnerability are carefully noted. Are they the body-snatchers ready with their pods to clone us and produce our equivalents in everything except for the individuality of our personalities?

Are they the tripods striding on their ungainly telescopic legs across the rural landscape to a little village where inhabitants are celebrating with merry-making the capping of their sons and daughters who have reached their sixteenth birthday so that they might become less rebellious and have all traces of original creative thought extinguished in them?

Are they the alien beings who regularly hover above Garfagnana’s Monte Palodina in their flying saucers eager to abduct incredulous humans living in the surrounding villages? Newspapers in our part of northern Tuscany have indeed reported a significant increase in UFO sightings around that mountain whose extra-terrestrial qualities I have already described in a post here https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/ufos-return-to-garfagnana/

At the same time, these sightings have been linked to the current pandemic situation which, in Italy, shows little sign of abating and threatens to turn the whole peninsula into a red zone worthy of a Martian invasion.

We are being watched. That is for sure. Whether it is the epidemiologist investigating probably the biggest news story since the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or whether it is the conspirer ready to proclaim it is an internationalist plot to reduce the world population and to place humanity under big brother mind-control the fact is we are all being watched by unknown beings. They are not like the great cat paws toying with the lives of small mice. They are quite the opposite: invisible viruses ready to launch themselves on unsuspecting giants…us!

Many can, of course, deny this scenario. Flicking through often irresponsible social media I noted a video posted by a right-wing Italian staying in the UK. It showed the Brighton seafront filled with crowds enjoying the sunset and, as he was proud to point out, with only a handful wearing protective masks.

Of course, there are still heated debates about wearing masks or ‘mascherine’ as they are called here in Italy. But then there are debates about the wearing of compulsory seat-belts and bicycle helmets. Health and safety increasingly control our lives even in the more relaxed milieu of that corner of Tuscany where arguments are now raging about the impending imposition of safety barriers on Lucca’s walls. If somebody’s kid falls off the city’s imposing but unprotected sixteenth-century ramparts then whose fault is it? The city council or the unvigilant parent?

One thing is certain: there will be no protecting hand to save us from the perils of the world’s present nightmare as the mouse was saved from Archie’s razor talons and sharp teeth by my intervention. As to the vaccine let it remain our personal decision.

It is clearly up to us to decide where and what we are and if we cannot decide then I truly believe in the protecting veil of the Mother of God as so wonderfully evoked in John Tavener’s inspirational piece of music.