Softly Softie

Friday, 17^th April 2020

Remember when you could touch someone else without killing them? Those halcyon days…

Not so long ago, I was playing touch rugby with a bunch of strangers. That sort of thing can now get you arrested. The news is full of ‘social distancing’ (2m gap etc), the supermarkets mark out little boxes for you to stand alone in, and on the quiet streets people veer away from each other as if we were all radioactive little timebombs. And maybe we are. Touch – so last decade…

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I should perhaps set the record straight before I risk antagonising my whole family with exposing them through this blog. We are incredibly lucky to have a house, a garden, jobs in the public sector (not usually a good thing but at least we are keeping our jobs and getting paid), a spare room that is now a mini-gym, live within easy walking distance of the South Downs and the beach, and an old dog/excuse for being outside.

More importantly, and despite what you may think reading this blog, we all get on pretty well. In between bursts of teenage vitriol and violence, the Screenager will give me a spontaneous cuddle. He will, sometimes, want to tell myself and the missus that he loves us just before he goes to bed.

A few years ago, we did a questionnaire with him that puts you on a scale for sensory stimulation. This was instigated by my wife who had noticed how he can’t stand in an empty space but has to lean on a wall or another human being. He also couldn’t walk through the woods without dragging a fallen tree round with him or walk to school without a pocket full of pebbles. Anyway, he ranked at the top end of the scale for needing sensory input at all times (autistic children are often at this end, too).

It explains why he likes rugby so much, particularly the really physical nasty stuff when bodies collide – weirdly enough, it gives him the touchy-feely stimulation he needs. It explains why he has a deep-seated need to punch his dad in the head. And this need also explains why he has walked round the house with the soft hippo dog toy inside his T-shirt for the last few days, its head poking up beneath his chin. The idea was that we all scent it by carrying it round for a bit and then deliver it to the puppy so when it comes here, it already knows our smell. Apart from the old dog using it as a pillow on occasion, it has not emerged from the Screenager’s clothing.

During the night we played Risk, the Screenager sat at the table spinning a 2kg weight off one of the dumbbells around the handle of a wooden spoon, looking a little bit crazy but tactile-ly fullfilled. He also has a habit, now he has outgrown us in height, of picking one of us up and carrying us round to deposit us somewhere else in the house. Just because he can. Anyway, I just thought that it was only fair to illustrate the rather soft centre that still lurks inside the beast. He’s an uneasy mix of knuckles and cuddles.

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The wait for the puppy goes on but we have now got a new addition to the household in the form of the Voodoo Parsnip girl (see earlier Q&A post) herself, the Cine-Teen’s girlfriend. After his shift at the supermarket, on Wednesday night, I drove him straight there to collect her. I was hoping to witness a romantic reunion like a returning GI being met by his belle off the train circa 1945 but on the way there he reminded me that he was wearing his ‘contaminated’ clothes from work and would have to avoid touching her until he had gone home showered and changed. It was, therefore, a rather muted, anti-climactic scene.

Extreme people smuggling

As the Voodoo Parsnip said in the car: ‘This is weird. Talking to someone outside your family.’ On the deserted Brighton streets, it also felt illicit to have her in the car, as if we were smuggling her from East Germany (boo!) to West Germany (hurrah!), a non-family member being snuck across the border right under ‘their’ noses. In these times of High Ennui, it is hoped that she will bring a new energy into the house and be responsible for a dilution of the toxic male energy going around (banter, sarcasm, boxing, power tools). And maybe, just maybe, the Screenager will rein in his worse impulses now that there is an independent witness (burping to announce the start of dinner, attacking his father, scattering his detritus round the house like an ever-evolving Tracey Emin installation) . 
Watch this space…

Latest data for the UK (as of 9pm):

Infected: 108,692

Deaths: 14,576

Celebrity Deaths: 3

People I know who are infected: Back to zero

Song of the Day: ‘Personal Jesus’ (Reach out and touch me etc) – Depeche Mode