Giles Brown
If you didn’t know, an earworm is the term for a song or, more annoyingly, single verse or line from a song, which somehow gets stuck in your subconscious and keeps repeating over and over again.
In the past few days, I have been plagued by a persistent earworm featuring late 70s one-hit-wonders The Knack.
But instead of playing the chorus to their sole success My Sharona, this particular earworm has subtly altered the lyric.
Which means that I now have ‘Ohhhhh, yeaaaah, My Corona’ echoing through the (admittedly cavernous) space in my head where my brain should be.
The first cases of coronavirus were reported in Marbella at the end of February.
If you grew up as a child in the 70s, as I did, your previous experience with Corona was probably as a fizzy drink, given to you along with a Matchbox car and a packet of Monster Munch as you waited for the grown ups in the pub car park.
The fact that coronavirus had finally reached Marbella was worthy of a report on my news blog, and I duly wrote a piece, based on a statement from the Junta de Andalucia’s Department of Health.
You know. The Junta. The organisation that allegedly runs the province we live in.
Once again, social media didn’t let me down.
The pick of the comments that came in included ‘please do not exacerbate this just for the sake of journalism’, ‘DONT LET THE NEWS-HUNGRY PRESS CRIPPLE MARBELLA!’ and ‘?Great! Now that’s going to panic the whole of the Costa del Sol and others. Tourism is going to suffer, flights will be cancelled and prices will go up, great media panic. Well done!’
I like to think that I have a little bit of media clout, but blaming me for any impending financial crisis on the coast is a little churlish.
And then there were the more succinct, Anglo Saxon replies.
“Bollocks” was my favourite.
When something like this hits the headlines, a wide variety of social media conspiracies and theories always spring up.
“Cocaine kills coronavirus” was one that caught my eye and enabled me to come up with the following cunning plan to beat the virus.
Either:
a) move to Bogota or, failing that, the second line of Banus after midnight.
b) If you think you have been exposed, check into one of Marbella’s five star hotels.
After all, if you do have to be quarantined, you might as well do so in sumptuous luxury daaaaaaarlings!
Keep calm, pass the hand sanitizer and carry on!
