Had enough yet?

Afternoon Mugs,

Blimey, it now seems never ending doesn't it? I said at the beginning of the lockdown that if there was no real end in sight then civil/social disobedience would start to kick in, and sure enough it has. This has of course been accelerated by the confused 'easing' of restrictions by the failing and flailing government who seem to be making stuff up on the hoof.

I would have preferred a single unequivocal statement of 'another 4 weeks' until mid-June of complete lockdown. That way, as tough as staying in and watching TV or doing DIY or whatever seems you would have had clarity and a few weeks to prepare a proper caveated road map of restriction easing. You know, like France, Ireland, Spain and Germany amongst others have done.

Oh, but they're all the EU aren't they and the good old UK can't be seen to be doing the same thing as them now can we? Even if what we're doing is wrong, like some out of control village idiot we will plough our own furrow and the gormless and gullible will follow. On the one hand you have cold hard facts, based in science and an opposition leader quietly exposing the foolhardiness of this government and it's 'out of depth' minister, whilst the great British public would prefer a bumbling oaf who sees himslf as a Winston Churchill character because he uses the phrase 'Great British public' and 'hard working British families'. Its bluff, bluster and bullshit beating down the truth again.

And of course we also have the continuing unhealthy corporate greed of billionaires desperate to keep making billions whilst risking their emplotyees lives, and sport putting its business ahead of the health of participants and staff...you know,,,because the nation needs cheering up. Today the Scottish Premier League have (sensibly) called time on the season awarding positions as they stand. But the English Premier League are desperate to finish the campaign to avoid paying the TV companies millions back...sorry...I mean to lift the nations spirits. And then today they announce the likelihood that the womens super league will be stopped but not the mens .....no sexism or corporate greed on display there then!

I did think at the beginning of this that things might change. We'd be greener as we have the chance to gaze at pure blue skies unsullied by pollution haze...but no, it's all about getting people to work, even to the point of encouraging car use over public transport. Because working with colleagues is so much safer than sitting on a train or bus. Give me strength.

My message is shit or get off the pot. Remove lockdown and be damned and take the consequeneces, or lockdown good and hard and save lives. This government will do neither and we'll be stuck in Vagueness City and Indecision Town for the foreseeable future.

Grim.

Later Mugs, GJ

Funny not funny

Afternoon Mugs

As I sit here recovering from wine lag (replacing beer lag due to the fact I have rediscovered a taste for red wine)  on a quiet work afternoon, I'm watching one of the new breed  of sitcoms. No not the risible Mrs Browns Boys, or the equally dreadful Citizen Khan, but clever, darker ones. Sitcoms that have no laughter track and therefore force you to find the comedy and laugh moments. This all sounds a bit like middle class, liberal elite wankerie  I suppose. However for me the days of laughing when prompted have long gone and it's probably all the work of Ricky Gervais and the ground-breaking series The Office. It was cringe inducing of course, but so beautifully scripted and set up, and followed up by the equally brilliant Extras, Derek and his latest, After Life. I think it's perfectly fair to say he changed the comedy of the sit-com forever, and for the better.

So, on the list of honourable recent sit-coms I've watched and enjoyed are....

Back to Life: Dark, yet gentle humour in this series written by and starring the immensely impressive Daisy Haggard. The sad and yet uplifitng story of a woman imprisoned for murder, and relased 18 years later as she approches her forties.  On iPlayer.

Fleabag: Fourth wall breaking sit-com with outrageous situations, a free speaking star in Phoebe Waller-Bridge, deliciously dark and funny. Not as touching as Back to Life, but in the same vein of centering the series around a strong female character. On iPlayer.

After Life: Ricky Gervais in a stunning comedy/drama about a recently widowed man who's life is in tatters after his wife's death. Doesn't sound funny does it? And yet like the previous two it is laugh out loud funny at times and Gervais loads up the pathos to smack you in the face and drag you to tears both after and before the laughter. Netflix only. 

Breeders: One from the blue for me......recommended by a work colleague for the lockdown. Think Outnumbered with far worse language, less cute and verbose kids, concentrating on fraught parenting and the bparadox of being willing to die for your children whilst simultaneously want to kill them. Martin Freeman, Michael Mckean, the constantly underrated Patrick Baladi  and the lovely Daisy Haggard form the cast.  Cognitive dissonance at its best. Sky One (yes Sky seem to be a bit of a leader in the adult sit-com market!)

Code 404: Not watched this yet, it's on the lockdown list though and starts Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays and I can't imagine for one moment that two such fantastic actors would star in something shitty. Sky One (yep...Sky again huh...who knew...)

Avenue 5: Set in outer space on a fictional equivalent inter-planetary cruise liner. Starring Hugh Laurie, Rebecca Front band Leona Critchley and written by Armando Ianucci (of The Thick Of It fame...one of the finest sitcoms ever) - this was a grower but is a very funny and maybe a currently apt view of human behaviour in the face of a crisis! Sky One.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: I was never a huge fan of Seinfeld, always more of  a Frazier man myself. But this is a gem from one of th riters of Seinfeld, Larry David who plays a parody version of himself. He's probably acting out the stuff that's deep inside all of us, but this series is as strong no as it was from day one. Superb stuff. Sky One 

Thats all folks as they used to say, 

Later Mugs , GJ

 

JFC

Morning Mugs

Despite having more time...it seems I have less time...well for writing. I need to get in the habit of writing daily thoughts  quickly and punchily here. I am also considering a memoir from the earliest of memories, although of course dates from years ago, even years will be mere guesses!

JFC stands for Jesus Fucking Christ, a statement for when you hear, see or experience the most stupid of things from other people.  

JFC - The BBC and their Big Night In. Utter garbage at a time when people need better TV. Davina ShoutyGob is the last thing you need, but adding to her a list of 'celebs' being earnest, pious and trying to mix that with humour came over as patronising, insincere bullshit. I am a big fan of the BBC, but this was an error of judgment and poor execution.

JFC - Disinfectant? UV light? Injections? Irradiation? Seriously America, the man is borderline insane and surely suffering from Dementia of some sort? Don't elect him unless you want to lose the trust of the entire world. Russia excepted maybe...

JFC - Tory 'grandees' or CUNTS as I know them, calling for lockdown to be lifted to restart the economy. If ever there was proof that old school Tory-ism puts lives before profit, there it is.  

JFC - 20,000 deaths and that DOESN'T include care home and other non-hospital reported deaths? The NHS still short on the right PPE for the front line workers? The NHS still not getting the testing resource for the front-line workers? And yet...and yet...the press are still blowing smoke up the arses of this government. We are one fucked up country.

JFC - Kim Jong-Un is allegedly very poorly. And by all accounts might actually die. And yet on Twitter there are people saying that we should have humanity and show compassion for his family. The same humanity and compassion he showed those around him he's had executed and tortured. The same humanity he shows any dissenters and the thousands if not more locked up in concentration camps. Fuck him. 

JFC - people raising money for the NHS. The NHS, a publicly funded jewel in the diminishing crown jewels of the country. I will NOT contribute to any NHS charity because it's a failing of the state if that is needed. Tax people more if necessary, fund it properly from the outset. Every penny raised through charity just allows this government to use that as an excuse to keep on starving it of cash. 

Thats enough JFCs for now ....

Later Mugs, GJ

Lockdown Issues (2)

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

Lockdown issues

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

Crisis? What crisis?

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

Paris - Most definitely NOT ruined by the French

Morning Mugs,

Paris. The city of lights. Or something. We went there over Valentines weekend and I did so with trepidation. I've been through Paris, round Paris, under Paris and over Paris. But I've never stayed in Paris and spent time there. Whenever I mentioned this to friends I would always get the usual 'ruined by the French' comment along with others as below.....

'It's expensive' - yes it is but no more than London or Rome or Venice or many other great European cities. Take a bit of time to go off the beaten track and prices fall quite a bit.

'It's got dog shit everywhere' - no...no it hasn't. I'd argue Buchjarest was the worst I've seen for this, but Paris is clean, very clean. They passed a law on dog shit in the streets, and although no city is completely free of idiots leaving it behind, paris was s clean, if not cleaner than London. 

'It's ruined by the French' - oh how I laughed at this..NEVER. Get the fuck over yourselves you gammon faced xenophobes. The french are fine, as are most of us, or the Romans, or Berliners....it's a shit lazy stereotype propagated by brexit twats. We found Parisians to be friendly, welcoming and polite. 

'It's full of pickpockets, scammers and con-men' - Now this is the closest to being true. But again it's no worse than any other major Eurpoean city, where chancers see oportunities to mug off ostentatious or gullible tourists. We did see a pickpocket team by the Trocadero, and plenty of street sellers and 'cup and ball' con men. We also got partially done by the 'wedding ring' scam whereby a stranger walking acrfoss the road next to you claims to find a ring in the road, then says they can't keep it for religious reasons and gives it to you. Then tries charging you €50 for it being your 'lucky day'. However, we only had €2 in cash on us, and said we would hand it in to the police as we would want that if we had lost our ring. She accepted the €2....we see that as a €48 gain!

'The queues for the Eiffel Tower and other sights are horrendous' - yes they are, even in February. But..get the fuck over yourselves. Paris is the MOST visited city in the world, more than London, more than Rome, more than New York, so don't be surprised it's busy. Here's a thing though...a GJ tip if you like.....book your tickets and tours online before you go. There are plenty of 'skip the line' tours with TripAdvisor and Viator, both of which have never let us down. The price difference is small and the guarantees are worth a few extra quid, as is the lack of waiting around in endless queues. The Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Place de Concorde, Champs-Elysees, Musee D'Orsay, Montmarte, Sacre Coeur and all the other stuff are terriifc places to visit. Notre Dame is behind a fence, and covered in scaffold so ...very limited stuff to see there. 

'Public transport is shit' - no it isn't, well the metro isn't. It's clean and punctual. Is it as good as the London Underground...no, but it's pretty close. 

'The food is shit' - au contraire mon amis, au contraire. The food we ate was amongst the best I've eaten, anywhere at any time. And I'm talking from the baguettes we bought on the street and in the Eiffel Tower cafe, to the food on the river boat meal and to the excellent food in the restaurant we ate in on Valentines night (Signature)

So, my advice is simple, go there. Take your cunty Union Jack/Cross of St George goggles off and see how the other side of the channel lives. Paris is a beautiful, clean , stunning , interesting and wonderful city that now vies with Berlin and Rome as amongst my favorites.

Later Mugs, GJ