the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Yesterday wasn’t a great day for me and not just because it was the first day Joe was back at work and that I had rashly offered to help Marge out with LMS’s home schooling. Despite me having seen LMS in action, swerving like a slalom skier out of anything she doesn’t want to do, despite me having witnessed at first hand how easily distracted she can be and how resistant to attempts to bring her back to what she was doing she can be, despite her knowing all of this, she was convinced that my knowing all this wouldn’t require her to modify her behaviour in any way whatsoever. Which, in a weird way, I quite admire. It shows a self-confidence, a ‘I don’t care what you think, I’m going to do it my way regardless’ that I had as a child – and indeed have now.

As any reader of this blog will know, I think LMS is a bit more than alright and I like to flatter myself that this is reciprocated, but yesterday made me realise that being ‘Mr. Fun’ – the adult who because their not her parent means I don’t have to undertake the boringly necessary tasks that a parent has to, but can be a man-child – makes the sudden switch to being ’Mr. Notsofun’ somewhat difficult for her to process.

At least that’s how my adult mind rationalised it. Marge was very sweet about my efforts though, saying ‘Don’t feel you have to do this every day’, which of course I interpreted as ‘I know you meant well, but no.’ She assures me that this wasn’t the case but yesterday was a day when my mind was a bit off-kilter.

And it wasn’t that my partner finally got her waders on and made it across London to see me. Joe said to me later that it must’ve been quite emotional for me, seeing her after so long apart, to which I replied ‘Don’t go overboard’ Anyone who knows me knows that I have a profound dislike of what I call ‘Hallmark Emotions’; emotions that could’ve come from a greetings card, or else be found in a romcom starring Matthew McGonauhey. It’s only been six weeks and we talk every day on the ‘phone. It hasn’t been six months of no contact whatsoever. She knew what yesterday was, and wanted to see me

Because yesterday was May 4^th and might well be for some sad sacks ‘Star Wars’ day but for me it is the anniversary of my accident, when I went from being someone with a a future, into someone with a past. At least that’s the story I tell myself. The sudden reversal of fortune happened some years ago now but when it was more recent my partner and I would escape to the coast somewhere, so I could just sit and watch the sea, the sunrises and the sunsets, but with the passage of time this has seemed less important thing to do. But this year, falling slap bang in the middle of this lockdown as it does, I miss being by the sea, specifically just gazing a the horizon for hours, lost in one’ s thoughts. Reflecting on the boundless possibility the horizon suggests to me, and equally that I squandered that potential. These are not, surprisingly, unhappy thoughts.

Looking at the horizon helps me realise that just as a sudden burst of sun on the waves transforms them from dull grey to glittering silver and back again in a second, so to my own problems are only problems to me. Helps me put them into a proper perspective, a reassuringly comforting one, that in the scheme of things, they matter not a jot.

The flowers will not bloom because I’m feeling depressed. The waves won’t stop crashing on the beach in show of solidarity for me, neither will the sun go on strike, refuse to rise or set, until I feel better. The changing of the seasons won’t be affected any, the birds will still chirp away, bee’s will – hopefully – still pollinate and make honey and wasps will still do whatever the fuck it is that they do.

And that’s just as it should be. We are all going to die at some point and whether its coronavirus, a drunk driver, or being harpooned by a spear of frozen urine jettisoned from a jumbo jet, no matter how tragic or comical our death is, things will continue. That’s what I think of when I look at the horizon. Well that and how glad I am that I’m in the warm looking out at it, than on the sea, being buffeted by blustery winds, freezing my fucking tits off.

One of the reasons why yesterdays post was so angry is because it makes me angry when people who’ve been quite happy to be fellow travellers with the Conservatives when it suited them to be so, have now discovered they have a conscience, and thanks to Twitter and Facebook, they can advertise it.

It’s like the flagrant inequality that began under Thatcher and continued unabated until now never happened. That the pernicious benefits system was something that affected other people, as long as their own cosy, well-ordered life was untouched, it was alright. Alright if others had to pay the price, in blighted lives, thwarted ambitions and potential never realised. Basically, if other people suffer, well it’s better than me suffering.

It’s a bit like that pitiful waste of oxygen in ‘Question Time’ a few years ago, who admitted that she’d voted Tory because she thought it would benefit her and her family but now they were going to take away her tax credits it reduced her to tears. She quite happily admitted to voting Conservative, so she was presumably comfortable with cuts to benefits for the sick and disabled then – as she wasn’t sick or disabled. And very relaxed about cuts to public services – as long as they weren’t the public services her or her family used. Totally unconcerned with a Conservative government trying to create a ‘hostile environment’ not just for asylum seekers, but increasingly for everyone. Because the more people fear losing things, the more they fear.

She was the modern day embodiment of the famous poem ‘First they came..’ by the Pastor Niemolloer, describing the Nazi Party’s gradual takeover of the German state involved removing dissenting views, helping to create a mindset of ‘Take them, do what you want to them, I don’t care, I’ll do whatever you want, just leave me be.’

Until now, of course.

Suddenly they’ve realised the blindingly obvious, that its not hedge-fund managers, footballers or ‘celebrities’ we depend on in a crisis. It’s the nurses and doctors who former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt waged a long battle with over their pay and conditions. It’s the police whose numbers have been cut by over 20,000 – 14%- since 2010. And the UK’s ambulance service, which too has seen over 3,00 jobs cut and it’s budget slashed not forgetting the fire brigade, who when London mayor, Boris’s Johnson oversaw the closure of 10 fire stations. The list could go on and on, but you get my point? People quite happily voted Tory when they thought it would have no negative impact on them. But now they realise how by not voting Labour at every election they’ve been able to take part in, they have fucked us all. Yes, they can “Clap for Carers’, sign whatever online petitions they want or wear badges or T-shirts proclaiming their support, but that will do fuck-all-nothing if they continue voting for the status quo.

It’s like I posted yesterday, it’s about as much use as a cement football being concerned now, now it’s like watching your house burn and wishing you’d got insurance. But back when this could’ve all been stopped, at every election that’s returned a Conservative government, not in the 2000’s so much, as in the 1980’s and 90’s. But Twitter didn’t exist then and if it isn’t shared, talked about or liked on Twitter, then it hasn’t really happened.

The Conservative Party have an ideological obsession, almost pathological belief in the notion that whatever the state does, the private sector could do it both cheaper and more efficiently. We know its bollocks, but inexplicably when people are told they can have lower taxes and better public services, they believe it. They don’t question what ‘free at the point of use’ means when it’s used to conjunction with NHS funding. People don’t ask the questions for the good reason that they know they may not like the answers.

Mind you, the clue is right there in the fucking name!

Con –servative.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

As I get older, one thing I’ve noticed is not that I find most news either surprising or shocking, but that other people do. An example was provided yesterday by the BBC. I manage to avoid most news now, as it isn’t good for my mental health, me knowing the latest this or scandalous that, but when I log online, BBC news being my homepage, I can’t avoid it. I should change it, I know, but it does on occasion provide me with yet another ‘ oh for fucks sake’ moment.

People living in more deprived areas of England and Wales are more likely to die with coronavirus than those in more affluent places, new figures suggest.

 The ONS studied the 20,283 deaths involving Covid-19 that took place between 1 March and 17 April. In England, it found the mortality rate in the most deprived areas was 55.1 deaths per 100,000 population, while the rate was 25.3 deaths per 100,000 in the least deprived areas.

In what possible universe is this news to anyone? Did anyone read the first sentence of that story and think to themselves ‘Bugger me backwards with a pitchfork, can this be true?’

What did people think was going to happen when shipyards, coalmines and steelworks were closed under Thatcher’s Conservative government?? What did they imagine was going to happen to those workers who were now unemployed, to their children and grandchildren? What did they think would happen to those communities that were decimated, sacrificed on the altar of free market ideology? Did they not stop to consider that there might be a societal cost some time in the future? No of course not. They were too busy wondering who the fuck ‘Sid’ was and would anyone ever find him to give him a message. They were thinking about buying their council flat, or deluding themselves that they were now middle class because they drank Perrier, knew that hummus wasn’t a Greek island and watched mucky films with subtitles on Channel Four.

The same people who were too busy thinking of the benefits to them of Thatcherism, to ponder of the detrimental effect those benefits had on others. They were the voters ‘New’ Labour was after, when it jettisoned it’s commitment to re-nationalising everything Thatcher had privatised, and was no longer recognisable as a political champion fighting for a more equitable society. So much so in fact, that when Mrs Thatcher was asked what her greatest political achievement had been, she replied ‘Tony Blair.’

Is this a surprise?

In a statement, the government said it had commissioned urgent work from Public Health England to understand the different factors that could influence the way someone was affected by the virus and would set out more details in due course.

Not even remotely. Anyone with a scintilla of intelligence knows what it’s what causes those factors to occur that matter, just as surely as they know that the report will take ages to complete and it’s recommendations largely ignored.

That’s why I don’t join in with all this ‘Clap for Carers’ bullshit, and not because my brain injury has bizarrely affected my co-ordination either, but because I’ve always supported the NHS when it matters. Not as part of some meaningless self-aggrandisement bollocks, but in private, at the ballot box, by not ever voting Conservative, or worse, Lib Dem – they’re worse, because the same free market ethos, but disguise it. Think what you will about the merits or otherwise of Jeremy Corbinned, it is inarguable that Labour under him could’ve transformed this country for the better. Well you could argue against that proposition, of course you could, but you’d be an idiot, one of the many idiots who elected the paternity suit in a suit our PM.

The root causes of the inequality so rampant throughout the nation aren’t difficult to fathom, nor do they require flow charts or complicated theories to make sense of them. Thatcher (in)famously said ‘There’s no such thing as society’ and thanks to her zealous pursuit if ideology, it’s more divided than ever.

Yesterday I referenced McCarthyism without stating what I meant when using that term. I just figured that anyone reading my blog would know what it meant. I’m sorry, it was lazy of me, and I offer this by way of an apology.

McCarthyism refers of course to the work of that well-known comedic actor, Melissa McCarthy.

They were at again last night, ‘The Happy Clappers’, showing their support for the tireless work of front-line NHS staff, by er, well cheering and clapping for about five minutes. I know I’m cynical and everything but I can’t be the only one who thinks it smacks of McCarthyism.

By that I mean the ‘if your not with us your against us’ mentality, the suspicion that anyone not displaying the correct values was in some way not one of us or isn’t adhering to social norms. Norms that everyone just understands to be case without the tiresome necessity of having them either discussed as to what they be or what the sanctions might be for not being totally committed to following them. That sort of thing, an osmosis of conformity,  where doing the right thing, and more importantly, been seen to do it, is of greater import than the thing itself.

As I wrote last week

…my partner informed me that they were at it on her street as well and from her first floor window she could see the neighbours checking out who was – and wasn’t – taking part… It’s not enough that you do something, oh no, people have to see you doing it. Then it accrues it’s proper social purpose, that of being well regarded by your neighbours.

I don’t think we’re anywhere near having to sign loyalty pledges in support of the NHS yet.  Although by the sound of things, there seemed to be more people taking part, and they were noticeably more enthusiastic. with it. And it did make me feel slightly uncomfortable earlier when Marge told me that people had taken to Twitter questioning the actual benefit to anyone other than those doing it. Really? Taking to the very social media platform that helped create this orgy of onanism to doubt it? Aren’t we all meant to be grown-ups here?

Or maybe ‘Clap for Carers’ is a good thing, unless of course one gives carers to clap, in which it isn’t. It’d be as useful as a minute’s silence is to the dead NHS workers it was meant to commerrate.

I know that the last couple of my posts haven’t exactly been a barrel of laughs so in recognition of that, I’m going to lighten the mood considerably, and I find nothing lightens my mood half as much as LMS!

We were all in the dining room the other day, Marge, Joe, LMS and I, when Marge asked LMS which of her friends would she like to chat with on Zoom. LMS is, for reasons known only to her, remarkably resistant to this idea, but in practice less so. Anyway Marge asked again to which LMS replied by singing ‘I think we both know the answer to that one!’ which made me think of a lovechild between Ethel Merman and a barbershop quartet. That isn’t an insult, in case you think it is. LMS then – and I found this incredibly funny – proceeded to repeat this by putting the stress on a different word every time, so ‘both’ for example, became ‘bohohoth’.

Then when Marge tried to join in, LMS sang her displeasure thusly ‘Her voice is pathetic and she has a throat as crooked as witches nose.’ She then combined the two in a bizarre freestyle mash-up, the sort of thing Andrew Lloyd-Webber has made a career out of. Not just the once either, oh no, she belted it out, repeatedly. I laughed, despite myself because the worse thing is, for me at any rate, that LMS has decided that me giving any indication whatsoever that what she’s doing I find in any way amusing is worth pointing out – and that if I’m not finding it amusing, doing it until I do. That by implicating me in whatever she’s doing, it somehow renders her less culpable, ‘Mooky’s laughing, Mooky’s laughing,’ she’ll triumphantly add to whatever mischief she’s up. ‘Mooky’ being her nickname for me and never having had one before, find, to my surprise, that I quite like it.

Speaking of mischief, later that same day LMS jumped into a paddling pool full of cold water. Those who saw her do it laughed heartily at her reaction – understandable shock – and even more when she took requests, ‘get your shoulders under,’ that sort of thing. She eventually emerged shivering but delighted at the response she’d got, that she was once again the centre of everybody’s attention. Then she asked me, in the sweetest, most innocently curious way, ‘Have you ever had a bucket of cold water thrown over you?’

There are moments when you realise instantly that there are only two possible answers; wrong and wronger. This was one of them but I was reprieved by Joe’s laughter and him noting ‘Now that’s what I call a loaded question’ A while later I was sitting in the garden reading, having quite forgotten the earlier entertainment but LMS clearly hadn’t. She snuck into the garden and crept up behind my chair. Startled by her sudden appearance, I was unprepared for her swift move to turn the garden tap on, and then to hose me with cold water, first only the spray setting, but then the full on jet.

As I tried to hurriedly get out of the garden, insisting that she stop, I realised my protestations were rather undone by me laughing as I shrieked them. It was later than I realised that yes, of course I could’ve reacted like a grown-up, shouted and possibly added in some expletives, of course I could, but that would risk undoing all the trust that she has in me. That’s the thing with trust. It takes time to slowly build it yet can be undone in an instant and when it’s gone, well a child’s world is that much colder as a result.

The main reason though is that I want my ten year-old self to think well of me, to be proud that I haven’t taken the easy path, the path that he was used so often by other people treading in his childhood. It’s so instinctive a response, that some of the time I’m not even consciously aware of why I’m behaving the way I do and that’s a good thing.

I know that won’t make a lot of sense to most reading this, but do I care? Not really. I know Marge and Joe think I give LMS too much…too much, but I’ve always had moments as an adult where I think, ‘What would the ten year-old me think if I did this?’ and I always do what I think he’d want me to do. I know this is transferrance – kind of – but I think if one good thing comes out of all that..that, well that’s me choosing to turn a negative into a positive.

The BBC today carries the laughably absurd story that,

 Coronavirus: ‘One billion’ could become infected worldwide – report’

 Which then goes onto add, in case you missed it the first time.

One billion people could become infected with the coronavirus worldwide unless vulnerable countries are given urgent help, an aid group has warned.

The IRC’s report, which is based on models and data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College London, estimated there could be between 500 million and one billion infections globally.

The reason I find this claim laughably absurd is not because I am a demented wrongcock, I am, but that’s not the reason. No it’s because of the use of the words ‘could’ and ‘estimates’. So basically guesswork then. Clever guesswork, to be sure, done by boffins in glasses and sensible shoes, but guesswork nonetheless. How do I know this? Because of this, when it states ‘there could be between 500 million and one billion infections globally.’ That’s some wriggle room they’re giving themselves there.

If I said to LMS that there could be 5 to 10 chocolate biscuits hidden in my cupboard, she’d quite rightly want to know if there were actually between 5 to 10, or only that there could be. There could be more, in which case she’d be delighted but equally there could be less. Words like ‘could’ and ‘estimated’ are like ‘might’, ‘should’ and ‘potential’, things that could just as easily happen as not. Might is maybe, potential is perhaps, and estimated is what a gas bill is. When was the last time you opened a gas bill that calculated the amount based on an estimated reading and thought ‘That seems right.’

The story also carried this

It also said there could be more than three million deaths across dozens of conflict-affected and unstable countries.

“These numbers should serve as a wake-up call,” said the head of the IRC, David Miliband.

Of course they should be. But not in the way our modern day Able thinks. If the global population totals over 7 billion, and a billion is a thousand million, then 3 million something like 0.05%.

On we go with yet another piece of unsurprising news, again from the BBC, that

A third of all coronavirus deaths in England and Wales are now happening in care homes, figures show.

 Office for National Statistics data showed there were 2,000 coronavirus care home deaths in the week ending 17 April, double the previous week.

It brings the total number of deaths in care homes linked to the virus since the start of the pandemic to 3,096.

Whoa, wait, back up there a bit! You don’t mean the care homes that are full of old people, those old people who live in care homes because they need care, the one’s who possibly have underlying health conditions and are therefore much more susceptible to die from this or any other illness anyway. Those ones. What a shock that wasn’t, people who were going to die soon, died sooner!

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 naïve to assert that, as if it were some inviolate truth, something to never be questioned. Of course they’re not equal. For one thing a child of 8 or 18 has more life in them, more potential than someone who’s 88. And given how were constantly reminded of the need to protect the NHS, shouldn’t one of the ways we can help it, would be 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.

If you’ve got this far, you’ll no doubt be wondering what cheerily heart-warming observation he’s going to end on, a bit like Jerry Springer, only without the faux sincerity. The BBC reports that there have been just over 3 million worldwide cases of cornonavirius, of whom nearly 215,00 have died, and almost 870,000 survived. It doesn’t say what the other 1.9 million are doing. Lounging about most likely. The UK fares even better though, with roughly 162,00 cases but only 22,00 deaths. I know my maths are a bit shaky but isn’t that a death rate of less than 10%? And the news just gets better, if we factor into our calculations that a third off all new deaths are happening at care homes. That’s a cause for celebration right there, isn’t it? A killer virus with a death rate of 6 or 7%? Really?

Mind you, if I get the virus and then die, I won’t be so glib then!

It’s pissing it down, it really is, has been doing so for most of the night, and if I was minded to think about it, I might consider that if we’d had this sort of weather on and off for the last month or so, then the lockdown might have been somewhat more effective. As it often said – by me, mainly – rain is a policeman, as in nobody goes out in it unless they absolutely have to. But I’m not in the mood to write about that.

No, instead I want to tell you why I’m in mood such that I can’t remember, why I’m still in bed typing this and why I have no plans to move other than to use my en-suite toilet.

Because it is pissing down, the rear wall of my bedroom resembles one of those horror films with Vincent Price, where the walls leak blood. This has been a persistent problem over the past – I forget how many years exactly – but none of that matters. Neither do most of the solutions to fix the various leaks, so effective have they been that when I hear it rain I think it only a question of when and not if the leaks will start.

At the moment there is a solution that sort of works, given the owners are not going to spend loads investigating it, possibly having to have a new roof put on my room, when the plan to knock it down in less than a year and build an extension. They can easily cope with my discomfort and right on cue, I can hear the relentless dripping sound of a leak falling onto the wooden floor just behind my headrest.

Marge came into my room earlier and aside from opening all of the curtains, was horrified by the state of the wall, so much so that she bought her partner Joe in, so we could discuss what should be done.

Unfortunately, I just don’t care, I mean obviously I care when drips fall on my face and wake me up, obviously I care that I can’t hang any pictures on the back wall and of course I care that I don’t care, but in the scheme of things that bother me, that doesn’t matter.

It should do though. I know that.  I know that most people’s yardstick for how much things bother them isn’t how bad they are is when they’re compared to waking up after a month in a coma and realise you can’t walk.

Referring to my room as ‘my room’ is a misnomer, not because the house belongs to someone else, but because I’ve never thought of it as ‘my room’. Well, not in the sense that I imagine most people think of when they imagine ‘their room’. Yes my bed is in there, yes so are my clothes, some books, some files and my most treasured possession, Bruno, my teddy bear, but I have I tried to make it comfy, to personalize it, put my stamp on it so to speak, to make it recognizably mine? No.

Possibly that’s because I don’t think of this house as home, in fact I’ve only ever thought of three houses as home, and the lyric “A house is not a home’ is true, at least in my case it is. A house is a collection of bricks, mortar, glass and other building materials cunningly arranged into a recognizable structure that looks very much like it could be a home but a home is an entirely different proposition altogether. A house only becomes a home when it embodies certain characteristics. These vary from person to person depending on what is important to them. But in my case to make a house a home one would need to fill it with laughter, happiness, peace and above all love. Good companions and the ever-present potential of cups of tea and buttered crumpets wouldn’t go amiss either. In essence to me a home is a place of sanctuary, one where you metaphorically close the front door once inside and lean back on the door safe in the knowledge that the outside world is just that, outside.

Since waking up from the coma I haven’t felt that and the house I lived in as a child I never felt that, so is essence I’ve only ever felt truly at home somewhere for, all told, less than a third of my life.

So not really a good proportion really.

This isn’t meant to depress anyone or to elicit any sympathy from them. It’s just a bold, factual – maybe too bold, too factual – statement of the facts, certainly as regards my living arrangements and certainly as I see them. Indeed anyone who knows me well would know it’d be impossible for me to think any other way and have thought this for some years. But much like me never having long hair again, never being thirty again, never having voted Conservative, believing in god or aliens, it’s like how Bruce Hornsby has it,

’That’s just the way it is and some things will never change.’

I was out and about yesterday, relaxing in the park, when a couple traversed my eyeline. Normally, the sight of a couple wouldn’t bother me, but actually, there were five of them; the wife was heavily pregnant, the father was carrying a baby in a thing on his chest, and there was a toddler running behind them. And I thought ‘We’re fucked’, although thinking it about it was an apt summation of the wider problem of over population. She clearly had been and so, by extension, is the planet.

As anyone familiar with my posts will know, I’m not overly enamoured with the fact that people keep on having more children, when we know we consume too much of the planets natural resources as it is and now’s there’s a new fangled concern with regard to cutting down on consumption. Quite how this squares with people having more children I don’t know. Unless I’m much mistaken, more children means parents will buy more things and then those children will grow up and have more children themselves. To my mind, it’s a very vicious circle, one of our own creation, one which we adding to.

Gordon Ramsey, the grisly faced, potty-mouthed celebrity chef leaps to mind. Apparently his wife has just given birth to their seventh – seventh – child! What level of ego is he deluding himself with if he thinks that his DNA is so important that that the planet needs yet more of it. Same with David Tennant, his wife has just had their fifth. I mean, I know he was good in ‘Dr.Who’ and all, but its Timelords that can regenerate, humans just procreate. But my favourite has to be everyone’s least favourite mockney geezer Jamie Oliver, whose wife has just had their sixth. I only caught a bit of his show by mistake recently, but he was banging on about how important it was to use sustainable fish and to insist on buying organic because he cares, you know. Just not enough to keep his jubbly not so bubbly, or not to bish his bosh.

There should be a mandatory one child only policy, and if people want more children, well orphanages are full of children needing homes. They could have one of Angelina Jolies many rejects. I fail to see why anyone would want to have a child now, not with the state of the world being what it is. It doesn’t fill one with optimism for the future does it? Anyone who has had a child in the last, oh, five years, shouldn’t be too surprised when their child realises how utterly grimola the world they’ve been born into is and sues them.

A few moments ago, Marge received a ‘phone call from one of the owners of this house, that only underlined their sense of entitlement and expectation. They’re so used to people jumping through their hoops, to getting their own way, that even at a time like this, even at a time of an ongoing and worsening national emergency, it’s still a shock for them not to have the usual response, that of immediate compliance.

Some background might be useful here.

A couple of years ago now, the previous owners indicated their intention to put this house up for sale. For various reasons, Marge wasn’t impressed by this, but remembered that people she vaguely knew and lived nearby, had always liked this house, and told them of this. Long story short, they bought it, but as the new owners wife had just got a job with a grace and favour home thrown in – you know you’re doing well when employers throw in a house to seal the deal! – they wouldn’t take possession of this for some time. Which, we discovered last December, was to be December 31^st this year.

Nice!

Anyway, back to today. After the usual pleasantries, well as pleasant as pleasantries can be at the moment, she got to the point of her call. A workman was due to replace the windows on the front of the house and has built the windows. Could he come and fit them, only she’s worried that he might go out of business before he fits them. So she wants to fit us up, so he can fit them? I mean she does there’s a bit of a thing going on now? Of course she does! A lodger in their house has the coronavirus and is in isolation.

She works somewhere that in ordinary times would be less onerous, more of a title than a job, one to impress your friends, if your friends are the sort of people who’d be impressed by that. But now she has to do actual work, the kind of work that’s technically in the job description, but she never did. Until now.

She then followed this humdinger with wondering if it’d be possible for someone to come and do something to one of our garden walls. She does realise that the government is advising people to stay at home? She knows we’re self-isolating so we’re making use of the garden, so in what fucking universe does she think we would want someone turning our garden into a building site.

Oh, her worry about losing the money she’s spent on the windows? Her husband is a barrister who earns £500 an hour. My heart bleeds.

I heard that once on a radio show, and I think of it occasionally but today it seemed really applicable to a wider range of people, who were all actively engaged in annoying me. It didn’t seem as if they were. Trust me, they were.

I was in a bad mood this morning and so needed to be somewhere else, anywhere really so as not to infect others with it. I can’t help it. It’s my default setting. Bad mood? Be selfish. Go somewhere else. So I did.

After a few hours my bladder let me know that it would soon need emptying. Shitting cock, thought I. Then I though that should cut a small – not too small – hole in my pants, match it up with a corresponding hole in some jeans and bingo! Problem solved. Carefully ease the one eyed trouser snake into position and then surreptiously  water the plants.I’m not going to do it, of course! Or am I….

I came back, still in a bad mood, went to the toilet, put on some sun cream, charged up my ‘phone and went out again. This time to a more pleasant park. Well in theory it was, in practice less so. I’d been enjoying the afternoon sun when some dickhead thought ‘ I know, I’ll fly my drone about, no-one’ll mind, in fact they’ll thank me for adding to their enjoyment of the day”

When that waste of oxygen had finally finished, who should take it upon themselves to unite everyone in earshot in violent thoughts that could be visited upon him? A bongo player. There must be special place in hell for bongo players. Why they think it perfectly acceptable to infect their noise on everyone else is a mystery.

He finished – and it’s always a him isn’t it – and then another started and reminded me that there’s one thing worse than a bongo player.

A fucking learner.