Bluebells and Booping
Monday,
20th April 2020
Do you remember the time when ambulances weren’t
called ‘plague buses’ and had to use their sirens instead of gliding along in
eerie silence which is only broken when a paramedic leans out the window to
shout, ‘Bring out yer dead!’ You know, back in the day when we all had jobs
and the kids went to a place called school.
*
So, the Easter holidays are over. Fun, weren’t they? Get
out much? No? Me, neither. Oh well, there’s always the summer to look forward
to, isn’t there? Isn't there...?
Yesterday, the wife and I made a decision on behalf of
the whole household: we are going on a bluebell walk. Of course, someone would
have to break it to the Screenager without encountering derision or outright
violence but the sun was shining, the bluebells were out, and somewhere I had
read that the new police guidance was not to stop people driving to go for a
walk.
The Screenager emerges from his funk-den just before midday,
wading through the food waste and packaging on his bedroom floor, and totally ignoring
David Attenborough holding up a pair of his unwashed underpants as he does a Blue
Planet piece to camera about air pollution. The Screen is already complaining
that his older brother woke him up playing music and singing in the shower. Maybe,
we won’t tell him about the bluebell walk just yet.
He makes his way to the body imprint on the sofa that ‘remembers’
him from yesterday and prepares himself to watch 15 hours of Netflix whilst simultaneously
nudging some touchy-feely buttons on his PS4 controller to co-ordinate a bunch
of pixellated American football players.
I stand before him with my arms raised, ‘Behold, tis
I, your father. Hashtag: my hero.’
‘Hashtag: piss off,’ he replies, stubbornly refusing
to behold me.
I decide to do exactly that and not instigate the
violent interlude that ended yesterday with him sitting on me for about ten
minutes. We had been foolishly left alone; something that never ends well. The
missus and the Voodoo Parsnip had gone to pick the Cine-Teen up from his shift
at Waitrose, because a trip in a car is like a micro-holiday (Get out and see
the world!) in these times of diminished geography.
To be fair, I started the bout of one-sided violence
by ‘booping’ him. A ‘boop’ is a finger press on another’s nose. Each boop is a
point, to be racked up all day and the winner declared before bed. It started a
few weeks ago, for no apparent reason, as a bit of stupid fun between me and
the Screenager but now it is war without the niceties (like rules of engagement).
In something very reminiscent of our boxing ‘match’, all advantages are his. He
is taller, quicker and stronger than me. I only have surprise (sometimes waking
him up with a boop, which is about as recommended as doing the same thing to a
great white shark) and often I don’t have that.
Anyway, as the door shuts and the sound of the car
driving away can be heard, our eyes meet across an uncrowded room.
‘Oh no,’ we both say, ‘We’ve been left alone.’
(In the history of our relationship, being left alone
never augurs well. Lots of fun is often had but much of it has had to be brought
to a close with the words, ‘Don’t tell mum.’)
Of course, he was still gaming/texting/watching on the
sofa so I casually walked past him then ducked across to give him a boop. Bad
idea. Abandoning all electronic devices, and using the pent-up energy and
aggression of a well-hibernated bear, he leapt on me. Somehow, in a once-in-a-lifetime,
making-some-daddy-memories, freak-of-nature event, I get him pinned with his
head sticking out where I can boop him mercilessly.
‘Who’s Daddy’s Little Boop Bitch, eh?’ I gloat, with a
very grand disregard for the consequences which are almost immediate and
launched with the kind of vicious glee usually seen just after someone has announced
that they’ve run out of Baby-Bels at one of Kim Jong-Un’s notorious Cheese
Parties. In three seconds flat, things have flipped entirely so that I am now
being sat upon by the Screenager as he boops me with abandon.
‘Who’s my Little Boop Bitch, now eh?’ he gloats
as I try and work out how long I might have to lie here until possible rescue
(roughly the time it takes to get to Waitrose and back). When they do return, nobody
really gives a toss that I am being sat upon and so there I remain until he realises
his phone is out of reach and the dog won’t bring it to him as she is almost as
pathologically lazy and untrained as himself.
*
Anyway, I decide, as it’s a Sunday, I will keep away
from the Screenager and let the wife tell him about our plan. Miraculously, when
it is announced, it receives a shrug that might be counted as agreement.
Perhaps it is the allure of big sticks or maybe he has forgotten what a
bluebell (and a wood) is.
Next, is the difficulty of co-ordinating our exit from
the house, something that was much easier when they couldn’t tie their own shoelaces
and could be carried and then straight-jacketed into a children’s car seat. At
the allotted time, 2:30pm, the Voodoo Parsnip and Cine-Teen are halfway through
making their lunch and the Screenager is in his happy space, still in his
pyjamas. His state-of-fed-ness is anyone’s guess. At just after 3pm, most of
the required people are in the car having negotiated last-minute toileting,
gathering up of water bottles and appropriate footwear and clothing.
It is very weird to be five people + one dog in the
car on the deserted streets: what on earth is our reason for travelling the eight
or so miles to the woods? How will we explain it to the army at the roadblock
as the tank swivels its turret in our direction and we realise we don’t have
the wife’s NHS badge to wave nervously at the trigger-happy squaddie who thinks
this is the ‘live’ action he’s been training for? None of us has an alibi for
the crime of being somewhere else.
Fortunately, there are plenty of cyclists on the roads
and we are not blown off the road and out of existence by a drone-deployed
smart rocket. The woods we are headed for are on a long country road with very
few houses and where there is no actual parking. We stop the car on the side of
the road where it is a bit wider, on a muddy car tyre-rutted verge. As we exit
the car, a woman’s head appears over the hedge and she informs us that it is ‘her’
verge. She leaves this hanging in the air and wanders off, or ‘orf’, to make
another gin martini and gaze upon her country kingdom.
‘Does she mean she wants us to move the car?’ I ask
the wife.
‘I think so.’
As I move thirty yards down the road, all the wheels
are turning in my little anarchist brain, trying to decide which is the best way
to deal with someone who considers a muddy bit of verge as ‘theirs’. Maybe
leave the Screenager on her doorstep with a bow around his neck…?
My bluebell walk is overshadowed by this encounter. I
find no mindfulness in watching the dog sit in a stream, piss in it, then
immediately drink from it. I find no solace in the dappled shadows nor the
bleating lambs. Mrs Daily Mail, orf-my-land, my-other-car’s-another-Range-Rover
has got my goat. When this is all over, I think, I’m going to come back here
and do something all anarchic and dark on her property to satisfy the Punk Krow’s
black little heart.
Meanwhile, the Screenager has electro-withdrawal symptoms
and has been badly affected by all of the sunlight that has landed on him. It
is probably time we took him back. So far from home, without the sofa to hold
up his fragile frame, he looks pale and enormous, an upright slug with a
moustache. Shall I tell him this, I think, or do I want to live…?
Latest data for the UK (as of 11pm):
Infected: 124,743
Deaths: 16,509
Celebrity Deaths: 3
People I know who are infected: 0
Song of the Day: ‘Common People’ - Pulp
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