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
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
Morning Mugs,
I'm fresh back from my first ever weekend in Paris........more about that in the next post.
My question is this......as we get older do we become more detached from the shit the world throws at us? Right now, it seems to me the news is an incessant stream of bad news. Coronavirus, floods, storms, brexit, facism, anti-semitism and an ignorant Uk government seemingly being driven by Dominic Cummings and not the PM. In sport it's all doping allegations or VAR controversy or racist or homophobic sports people.
The list of negativity is endless.
And I look at this and the The Wall is erected. I just think, well fuck the world. My life continues as it does every day. My influence on anything or anyone is zero. I ignore health fads. I ignore conspiracy stories. I ignore scare stories. I read articles, watch and listen to the news and base everything on the simplest balance of probabilities. That's almost ironic as probability was one of my weaker mathematical subjects.
I can't help wondering if this attitude of 'keep calm and carry on' is a peculiarly British thing or whether it's just a result of getting older and a by-product of life experience. Looking at the rising panic and gloom in the country as a whole, especially from the more fearful and hysterical people, I have come to the conclusion it's not nationality based calmness, but more a result of becoming older, and therefore more cynical and world weary.
And with this comes a rather comfortable feeling of detachment. VAR can fuck football up and it bothers me less because my emotional investment levels drop accordingly. Anti-semitism is a sad fact of life that can nver be eliminated by the facts on the Holocaust. The UK voted for Brexit, despite the harm it might cause. The UK voted for Boris and his gang of fuckwits, despite the hypocrisy and lies of every one of them. Nothing I or any other reasonable person can say will change that. We are disarmed, powerless and nothing we can say or do changes anything.
The perfect 'subjects'.
And this means I don't care. I can leave The Wall in place and ignore the crap going on. I can walk my dogs. I can play walking football. I can have a few pints on a Friday and talk shit with friends. I can go to football and quell the emotions using the inevitable fuckwittery of VAR. And this couldn't care less attitude just strengthens The Wall.
Have I found and advantage to getting older?
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs
This fine young chap on the left below, Ossie, who we picked up in early November from the wonderful Cyprus Rescue and Rehome charity after several months of being dumped, living in the pound and then a foster home before coming to us....is ONE YEAR OLD today.
OSSIE BERTIE
He is a part time garden reconstruction engineer, part time furniture taster, part time cat tormentor, part time bird chaser, voluminous food inhaler, constant farter and of course full time loving dog. He has made good friends with our first rescue dog Bertie (the one who's ear is floppy on the right picture) who is a month older. Every day they take me for a walk for an hour, sometimes we go at lunchtime, sometimes in the evening , sometimes all 3! For this my life is filled with a daft bit of joy every day when waking him up for his walk. Now if I could just stop him nipping everyone with excitement at seeing them!
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs,
I want to retire. No honestly I do. IO k now it's trendy to spout on about how much you love work, but after 41 years I've had enough. I want to wake up, walk the dogs, go to the bowls club, play walking football, take in a pub lunch, do the garden (yes..me...do the garden) , do another degree, decorate, vacuum, spring clean....anything but bloody work.
But will I be allowed to?
Well, I am in the fortunate position of having been in company pension schemes since the age of 18. 40 years I've been paying into them, a mix of Defined Benefit (final salary) or more recently (as is the trend) a Defined Contribution scheme. I've worked for 3 different companies in all that time which admitted has simplified things as the previous pensions have all been consolidated into the current (now closed) company scheme. I've been with this company 26 years and will be 59 years old this year...I have no desire to leave and find another role. My only desire is to carry on a while longer and then leave when the time is (almost) right with no role other than that of happy retiree.
I am currently looking at all the options on my DB pension, including transferring out to take the 25% tax free lump sum and clear the mortgage and some debts off. The CETV was very generous so I am seriously considering this. The house is then secured and owned, I'm still employed and working from home with minimal travel expenses. With a substantial lump left to fund the rest of my life when. am finally shown the door.
My bigger question is it now seems my state pension age is 67, having previously moved from 65 to 66. I now hear that this bunch of fuckwit wankers called the Tory Government wants to raise that to 75. Seventy-fucking-five! This sounds to me like part of a long term plan to move 'pensioners' from deserving retirees in the twilight years of life, to 'benefits scroungers' if they dare retire.
'Why shouldn't you work until you drop?' - yes I have heard people say that. I can foresee a time when people who declare themselves retired are sneered at and told they are sponging off of the state. Now, if you want to work until you drop, then fine, fucking get on with it. If you don't though, and you want to retire then that should always be a right, and the state should pay you a pension. And you should never fall foul of being called a benefit scrounger. And society should never reach the point where it frowns upon those who retire and seek a quieter life.
If I had my way, the retirement age would be 60. Then the older people could stroll off into the sunset and that would/should create vacancies for the young as they enter the jobs market. This system worked for decades. There is no reason for it to change.
As society moves on, the burden of work should be lessened not increased.
Later Mugs, GJ
