Here They Come!

AS the first coughs and splutters fill the crisp November air like the rich spoils of a seasonal bounty, the more diligent and fanatical members of the masked cult are soon likely to appear on the streets as an inauspicious prelude of darker things to come. So eager are they to display their pre-emptive loyalty to authority in lieu of official state directives that, ironically, each seems to have arrived at a conscious and independent decision to conform.

These unlikely mavericks always jump the gun before the infallible cartridge of scientific authority has even been slipped into the cold, grey chamber of public consciousness. Millions of others, still waiting to be told how to behave and when to do so, would die of sheer embarrassment were they to be magically transported to another time-zone in which the exposure of one's chin had since become a blatant act of sedition. It's all a question of context, yet some people will always stand out in their frantic desire to fit in.