Morning Mugs,
Well that's more or less the first week done. The list of lockdown issues continues.....I am sure there will be some lockdown advantages along soon, but the due diligence of whether they are advantages of just me making the most of a bad situation is needed first. In no particular order of importance.....
1.) No football...that's WATCHING football. I'm a terrible TV watcher of my team Chelsea. I can go to games and win or lose, it's up the Blues. There are 40,000 soul mates of sorts who feel pretty much the same way. Watching on TV though is a solitary torturous affair. If you've seen the film Get Out, it reminds me of the TV sequences in that where the 'hero' is drugged or hypnotised to the point where he can only see the world through the screen of a TV that is diminishing in size. Yep...that's TV viewing of Chelsea for me. But now I can't watch them...I want to. Now I can't even watch meaningless games involving teams I don't give a shit about, but now....I really want to. And no, watching old matches being re-run doesn't do it for me unless they're from the 70s. There's talk of re-running Euro '96 in full. Fuck that...re-run Mexico 70 and I might be interested based on the fact I remember so little of it. Aside from Pele, Jairzinho, Bobby Moore, Beckenbauer etc....
2.) No football.....thats WALKING football. Blimey, I bought some new Adidas Kaiser 5 indoor football trainers to improve my game. They felt great. My passing was better. My shooting no longer looked like I had a sand wedge tied to my foot. And then it stopped. No more banter, no more controversy over whether anyone was running, or what a fair challenge is. No post match handshakes. No post match pints of Peroni. No getting home and being asked why you're so late. No late dinner. No falling asleep on the settee after the football, dinner and beer combo. I miss this...
3.) Sore hips. The nicer weather, the choice to use dog walking as the exercise of choice, the longer dog walks and then in a moment of madness doing the front and back gardens in the first cut of the year this weekend gone. It's like both hips need a bloody good dousing with 3-in-1 oil. Oh, and not just them, my shoulders as well. Hell, there's barely a bit of me that doesn't fucking ache these days.
4.) Shortage of ice-cream. We normally have a couple of tubs of ice cream in the freezer on the pre-text that it's for the grandchildren. In truth, ice-cream is like crack cocaine for me. I can't just get a tub of Carte D'Or or Ben & Jerry's and eat some of it and save the rest. What sort of fuckwittery is that? Once I've let it thaw a bit, opened the lid and sunk the first spoon in, then I'm like a dog eating it's breakfast. I inhale the stuff. I will not stop until the tub is empty or is wrested from my greedy, gluttonous hands. But thanks to the lockdown I've had to be disciplined. A third of a tub is all that remains. Now the crisis is hitting home.
5.) Fuck me, how can you get some private time? The house is occupied almost all of the day except if Hellsbells and Pie take the dogs out. They did yesterday afternoon.....10 minutes they lasted until the hail came down. I nearly had a nap.....
That's it for now, heading into week two of fuck knows how many this will last, I'm sure there will be more trivial gripes and moans. Meanwhile I promise (sort of) to try and find some lockdown positives. There must be some .....
Later Mugs, GJ
Afternoon Mugs,
Fucking lockdown.
I work from home. I have routines. I have alarms set to get up and walk about. I have radio stations I like. The TV sits idle.
But now, my wife and youngest daughter (aged 25) are hom all day, being furloughed workers.
These have fucked up the following, in no particular order.
1.) My peace and quiet. I usually have a bit of background radio on and nothing else. Now, if they're not chatting or shouting to each other, they're watching fucking box sets loudly on the downstairs TV. Oh and they are asking Alexa to play the most shit radio they can find...the sort of playlist crap that Radio 2, heart etc pump out.
2.) Spring cleaning. This has NEVER happened in any house since I was a kid and my mum used to do it religiously every year like all Mums did (calm down millenials, it was a different time back then) . Now my garage is being cluttered with shit that needs to go the dump but can't because they're all shut, or shit that's to be kept and stored elsewhere, or shit whose future is in the balance. A sort of shit purgatory. But my garage had order, and now it doesn't.
3.) The dogs are being walked by wife and youngest (HellsBells and Pie) every morning. Then I get the evening shift ON MY OWN! To be honest there's very few people about so that does suit me. I'll grudgingly and grumpily acknowledge that as a positive.
4.) Deliveries. No not food deliveries. Deliveries of things for me. Gadgets, shirts, stuff for the dogs etc. I used to order this surreptitiously and the deliveries would come when everyone was out. Now the fuckers knock and walk away and I am suddenly found out. Bastards.
5.) Coffee. I have a Tassimo machine. I love the coffee. It lasts ages in terms of supply. Now with these two home it's getting drunk BY THEM! I have suggested some Nescafe Instant. This did not go down well.
6.) I am home based for work, so nothing new for me here EXCEPT I am now plagued by 'can you help with this' or 'can you take this to the bin' or 'can you help me here' or 'are you busy?' . I haven't shouted 'FUCK OFF I'M WORKING ' but it's getting closer.
7.) Nap time. Sometime, after a sarnie at lunchtime...I either meditate in my attempt for some mindfulness in the peace and quiet or sometimes I plain out nap for 30 minutes or so. I believe it's called a 'power nap' and it works wonders for the afternoon shift. There is zero fucking chance of this.
8.) They prefer The Chase to Pointless. Yeah....imagine that?
Fuck this , lets hope we're back to normal.
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs,
Well well from a weekend in Paris to potentially weeks indoors. We, the boomers onwards , have often been referred to as the 'lucky generation' or the 'unchallenged'. I have railed at this on the basis that just because we didn't get into a fucking war with our neighbours doesn't make us less worthy than previous generations. Instead of focussing on what we have never done, fought world wars etc, why not focus on what we have done?
Look at the huge tech advances in medicine which regularly save lives of people formerly doomed to early deaths. Look at the advances in fuel efficiency. Look at the availability of services. Look at the internet, social media and the ability to work remotely, things which are helping life keep to some semblance of normality. Look at the availability of flying to far off places for many more people instead of it being exclusively for the rich. Look at smartphones and tablets allowing people to stay in contact from their homes rather than queueing outside a phone box with a bag of tuppences.
Boomers onwards have done more to democratise and spread wealth than any previous generations. Becaaue we refused to accept what went before. And the millenials are doing the same to us, and for the most part, more power to them for looking to better things.
We have consciences and raised awareness of what we do and the impacts we have on society far more than any previous generation had. The millenials, as annoying as it seems want to go further. Yes, they can irritate with the 'we want it all, we want it now' attitude hidden behind bushy bright eyed and untarnshed smiles, but the more they agitate nd disrupt, the more things will change for the better again. Change isn't comfortable for many until it's bedded in and the results can be felt. Working for a technology company has taught me that.
Right now this damned Coronavirus is changing the way we interact, the amount we travel, how we socialise, how we shop, how we socialise and as uncomfortable as it seems life is not that far from normal. As I walk the dogs I notice more people saying 'hello' albeit from distance. There is less traffic. Local shops are booming without profiteering (here at least). Satellite pictures and photographs show pollution dropping like a stone, as 'predicted' at the end of the brilliant novel Stark by Ben Elton. Ironically there is a growing sense of community even when social distancing seems to be growing. Fuck you Thatcher then.
It's not a huge reset button yet, but it might be something like a soft reboot for the way we live. I'd like to think that once this is over things won't just snap back to how they were. I'd like to think more people would be allowed and encouraged to work from home. That more distance learning would become part of school and college life. People would drive less, walk and cycle more. Maybe people would finally dispose of cash for contactless reducing transmission risks to the vulnerable that way. Maybe people would use supermarket deliveries more and local shops more. There seems to be so much more that could be done once this is over. I'm not saying we have to live like we're being forced to now, but there has to be a happy compromise that improves things for us, the environment and for society as a whole.
Fingers crossed, later Mugs GJ
