The Incredible Wordsmith

Friday, 29 th May 2020 Remember when the whole world and every living human was out to kill you? Even communal surfaces – door handles, supermarket trolleys, dog poo bin lids – seem to have lost their radioactive glow. Going outside no longer contains the same frisson of danger and excitement as a few weeks ago. Our distant ancestors knew that a day’s hunting of large dangerous beasts was a matter of life and death. Now, after several visits to Lidl during the height of the pandemic, I feel some kinship for my fur-clad brethren. Obviously, I didn’t need a sharpened spear to claim some halloumi and a pot of Greek yoghurt but I felt exposed in the aisles like my ancestors might have when crossing open ground. Does anyone know what the govt’s new ‘Stay Alert’ message actually means? I can’t help interpreting it as ‘Let Your Guard Down A Bit’ or just ‘Chillax.’ Whereas before I knew not to lick any toilet seats, now I’m thinking it’s okay to lick some toilet seats (as long as I’m payin...

Wednesday 27 th May 2020 Do you   remember when we all did as we were told because there was that residual part of ourselves that, despite 10 years of being dragged into the Tory whirlpool of lies and deception, really believed that in times of major crisis our government would try to keep us alive as a bare minimum? Yeah, of course you do - it was last week. Now, whatever spider filament of trust might have existed between yourselves and this govt. hangs broken in the wind. The evidence was everywhere to be seen last night on Shoreham Beach. * I had tried and failed to tease the Screenager into some form of activity for all of yesterday. ‘What do you want to do today?’ I asked eagerly. ‘There’s nothing to do,’ he said morosely. ‘We’ve done it all.’ There is an element of truth in this. Trying to muster up the enthusiasm to play another board game or drag the pallets onto the road to play short tennis no longer carries any weight. Even the grass on the ...

Scoooop! Thanks again to Wikileaks for passing on to me Dominic Cummings' diary entries for the period of time still in question. Behold! The truth, straight from the horse's mouth. And there's oh so much more to his movements than you could have imagined... Friday 27 th March Fuck! The Bozz has got the hot fever. Had to scoot out of there pronto and run to safety. In the taxi, I got one of my weirdo data scientists to run the numbers on the chances of me being Prime Minister by the end of the summer holidays. 63% apparently, even more if I started to distance myself from him right now. I told Mary that we hadn’t seen my parents for a while and did she fancy a trip up north. She hesitated, muttering something about ‘lockdown’ but one look from me and she was packing our bags. I bent down to talk to the kid and ask him if he wanted to go and see Gramps and Grandma. Funny little fellow asked if that was allowed. He can be a daft cunt sometimes. ‘Don’t you know ...

Sunday, 24 th May 2020 Do you remember when you felt that being alive on this planet at this time in this body was an exceptional, beautiful coincidence of events instead of feeling like a witness to humanity’s final, pathetic death twitches? No, me neither. * So, the vast worldwide home lockdown laboratory experiment continues as we, the guinea pigs, flounder about with our hordes of bog roll, mainlining the internet’s never-ending stream of colourful moving images so that we can stay home, stay safe, stay alert, stay still. Unless you’re Dominic Cummings. In which case, do what the fuck you like. Why not? You always have. And Boris has his head so far up your arse that he’s headbanging your tonsils. This blog post is not about him, although I would just like to quote the following from his own blog, posted on January 2nd this year: ‘ We want to improve performance and make me much less important — and within a year largely redundant. At the moment I have to make ...

Saturday, 23 rd May 2020 Do you remember when you would find yourself in a stranger’s orifice at a swingers party, wearing a carnival mask and swishing around in baby oil on a sofa covered in clingfilm, listening to ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba and looking at the sad array of tuna and cucumber sandwiches cut into neat triangles and thinking, ‘Am I hungry or should I wait until I get home and have that leftover bulgur wheat salad?’ Ah, those were the days… * I am going to weigh in to the debate about re-opening schools, and, for once, I know what I am talking about because a) I am a teacher, and b) I have just spent a week in my school. Frankly, it was great to get out of the house and see some other people. I also had a great time, with the school functioning completely differently to normal: only 30 or so children, all activities based around curiosity, games, and being outdoors. It felt a bit more like a Steiner school than the usual overstuffed, overweight, overdry Nat...