Posts

Pro-lifer or No-lifer? Let's make up Dan's mind for him!

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Thursday, 26 th March 2020 I know it’s early days in this lockdown business, and Bozza could get his dough-y fists out again to give us a right good telling off if we don’t all obey the ‘advice’, but – whisper it – I don’t mind my new confinement. Actually, this imposed lifestyle – like living in some Scandinavian open prison – is one I could easily adopt. Now I am not the most sociable of creatures, and anyone who wants to get in touch with me usually goes through my wife, but being told to keep apart from people by a distance of 6 feet is almost my ideal. Also, I like hanging out with my family together because we all get on and find ways of being together and apart without it getting stress-y (so far). The combination of work and play minus the hassle of actually driving to and from work and anyone watching you do it, is quite liberating. Today, I got up at dawn, with the annoying dog who just wanted to see someone with two legs who she loves, and drank a coffee whilst ...

Aesop's Fables: The Dark Side

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Wednesday, 25 th March 2020 Minutes from AAGM (Animals Annual General Meeting): November 2019 Present : Chairman – Chimpanzee Vice-Chairman: Gorilla Secretary: Orang-Utan Plus, all the animals of the world. Secretary: First, apologies from the three-toed sloth. He’s on his way but got held up. Chairman: Okay, let’s make a start. I would like to propose a motion to- Marmoset: Why is it all the great apes got the best jobs round here? Chairman: We’ve been through this before, Marmoset. Marmoset: It’s a fucking stitch-up. You scratch my back, I pick your fleas- Vice-Chairman: One more word, Marmoset, and it’ll be you getting stitched up – at the hospital. Secretary: Okay, order, order. Calm it down, hyenas. This is business. So, everybody listen up. Chairman: As I was saying, I would like to propose a motion to wreak a little mischief on the humans. Vice-Chairman: I second it. Chairman: For too long, we’ve put up with their shit. We’ve got less ...

NHS striptease

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Tuesday, 24 th March 2020 I don’t sleep very well and wake up before the dog starts thumping around downstairs and howling for some company. This must mean it is near dawn. I don’t look at my phone for the time and just lie there, listening to the woodpecker hammer his little head against the giant ash tree just beyond the end of our garden like a very determined vibrator. I heard him for the first time last year and now he’s back. When I first heard him a couple of week ago, I thought of it as the first sign of spring but today I thought it was a symbol of freedom. He’s out there, nose-chiselling trees, free to fly wherever his little heart desires, I thought. The lucky bastard. Here, it’s Lockdown: day one. I walk the dog with Amanda at about half past six, wearing a snood that covers half my face, a woolly hat and a winter coat with the idea that I won’t need any of these things later when I go out again with the dog. It’s probably not great that I am already trying to ga...

A Tale of Three Presidents

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Monday, 23 rd March 2020 It’s late and I’m tired but the temptation is to run up and down the street screaming goodbye to everyone. And then to run past the barber’s and the cafĂ© in town and B&Q and the tennis courts and the hot yoga studio screaming goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. This afternoon, as we walked the dog back from the beach at the end of the road, we bump into Sol who has spent the afternoon with his girlfriend in the park, sitting in the sunshine in anticipation of this: the lockdown. They said their goodbyes and now they, and we, wait. As of midnight, there will be no sitting in parks with anyone who you do not live with. As of midnight, there will be no sitting in cafes or buying some compost or going outside for something frivolous like an unsanctioned walk to get an ice cream. Effectively, we have, as a nation, been put on the naughty step. Bozza told us to stay apart; we didn’t listen. And now here we are. We’ll come back to Bozza but first let’s start with ...

The New Abnormal (and a silver fox)

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Sunday, 22 nd March 2020 Are you opening doors by grabbing the handle with your hand tucked up inside your sleeve? Are you still playing tennis but marking the balls with different initials and only touching ‘your’ ones? Have you eyed up people you’re about to pass in the street for an aura of death? Are you overthinking things? I know I am… Welcome to the new abnormal! The line between paranoia and taking precautions is pretty thin, ain’t it? Labelling Covid-19 as the ‘invisible enemy’ doesn’t help, in that respect, like in some schlocky B-movie horror film: ‘It’s already inside your house… It’s already inside YOU!’ Sorry! Hope you weren’t chilling in your hammock, staring at the bright blue skies of spring, balancing a bucket of gin on your lap and fantasizing about the creative projects you’re going to embark on with all that working-from-home-time you’re about to have. If even ISIS are warning that this is not a good time to travel to Europe for a bit of jihad, then...

What the world needs right now - Covidiots!!!

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Saturday, 21 st March 2020 Can you feel it? The edges of your personal world shrinking around you like the scene in the first Star Wars film where Luke Skywalker and someone else (I’m not a nerdie fan, sorry) are in that trash compacter… Get out there in that Spring sunshine while you can, folks, before a Community Support Officer pepper sprays you for daring to put your rubbish in the bin without a permit from the government saying you are a keyworker and thus exempt from binge-watching Netflix and eating your own bin contents because there’s nothing on the shelves in Tesco’s. Today, I’m going to focus on Covidiots (I’ve coined this term but feel free to spread it around). A Covidiot is bravely defying all the advice about social distancing and self-isolation and, probably, sees coronavirus as a myth cooked up by a spotty, anarchist incel with a chemistry degree so no-one gets laid because he couldn’t. A Covidiot will crowbar the pub open and take some selfies of him downin...

Dolphins in Venice

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Friday, 20 th March 2020 Where is your attention? How has it shifted? Might, amid the panic and gloom, there be some good in all this? I am not a sociable person. I am happy in my own company and, in fact, get exhausted if I don’t manage to carve out time to myself in which to be still, to be quiet, to reset. But this week, my attention has all been outward. I have spent more time on the phone and WhatsApp this week than the last year combined. I am thinking about everyone I know, their mental and physical state, and how I want to reach out and connect. And this isn’t me, usually. Also, I am talking to strangers. These minor encounters at the garage, queuing for groceries, in the changing rooms at the yoga studio, which, previously, were spaces where I kept my eyes from meeting others’ and my conversations stripped down to essentials, are now charged with meaning. ‘How is this affecting you?’ I keep asking. And then people talk and they want to be heard and to share and to c...