Contradictions: together but also apart

Monday, 11^th May 2020

Do you remember when you weren’t alert? You know, when, during this global pandemic of a killer virus you were all blithe and blasé, wandering around hugging strangers, licking door handles and wandering into A&E just because you had a splinter?

That all seems like a dream now, doesn’t it? Or a waking nightmare.

So after quite a long break from watching the godawful procession of Bozza’s Elite Republican Guard being trotted out to brief us that maybe only half of all the people you love might die and that is what success looks and smells like, the wife and I sat down yesterday evening to watch Boris pump his fists backwards and forwards as if he was milking an invisible cow. I felt compelled to watch his hands rather than listen to the mouth but unfortunately, I heard all the mouth-nonsense.

Personally, I am confused. I am sure I am not the only one. Stay at home but exercise as much as you want, says Bozza. Piffle but also paffle. Go to work but only if you can teleport there and back again, he adds. Wiffle in small groups but please no major herd waffle. If each of you can infect less than one other person, we can open the pubs again, he promises. Flotsam with members of your own household but jetsam your arch-enemies. And, finally, a random selection of children will be able to infect some teachers and teaching staff from the 1^st of June.

I think, given a choice of following anything Boris says and staying alive, I might just choose the latter. Here, in the Punk Krow household, we are in something of a routine. My wife and I sit opposite each other in the conservatory/office, peering at each other over the screens of our laptops and pretending we are co-workers. In this pretend workspace, we both find ourselves working for a really groovy employer (instead of the NHS and the local authority) who encourages us to go into the gym (front room) for a HIIT workout or sit in the eco-space (garden) with a mug of coffee or do a few yoga stretches whenever we want. Just to get the creative juices pumping.  

My imaginary line manager keeps telling me the same groovy thing: ‘Here at Mega-Groove Inc., it doesn’t matter what time you start or finish. Just feel the pulse of your day and work accordingly. We all have different rhythms, man.’

It surely won’t be long before my wife and I are taking micro-doses of LSD and brian-Pollocking ideas onto a white wall, spitting paint and waiting for some ‘future shapes of action’ to colour-form. A few more weeks of this and we might be floating in front of our keyboards during an astral planning Zoom call, laughing at Jeff’s pathetic efforts to get off the ground because he forgot to drink his magic mushroom smoothie at the prescribed hour.

In the new routine, at some point around mid-morning, the Screenager will wade through the ocean of dirty clothes and food wrappers to open his bedroom door and share his funky air-poem with the rest of the house. After us utterly failing to persuade him to do more than about half the work he has been set, the emails started arriving from school, then the phone calls. ‘Is he alright?’ a member of staff asked politely. ‘No, not really,’ we said. They offered some more ways for the Screen to fail and then a few days later came his Home Learning Report, with subjects graded ‘Sapphire’ (exemplary) to Red (shite). If the Screen’s report was a traffic light, it was saying ‘STOP!’ Except he was already at a standstill.

In a desperate final attempt, we tried the parents’ last gamble: throw all responsibility in his lap and see what happens. ‘We’re tired of arguing and fighting with you,’ we said. ‘It’s up to you what you get done and when you get up. We’ll still help you with anything you need help with.’

At this point, he was all ears but it was hard to tell if he was hearing the actual words we were saying or just seeing through to the desperation behind them and thinking, ‘They’ve given up!’ Unfortunately for him, we rounded off our parental speech with: ‘And if the school ring, we’re handing the phone to you to explain yourself.’ Cue shoulder slump and a mental weighing up of the new situation.

‘Alright,’ he says, ‘wake me up tomorrow at seven thirty and say ‘school’.’

To everyone’s surprise, including probably himself, the Screen sticks to this for a week, largely self-governing his time and effort and achievement whilst still jumping back to his various screens with the alacrity of a wasp wishing to land in your pint of lager in a country pub beer garden (remember them – pubs and pints, not wasps).

In the new routine, the new abnormal, the Cine-Teen and Voodoo Parsnip emerge, joined at the hip around eleven. They are now nick-named the twins for appearing accidentally in matching coloured clothes. Once out of their own funk-den, they take over the kitchen for an hour. Cue singing, drill lyrics, laughter, and the smell of bacon. Lunch is then at 4pm. Dinner around 7 or 8 and very little in between. Occasionally, Cine-Teen will work out or they will go for a bike ride but otherwise there is a lot of time unaccounted for.

What unites the whole household, is tennis on the road in front of our house which is only used by the ten houses in our row. The net is two half-pallets and it’s first to ten, winner-stays-on. The umpire is in charge of the music selection and line calls but is often lost in cyber-space, staring at his phone, when there is a line call needed and so chooses to call a ‘let’ and a replay of the point. There might be no Wimbledon but this is almost entirely the same in terms of there being a ball and some people holding rackets.

It is highly non-competitive until we get the Voodoo Parnsip to take on the ‘Mooter-Mator’ (the wife) when we ramp up the hype and excitement levels to unnecessary and unwanted levels with some cheerleading, partisan line calling, and exaggerated commentary. Halfway through, we interrupt the game to give the girls some advice. Cine tells me later that the Parsnip said she was confident of victory. I told the Mooter-Mator that her opponent was ‘young and silly’ and she was ‘too old and wise for her.’ This clearly did the trick and wisdom prevailed (10-5) to lots of dancing, whooping and more cheerleading.

I am beginning to suspect the neighbours think we are a bit weird. We are not usually this visible, this audible, this present. Our lunacies are usually hidden or happen elsewhere but the shrinking of our horizons has meant I can tell you what time Malcolm hangs the washing out, how often Finn will call ‘Daddy’ before his dad replies, and can imitate the exact hunch of the shoulders Mark adopts as he wanders outside for a fag.

On VE Day, we were invited by one of our neighbours to a tea party held on their drive where all of us gathered except the evil neighbours from number 2 and the transvestite guy + partner at number 10. Two metres apart, we ate cakes, drank tea, and sat in the sunshine, sharing lockdown stories and bonding over a Victoria sponge.

Now it’s Monday and the PM has cleared things up in his speech delivering Phase Three: Stay Home, Go Out, Teleport to Work Back at Home. In this new ear of great freedom and responsibility, I won’t be caught napping again by the neighbours like that. Thanks to the elite war-cabinet that is taking the virus to task for storming across the English Channel, I know to be on the alert. Really alert. You’ll see me, from now on, hiding in hedges, wearing a deerstalker hat and carrying a magnifying glass and a butterfly net, in a state of hyper-alertness. That Covid-19 is gonna wish it was last week when my guard was down…

Latest data for the UK (as of 6pm):

Infected: 223,060

Deaths: 32,065

Celebrity Deaths: Couldn’t really give a shit anymore. If no ‘influencers’ are prepared to get it so they can make a video and sell their followers some bleach and a straw, then I don’t think they really care enough about their online popularity. Come on, you cyber-slebs, get infected!!!

People I know who are infected: 1 (one of my wife’s cousins)

Song of the Day: ‘Blind to the Truth’ – Napalm Death