The ship stuck in the Suez Canal is like the world right now

We are all stuck in this Kafaesque pandemic world. The giant Evergreen container ship stuck across the Suez Canal has become a symbol of our lives, the way we all feel, that feeling of being cemented into a routine that never changes from day to day. We've been stuck for a whole year with our horizons reduced to four walls and a front door. In some countries, such as Brazil and parts of Europe where a new wave of the virus is taking control, the coronavirus nightmare seems to be getting worse. At least here in the UK the speed of the vaccine programme and the lifting of some of the restrictions starting tomorrow have increased hopes of a better 2021. Yet there remain doubts if only because we have been given optimistic predictions by the government before and they have failed to materialise. Foreign holidays are on. Foreign holidays are off. Politicians say one thing. Scientists say the opposite. So it's back to that container ship. While it blocks the Suez Canal and stops the massed array of cargo vessels on either side, we are all, as it were, holding our breath to see when and if it will ever be moved. I see the US Navy has now offered to help. When it does eventually get shifted away from the sandbank, perhaps that will also be the symoblic moment when the Covid-19 pandemic is moved further back into the shadows to enable us to emerge from our hibernation and start to live again. Is it not time, after a whole year?