Death on the beach

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 cricket wicket is growing back. These activities long ago lost any semblance of novelty and increasingly resemble Steve McQueen’s character in The Great Escape, repetitively throwing his baseball against the cell wall in solitary confinement. In other words, just a way to kill time. Or, just not fun any more.

‘How about actual tennis on the tennis courts?’

‘Maybe,’ says the Screen.

‘Or a bike ride over the Downs? Bit of cardio?’

‘Mm, maybe.’

‘Or we could cycle to Hove Lagoon and play table tennis?’

‘Too windy.’

‘Well, what do you want to do?’ I say.

The Screen looks at the two long wooden play swords that he has recently re-discovered.

‘Sword-fighting,’ he says.

I think back to chess boxing and the knockdown and the black eye…

‘Too windy,’ I say.

Yet my resolve weakens and I try and make a deal with him: you do our hour and a half yoga session on Thursday and I’ll agree to a chess boxing re-match.

‘Deal,’ he says quickly before I change my mind.

He derides yoga as ‘just stretching’ but also because he has rugby hamstrings that have about as much stretch in them as a nun’s knickers. The chess boxing re-match initiates a day’s trash talking. Ill-advised, in my case.

‘It’s going to be like the Joshua v Ruiz re-match,’ I tell him. ‘You’re going down.’

He knits his brows in puzzlement. ‘What?! You’re Joshua?’

‘Yep!’

‘And not the short, fat, out of condition loser…?’

‘Well, I see your point but…’

The end of my sentence is drowned by the sound of a guffawing teenager. I decide to go nuclear instead of ‘going home.’

‘Papa’s gonna knock you out!’ I sing-taunt him.

‘Noah’s gonna knock you out!’ he retorts.

Why am I doing this, I think? What is the point of making him angry?

‘I’m going to play defensive chess,’ he says, ‘To make the pain last longer.’

‘You don’t know how to play defensively,’ I say. 

But does he? He better not. I am relying on him being too lazy to actually look up some defensive opening chess moves on YouTube but I will have to consider throwing the chess game if things get bad. But does he know how to checkmate me and what if he chooses not to…? Prolonged pain begins to make Friday look uninviting.

Added to the mix is the fact that he has now started weight training with his older brother and is starting to bulk up. Seeing his broad shoulder muscles in the kitchen today, I began to properly regret our deal. Maybe I can try and break him during yoga with some taunting/encouragement to ‘push it further, you little bitch!’ We’ll see.

Anyway, yesterday he eventually agrees to going paddle-boarding at the beach but only after dinner. We eat early and by 6:15 the car is packed with all beach gear.

‘Why are you packing up the car?’ he shouts down from his bedroom where his ear-antennae have detected movement.

‘Because you said you wanted to go paddleboarding,’ I explain.

‘I never said that,’ he yells. ‘I said I wanted to go for a walk along the beach. At the end of the road.’

My wife and I exchange glances but don’t challenge his version of events. At 6:30, there is still no boy. My wife and I are playing games on our phones in that limbo time chamber where we are all set to go out, expecting this to happen at any moment, but waiting on one or other of our two large children to grace us with their presence. Invariably, this means waiting for a streamed piece of unmissable and uninterruptible content to finish.

6:40 Still we wait. My wife shouts up the stairs to tell the Screen that we are all waiting (Cine-Teen is at work so theoretically leaving the house should be easier). Even the dog looks confused by now and is looking at us with a sad expression that says, ‘You gave me every indication with your movements and tone that we were going out. Yet now you sit.’

6:45 My wife tries again by shouting up the stairs something about the sun going down. An angry belligerent voice shouts back: ‘I’M PUTTING MY SOCKS ON!’

6:50 Socks are now on and the Screen appears to put his shoes on. Dare I tell him that he might need a hoodie? Or will he disappear into his room never to be seen again (or until he has watched another episode of something as aforesaid item of clothing is pulled over his head).

6:55 We are on the road.

Arriving at Shoreham Beach, where we know it is low tide and where, when the sea draws back, there is a wide expanse of sand to wander along with the dog, I am thinking that at least it will be easy to park at this late hour. Wrong.

The Dominic Cummings’ effect is incredible. Everybody – all 60 million UK residents – have come to Shoreham Beach to hang out in that loose kind of ‘Rules? What rules? There are no rules anymore’ way that DC and the united Tory cabinet have recently ushered in.

Keeping 2m apart means swimming 20m from the shore. Of course, WE are out, too. But, and this is important, we came here to get away from everyone and wander the semi-deserted beach. A group of 30 adults stand socially distanced from each other by about 30cm to drink beer and cook on the barbie. A group of teenagers kick a football about and some tackles break out.

Without wishing to fall on my own hypocritical sword, I am a little shocked until I realise that you can ask the great British public to very politely do something and expect them to use their great British common sense in obeisance but when you take a shit on the floor then point at it and say, ‘Look, a diamond!’ your credibility takes a deep-dive.

Let’s see what the stats say in about three weeks’ time? Then let’s lay the ‘surplus' dead bodies at DC’s Islington door, maybe arranged to spell out ‘Stay Home.’

Latest data for the UK (as of 12pm):

Infected: 265,227

Deaths: 37,048

Celebrity deaths: Some (still not the right ones)

People I know who are infected: 0

Song of the Day: ‘You Know I’m No Good’ – Amy Winehouse