the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I was out taking my morning constitution earlier when across my path fell some men, who were clearly the three sheets everyone talks about in relation to the wind. They were going to see a flat in Shepherds Bush. Now, it may be just me, but they didn’t strike me as the sort of people who held down steady well paying jobs so it followed that the flat they were going to view wasn’t going to palatial. Secondly, it was hard to imagine any of them making a good impression on the ‘phone, so what third-rate lettings agency thought that their commission on placing tenants in the flat was worth more than they’re health, I really wouldn’t want to know

I was going to use them to illustrate just how complicit we all will be in our eventual extinction, how all this nonsense about ‘how things will change/we can never go back’ is utter tosh. Well-meant, sincere and genuine tosh, but tosh nonetheless, but I’ve just thought of a better example. One who also has the benefit of being someone whose been hailed as something or other by people who tell people on Twitter they’ve jumped on the hailing bandwagon. The man of the moment.

Joe Wicks.

Now I have nothing against Joe Wicks personally. I’m sure he’s a perfectly decent chap whom, if I was fortunate enough to know him, would hold in the highest regard. The fact that LMS had fooled Joe and I into believing he is Russell Brands brother is neither here nor there.

No, what bothers me – and I’m sure this is just a happy accident – is the fact that he’s reported to have signed a £1 million book deal on the back of his new found prominence the new Mr. Motivator, albeit with thankfully a less garish wardrobe.

Here’s what bothers me, and here’s why things will go back to not exactly, but very, very, similar to how they were before.

A book deal. That means books. That means cutting down tree’s to make the books. That means having the machinery to cut down the trees, and that means having the machinery to make that machinery. And people to make the machinery. And to turn the paper into books. And the lorries to deliver those books to bookshops. And roads for the lorries to run on and fuel to power them ….and oh you mean the book deal might not be an old fashioned one, but a modern, new fangled one,, an e-book!

It’ll have tips no doubt on healthy eating to assist one in doing more exercise. This will all be packaged as something anyone concerned about adopting a more balanced life, one that’s more environmentally aware, just better will want. But in order to get what you want you’ll have to buy the things that make up that package.

You’ll have to work to earn the money needed to buy them. You may have to travel to work. This will involve some form of transport, which means people to build the transport, which means people making the bits needed to make the transport and factories to make them in.

And the things you make other people will buy, which means they have to work. You see the cycle, don’t you? If they don’t want to buy them they can be persuaded to buy them in ways that don’t seem like persuading at all. And in order to buy them, those things will have to be transported to a shop. Some will be food things, some possibly from far away, some possibly not. Then you’ll need to buy the things that turn these food things into the things that’ll make you the envy of all the friends you brag about it to.

Only you won’t brag, you’ll do it in such a self-deprecating way that other people will only double the praise in protest. They’ll look at you, be all envious, and think ‘If only I had what they have, if only I had all those things I’d look like that. I’d be slim and toned, I’d have a body to be proud of and a partner to match’ And so they’ll buy those things and the cycle will endlessly repeat, a bit like ‘Q.I’ on ‘Dave’

It’ll go on and on until we’re extinct. Lets not fool ourselves things are going to change that much. Yes, easy jet may decided to keep some seats empty on their flights to help with social distancing, yes, yes, all very worthy and feel good. But how exactly can an airline promote social distancing? Isn’t that their raison- d’être, to reduce that? Or am I missing something? Yes, yes, we all want healthier food but we also want it to be healthy for our wallet so there’s a trade-off. Same with clothing. Yes, yes, we abhor sweatshops, are appalled by modern slavery but…well everyone loves a bargain….

This morning we got a home delivery from Sainsburys’ and anyone who read yesterdays post will realise just how much that was needed!

It was hard enough getting through to register with them as ‘Vulnerable’ but it was nowhere near as bizarre of registering itself. They wanted name, address, contact number, basically everything you’d expect. Then they wanted to know why I should be classed as ‘Vulnerable’. Patiently, Marge explained I had a brain injury blah blah mobility issues blah blah benefits.’Aha’, thought I,’Now they’re going to ask if we can email them something to confirm that. But no. Nothing. Nada. Nish

All told, the shop cost us £236, which isn’t bad for 3 adults and 1 child, when you consider that buying food for the weekend for me and my partner costs her sometimes £60. Mind you, I do keep telling her that if she will insist on eating Beluga caviar…

It makes one realise how much cheaper it is buying for more people, especially if you have somewhere to put it all – which isn’t, as LMS remarked the other day, my stomach. I never thought of myself as a huge eater, unlike my brother. He seemingly has to eat every fours he’s awake – not snacks either, but proper meals. It’s now clear to me that we’re more alike than either of us would wish, although if I start to like football or he thinks that Britain needs a socialist government is as likely as unicorns existing. Be that as it may, part of the reason that the shelves were empty a few weeks ago when people were panic buying was in part because they had somewhere to store it all. There’s no point in buying loads of meat, fish, bread, milk, etc, if you’ve only got a tiny freezer. We have a fridge/freezer combo that would comfortably suit the needs of 2 adults and a child, whereas we have 4 adults and a Tasmanian devil living in our house.

Anyway, back to this morning and the Sainsbury’s delivery. Foolishly I imagined that in the absence of me having to provide any supporting evidence to prove my eligibility that the delivery diver would do some sort of visual check, although what it might’ve been, I don’t know. But neither, it turns out did he, because he fucked off, leaving the shopping strewn in bags down the path rather like the breadcrumbs in ‘Hansel and Gretel’

Thankfully, I live with people that don’t have brain damage – although a belief in homeopathy suggests some kind of impairment! – and so were able to retrieve the bags and bring them inside because Darwin knows I couldn’t, which caused Joe to quip ‘Its like knock down ginger, except we’ve got garlic as well. The when Marge was putting it all away, commenting on the abundance of ginger he said ‘She’s got so much ginger she could be a Spice Girl.’, which was a trifle ambitous

Last night LMS said something just so  damn hilarious, so outrageously funny, which cemented the wisdom of my decision to spend the lockdown here in sunny Camberwell, so as to keep my mental health from going mental.

Picture the scene. We’re about to have a communal meal; me, LMS, Joe and Marge. What the meal was isn’t important, but LMS’s sense of expectation is. Joe is serving it up. Please bear mind that had spent the best part of an hour preparing this.  He prepares LMS’s plate and gives it to her. She looks at it. And looks at it some more, as if by her staring at it for long enough it’ll magically transform into a large chocolate cake. Joe says, wonderfully managing to keep his understandable frustration out of his voice, ‘Please don’t stare at your meal like that.’ And with a sense of timing that wouldn’t be amiss on a West End stage, LMS slowly looked up, and with a voice thick with resigned exasperation, said, drum roll, please……..

‘That isn’t a meal. That’s a disgrace.’

Even writing it out makes me chortle, so imagine the effort it took for me not to explode with laughter.

In his book ‘The Plague’, Albert Camus describes the effects on a small, remote and walled garrison town in French Algeria, set, as I recall in the 1920’s. Possibly, it could be or it could be not, I read it a long time ago and my stubborn pride won’t let me Wikipedia it. What I do remember vividly though, is the sense of growing sense of paranoia the townspeople are gripped by the longer it goes on. They too have chosen to self-isolate, the whole town, that is, for the common good; in a way that would only ever happen in a novel. Unlike the reality, where Londoners wealthy enough to own second homes in the country are fucking off to them.

Hang about, I have to go, LMS has declared adults are boring and therefore I should stop doing this and let her ‘torture’ me instead.

Some considerable time later.

LMS has an imaginative array of ‘tortures’ for me, but her favourite just now wasn’t hitting me with cushions or pressing them against my face while telling me ‘It’s your fault’, in that creepy way that Danny in ‘The Shining’ does when says ‘redrum, redrum, redrum…..’. No her new discovery is first to tap my arms against my chest by sitting on them, then pinching my nose so I can’t breathe which forces me eventually to open my mouth, at which point she ties to shove a sweaty sock in my mouth. She finds all this incredibly entertaining

Thankfully, she’s moved on from ‘Does that hurt?’ which she found an immensely enjoyable way to pass the time. That one involved her hitting or else inflicting some sort of bodily discomfort upon me, gently at first, while asking ‘Does that hurt?’ And when I’d say ‘No’, she’d repeat it progressively harder, asking the same question, and on getting the same answer, repeat the process until she got a different answer. Lest you think she’s a tabloid headline in the making, she is aware that not only am I the only person she can do these things to, but the reason she can do them to me is because I know just how kind, good-natured and playful she is toward me for almost all of the time.

Anyway. Where were we? Oh yes, that’s right. ‘The Plague’. As the book draws ever nearer to the end, the more the fear, the paranoia increases and people begin to see and end in sight, fear they might not survive long enough to see it. It really is worth a read. It really captures the fear that grips you at four in the morning and seems quite rational, but with the morning sunshine comes sanity and you realise those fears were as grounded in reality as any religion.

Yes, I did have uncomfortable sensations in my right leg last night but was this early onset of coronavirus or something I get every now and again? Is a minor ache in my right elbow joint a harbinger of doom or just indicative of me putting too much pressure through both my arms as I use my wheeled walkers inside and out? I mentioned this to my partner earlier and she’s been having the same, jumping immediately to doom ridden imaginariums but then realising they’re just that.

Of course I could look online and check want exactly the symptoms for coronavirus are, were it not for the fact I’m not a bellend but am someone who realises humans have a propensity to focus on symptons into which they can shoehorn whatever supposed maladies they have.

A robin has just landed on the garden table in front of me and you what that means boys and girls? Yes, a robin has landed on the table right in front of me…and now it’s gone. I know some people believe that robins have a deeper meaning than that, but then some people believe in a forthcoming zombie apocalypse.

Anyway, earlier on I was speaking to my partner and she let slip that she’d spent as much time cleaning the shopping, as actually doing the shopping. I don’t think meant cleaning in the Luc Besson way either. I mean she didn’t go into details, but I took it to mean that she’d wiped clean all the packaging, so as not to bring the virus into her house. I was conflicted by this news, because on the one hand it seems like a prudent precaution to take when you’ve got your 89-year-old mother staying with you. But on the other, if one thinks that a prudent thing to, at what point do things become imprudent?

I mean clothes, what do you do about clothes, inasmuch as do you have a set of clothes by the door that you put on when you go outside and take off when you get in? Shoes. Same thing, in fact this seems like a good idea anyway, because one doesn’t really think about shoes and what they might be bringing in with them. And that’s the worry, that the seemingly irrational suddenly becomes rational not because of the thing itself but the circumstance under which it’s performed and the sheer numbers of people doing it.

On a brighter note, we were shooting the breeze about something or other and one us said,” Oh happy days.” and she immediately referenced something about Samuel Beckett and something else French. I replied that I was thinking more of ‘The Fonz’ in ‘Happy Days’. This, she claimed, highlighted the difference between us. Rather magnanimously, I let this pass. Some moments later some crows were crowing loudly in my garden and she said it reminded her of ‘Jude the Obscure’. No, me neither! All I could think of was that scene in ‘Dumbo’ where the crows taunt him.

Same reaction.

I could have pointed out to her that yes, she has two M.A’s. but as I never tire of reminding her, these were in Drama and Filmmaking. Basically, jazz hands. Granted, she did her filmmaking M.A at the best film school in the country and admittedly her graduation film was shown on BBC4, but jazz hands nonetheless. She did hers full time and got grants, and could sign on in the holidays. Get this, one year when she was doing drama, she had a show at the Edinbrough Festival and wangled it so she could sign on up there! Whereas I have a B.A in politics, a proper subject, not some mickey-mouse, airy-fairy, fuckwiterry, which I did part-time, in the evenings after work.

To her credit, when I level these charges, that she did her M.A’s in jazz hands, she doesn’t deny them, she acknowledges I’m right.

Last night bought me crashing headlong into a childhood memory, and lest you labour under the delusion that my childhood memories abound with fond reminsences or cherished recollections let me put you straight on that one. My childhood was a fairy tale alright, a fucking grim one. I know that children have a different view of their own childhood to that of their parents, but even as a child I was aware that I wasn’t enjoying my childhood, seeing it as something that had to be endured, or tolerated, until I could finally escape my childhood and teenage years. I thought I had too, but every once in a while there’ll be something that immediately transports me back to being 10 years old.

So last night. We were having a communal meal. All very civilised. Then the conversation tuned to chocolate, what with it being Easter Sunday and all. ‘What’, asked LMS’s mother, Marge, ‘was our favourite chocolate?’ We all thought about it although I suspect LMS thought about it the least. Paul went first, any chocolate that had orange in it, he said. Now to me any chocolate that’s been mucked about with by either orange, mint, ginger or anything like that is frankly an abomination. And as for contaminating chocolate with coffee? There aren’t words strong enough to convey exactly how wrong that is!

Contestant number 2 was Joe, LMS’s father. His favourite chocolate was the now discontinued ‘Matchmaker’, which didn’t find you a partner but instead was something better, a box of long, thin crunchy chocolate sticks. He had the good sense to choose something that was a childhood favourite and so free of adult opprobrium. Contestant number 3 was LMS. Well she likes all chocolate. Or nearly all, but we’re getting to that. But she settled on Lindt chocolate, possibly because her favourite chocolate is white chocolate and she’d been given a white chocolate Lindt Bunny. Paul then remarked that his brother-in law-was the C.E.O. of Lindt Australia, the news of which I thought LMS took extremely calmly.

Marge was contestant number 4. Her favourite chocolate is 100% dark chocolate. 100% dark? Mind you, this from someone who’ll freely admit that kedgeree was her favourite food as a child. Part of the reason she likes it, is I suspect because nether Joe or LMS do, so it remains eaten only by her. And possibly because it allows her to pityingly look down upon those with less refined tastes. !00% dark chocolate is basically virtue signalling in an (in)edible form.

I was up next. Was it going to be something worthy, something organic, something fair trade? Possibly all three? No, I’d sooner eat a chocolate starfish than say any chocolate that combined all three of them? No, my favourite chocolate is Ferrero Rocher. It always has and even though it got the reception at the table it did, mild amusement from some, abject horror from others – you can guess who was who – they’ve always done it for me. And unlike other brands, they have had the good sense to know a winning formula when they see it, and not to piss about with it. Cherry coke, anyone?

Marge declared herself disappointed, not least because she had bought me a box of ‘Booja Booja’ chocolates for Easter.  Gluten, dairy and enjoyment free. In case anyone at the table hadn’t heard it, she said it again. So would I, she asked as sweetly as the chocolates were not, mind if she got them so we could share some.?

Immediately I was 10 years old.

It wasn’t that I got edible presents very often but more when I got them I’d be invariably cajoled into sharing them and there are few things as infuriating to a child as when you are a box of pleasure and that pleasure is then snatched away from you, all the good one’s gone, and you have to style it out. So I said this yesterday. Normally I just think it. I mean it’s different if I choose to share, that’s my choice, but when someone buys you something with the expectation they’ll have some? There’s a term for that, I know what it is, but I looked it up on Wikipedia just in case and thankfully I did, because now I know it’s considered ‘objectionable’ so I haven’t used it.

But still. 10 years old. My brother grinning at me, knowing the pain I’m going thought. Choosing on purpose, on fucking purpose, the one’s he knew I liked. Oh yes, they’d all be generous with my goodies, wouldn’t take only one when two or three would do just as well.

Which is why whenever I buy edible presents I try and ensure their  contaminated with something I won’t eat, so the recipient knows I won’t have any and with LMS, I tell her that anything edible she gets from me she’s not allowed to share.

Because I know how it feels when adults make you share and Christian it is not.

I was out walking in the park yesterday, careful to avoid the attentions of the tabard wearing functionaries, whose main function, was it seemed to stop people loitering or sitting on the grass. In this weather. Clearly they had just a little bit too humanity to pass the entrance exam as a traffic warden. I was tempted to find out how slow could I could go before it was considered actually stopping. Or what would happen if they judged that I’d stopped in one place for too long or if the distance between these stops wasn’t sufficiently distant enough. Basic wind up 101.

But I was distracted by a tantalising snippet of conversation I overheard from two people jogging towards me. It was incredibly frustrating only to have heard what I heard and not the before or the after. Both would’ve great, the whole thing just perfect. But they ran past me, leaving me deeply unsatisfied, rather like when you’re finally passed a spliff, only to discover there’s no grass in it, just tobacco. When you hear someone say ‘I’d rather be isolated with a Bengal tiger.’ you want to hear more.

Well I do. I want to know why exactly why she’d rather be isolated with a Bengal tiger. In great detail. Forensic detail ideally. I’d want to hear about all the petty irritations that can quickly escalate into an argument. I’d want to chapter and verse on all of this. I’d be fascinated, as indeed, would most people. Because nothing helps alleviate ones own sense of suffering than hearing that someone has it worse. And I’d also want to ask them ‘If a we couldn’t get a Bengal tiger, what other wild animal would you settle for? Two hyena’s, maybe? A boa constrictor or a black widow spider at a push?’ It has always been a source of great amusement to me that everyone considers themselves to be a bastion of calm and even-temperedness at all times during an argument. That they display remarkable restraint and fortitude in the face of unbelievable provocation and can find nothing in their words or deeds worthy of reproach, but the other person, well…

This made me think how right I was to return back to Camberwell for the lockdown. I mean, yes, I could’ve stayed at my partners house, and for three or four days I’d’ve been quite happy. But then I’d miss the garden, which in this weather has become into it’s own and I’d also miss my music. Those would be hardships, of course. But an incomparable loss would be the absence of LMS. In another world, writing about something entirely different, someone wrote ‘The absence of her means more to me than the presence of others.’ At the time it  seemed arrant nonsense,. Naturally it did. A friend of mine had just been dumped and inexplicably he sought solace from his navel gazing by reading poetry. To me it was the sort of things poets write so that earnest types can quote it to impress someone, but now I know better. As I mentioned on this blog last Christmas,

(LMS) is my favourite person in the whole world, my favourite person possibly because I’ve known her all her life, possibly because of her relentless capacity for mucking about, possibly for lots of other things, but unquestionably because of her wonderful effect on my extremely moody outlook. All the medication I could swallow would be nowhere near mood enhancing as a four year old delight banging insistently on my bedroom door and shouting “Get up, get up, I want to play”, until I did.

Of course me writing that she’s my favourite person in the world might’ve had more currency had I not had a brain injury and had not essentially everyone I known vanished like a virgin on prom night. Although having written that, there is something rather wonderful when I think I’ve snuck quietly out of the house and double locked the door, then to hear footsteps running urgently to the door, the letterbox being flung open and a voice demanding to know where I’m going and telling me I can’t go, because without me the house is boring.

And at this time, when the news is unremittingly grim, I could choose to fill my head with things that would only depress me. So, instead I choose not to, I choose to preserve my mental health so that it doesn’t go mental. I mean, I know the news is bad and it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Or not better exactly, more less worse. I know this. I just don’t want all the details in my head.

What I do want in my head is to be mightily impressed by the descriptive imaginative power of someone who can say ‘In a dream the air is thick with imagination.’ And not think it of note, but instead we engaged in the more important task of classifying farts. And besides, why would I want to be apart from someone who this morning knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea? And who has just given her opinion that ‘chocolate isn’t a food because its too tasty’

Indeed, too tasty to share, lest I risk her becoming a Bengal tiger.

Yesterday, like millions of other households, we received a ‘vital update from the government’, the purpose of which was ‘to update you on the steps we are taking to combat coronavirus’

He set the tone from the start, by claiming ‘From the start, we have sought to put in the right measures at the right time.’ The key word here was ‘sought’. Anyone can seek anything, but whether they find it or not is anyone’s guess. It continues, ‘We will not hesitate to go further if that is what the scientific and medical advice tells us we must do.’ Even to me, someone who has studiously avoided the news, I find that palpable nonsense. I read “Private Eye’ and it has been especially critical of the governments belated, confusing, and ultimately counter-productive advice.

The leaflet that accompanies this, with the ronseal inspired title,

CORONAVIRUS: STAY AT HOME, PROTECT THE NHS, SAVE LIVESI

is actually, in contrast with the letter, really rather good. It’s informative in an unambiguous way. Anyone with a rudimentary grasp of English could understand it.  Right from the get go, it’s off, ramming home the governments message,

The single most important action you can take is to stay at home in order to protect the NHS and save lives.

And to be fair to the government, having it emblazoned on the podiums used during press conferences, press conferences which are broadcast live and get prominence on news bulletins, their doing everything they can to get the key message out. No-one can possibly be ignorant of them by now, and by keeping it simple, with constant repetition, it’s working.

But it’s the ‘Reverse Meatloaf Principle ‘ inasmuch as he claimed that ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ and after the abject failure to connect with people of’ Strong and Stable’ and ‘Get Brexit Done’, at a time when we need it the most, the government has finally delivered.

It’s just that had this leaflet been sent out some weeks ago, had the government acted in…well a more governmental way, then where we are now could have been avoided.  It sets out what we need to do and what the government is doing to help us do it. However, the social contract we make with the government is that we accept we are a collection of individuals inhabiting the same land mass and in order to continue to do so, we subjugate some of our rights and freedoms to allow the government to act for the benefit of all. One of those benefits is protection. But if it is the very government charged with protecting us that isn’t, does it mean the social contract is null and void?

I end on a piece of such brazen cant written by a brazen cant.

Boris’s Johnson ends his letter ” I want o thank everyone who is working flat out to beat the virus, in particular the staff in our fantastic NHS and care sector across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.” That would be the NHS that has been systematically hollowed out and underfunded by this and previous governments on the altar of profit? That would be the care sector that is close to collapse because of an increasing demand yet funding cuts. “It has been truly inspirational to see our doctors, nurses and other carers rise magnificently to the needs of the hour.”  That would be the junior doctors who a previous Conservative Health minister was engaged in a long running and bitter dispute with over hours, pay, and working practices. And not content with rattling their cage, thought he’d try again with consultants. That would be the nurse who recently went on strike in Northern Ireland. And the carer’s who barely make minimum wage?

His thanks won’t pay their bills, they can’t be used at a supermarket checkout to buy food or be used as a means of exchange or barter. Basically, his thanks sum up his entire handling of the coronavirus crisis, totally useless.

Yesterday it was reported that so far, the confirmed number of coronavirus cases worldwide now stands at 1.5million. 1.5million? Is that all?

As good fortune would have it, a couple of days earlier a housemate had clarified what exactly a billion is. I’d always thought it meant a million millions but no, it seems that the accepted measure of a billion is a thousand million. So I was wrong by quite a wide margin, some 999,000 millions wrong, it would seem.

Anyway my point is that if a billion is a thousand million, then 1.5 million expressed as a percentage of that is 0.15%. I think. Maths was never my thing. So therefore it stands that if the global population totals over 7 billion, then that percentage becomes smaller still. I know, completely meaningless numbers, cold, factual and boring. So lets try and render it more relatable, something we can all understand.

It’s not likely to happen, but imagine if I presented LMS with a chocolate gateaux, a triple layered one with cream filling and raspberries and said to her “ Right, here’s the deal, if this cake represents the total population of the world, you can have as a slice of it that’s proportionate to the amount of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world.”

Happy she would not be.

It does rather astound me, this notion that human life is sacred, that all human lives are somehow equally important. It is both patently absurd, and in this new reality dangerously naive. Of course they’re not! For one thing a child of 8 or 18 has more life in them, more potential than someone who’s 88. It seems blatantly obvious to me, anyway. Just so you know, my Mum is 88 and she freely admits she’s had her life. And given how were constantly reminded of the need to protect the NHS, shouldn’t one the ways we can help it, is not to squander finite resources a finite amount of resources available to the NHS, shouldn’t these prioritised to be used on the most potential for life? This may seem unspeakably harsh to some reading this, but detached and rational thinking is what we need now, not emotion and sentiment clouding our decision-making capability.

Anyone over the age of, what do they say in the bible, four score and ten? Well however much that is then, anyone over that gets the virus well, lets just hope they’ve made a will!

There’s no getting away from it. I’m in a bad mood, and that’s official. So bad, in fact, that at times I ape Billy Liar. For those of you who haven’t seen the classic British film ‘Billy Liar’ – and you really need to take a long hard look at yourselves if you haven’t – Billy is a fantasist who yearns to escape the drab northern town where he lives with parents to seek fame and fortune in London.

Well he thinks he does.

Anyway, at one point in the film Billy is outling his plans to his parents during breakfast, who in a 1950’s provincial way, pour scorn on his ambition. Billy retreats into his fantasy world, where imagines machine gunning them to death over their boiled eggs and toast. I know how he feels. In my mind, I’ve committed the most unspeakably heinous crimes countless times throughout my life. It’s a sign of just how much of a demented wrongcock I am, that hardly any of my fantasises have ever been about sex. That’s for the unimaginative. There are so many other, darker, more comic, more twisted, more..imaginative ones to play with.

For example;

Last week, the Sunday Sport was reporting that a couple had found a novel way to earn during the lockdown, by streaming online themselves having sex, rather wonderfully on the same day that most of front pages were full of palace press releases telling us how wonderful, how heartfelt and how just utterly brilliant in every way her address to the nation had been the night before. Coincidentally I had just found out that so many people had been flouting social distancing measures that the authorities had decided to close Brockwell Park to enforce them. This got me thinking. In a deeply twisted way, I hope you won’t be surprised to learn.

Just imagine, well no don’t, not if you’ve just eaten that is, that the laughing queen from jollity farm and phil the greek threaten to do a live two hour sex marathon every day until people stop flouting government advice. And don’t think having a screen turned off will help! This is a fantasy, my fantasy, so my rules, so every screen can be remotely hijacked and turned on – unlike the viewers – and so steam the sexathon live. They could even threaten to take requests, you know, like on those ‘adult’ channels that only broadcast after midnight where viewers text in requests for the performers to perform.

After four days of this the streets would be as empty as phil.

Another one concerns anti-vaccers, people who are so set against vaccination for their child, believing that somehow there’s a conspiracy afoot involving the government, the pharmaceutical industry, Bigfoot and the entire medical establishment. That they have pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth, which they share with equally delusional fuckwits on social media. My fantasy is this.

That at some point a vaccine for CO-VID 19 is developed and a nationwide programme of vaccinations is announced and people arrive at testing centres to get it. A somebody armed only with a white coat, ridiculous hair and a clipboard checks peoples names in the queue to get in and every so often, asks a family. Yes, there’s a bit of a problem, they say. The children can be vaccinated, so to can any adults in the family who didn’t post on social media about how they were. They’d have detailed social media evidence, proving that Snowden right to back them up. They didn’t believe in vaccinations then, so what had changed, apart from their desire not to die?

The third – and probably not the last fantasy I’ll have about all this – concerns this new fangled desire to cook for hospital workers and my housemate. Not like that! She cooked something a few days ago, with cabbage and something turned the liquid an unspeakable shade of grey. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 1960’s documentary about the Soviet Gulags. Anyway, she cooks, puts it in some Tupperware, takes it to our local hospital where she gives it to some nurses.

A day later they are all stricken by severe food poisoning, the severity of it depends on my mood.

So some days, like today, its fatal.