Ruffians!

by Pseud O'Nym

The self-isolating precaution that we are collectively taking as a household will invariably require certain sacrifices to be made, some temporary curtailment of the norms of everyday life, things we take for granted, for the common good.

I must practice saying that in a sincere voice, because this is only Day One and given enough time and with enough practice I might get the hang of it.

Until then, however…

I was out for a stroll yesterday, being as how the sun was out and I wanted to make the most of it. But, as is so often the case, what should’ve been a pleasant experience, wasn’t, because of other people. Whenever I approached anyone, they’d swerve to avoid me. Not in a subtle way either.

No.

What annoyed me was when they would start to swerve some distance away from, to make a point of being seen to do it so I could see them do it, and then continue to swerve lest I tried to jump them. If I could, believe me I would. This got me thinking.

Does anyone know with any degree of certainty 2m, is? I mean we know that it’s 120cm, but not in a practical application of it. We have no idea. I definately don’t and the people that annoyed me so yesterday certainly didn’t. So the government’s health advice about keeping 2m away from people is as meaningless as Boris’s Johnson wedding vows.

This got me thinking. If no-one is sure what exactly 2m is, then there is a gap in the market, which needs to be filled very soon if social distancing is going to stand the slightest chance of success.

The answer? Ruffs. Lie the one’s the Elizabethan’s used to wear only bigger. Much bigger. Huge, fuck off ruffs. They’d just slip over your head, be exactly 2m in diameter, with your head being the axis. If they came in a variety of colours, a flash mob of people wearing them would like a cross between ‘The Umberella’s of Cherbourg’ and a Busby Berkley number.

Face masks. Another gap in the market right there! This morning my housemates popped out to the shops wearing them and was I  thinking ‘What a sensible and prudent thing to do’? Hazard a wild guess. What I was thinking was ‘If you just drew on some vertical lines where the mouth is, you could look like Hannibal Lector’. Remember that scene in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ when he’s all trussed up in large chair with a straitjacket, restraints and everything? Like that. Being a demented wrongcock, I naturally thought that if you bought a hockey mask, with a few modifications it could be worn as a face mask and you’d look like the killer in either ‘Halloween’ or ‘Friday 13th’

Those horror films being as inditinguishable from each other as the days news is. Not that I see or hear much of it, you understand but I get the gloomy headlines from those who d