The New Normal
We all live indoors. We always have. That was what indoors was for. But now we're stuck there with the people we have chosen to live with, or we're stuck there with people we're stuck with. Or we're stuck on our own staring at the thin trickle of traffic outside, wondering what bin day it is.
Once a week we are allowed out to clap the key workers and wave at our neighbours whom we never used to talk to. Then we go back inside and read on social media that we're twats for doing so. Confused people contend that the government are forcing us to do it and internet tough guys still maintain that anyone applauding the NHS is attempting to physically slap the guilt of voting Tory out of the palms of their hands like a religious mortification of the body. Others are saying they're bored with just clapping nurses and doctors and we should be clapping Amazon delivery people and shop workers. I'm not sure how they found out I was deliberately excluding those people from my applause. But they ARE right - if I even suspected another kind of key worker, a bus driver or somebody volunteering to make soup for the poor, was appropriating and enjoying my very specific applause, I would bundle them physically to the ground and bite their ears off despite this contravening governmental health guidelines. The bloody cheek. And neck. And collar.
I'll still go out and applaud the key workers because the government, who have appropriated this gesture and confused a load of paranoid hippies, certainly won't be. I have no doubt that Boris Johnson, freshly sprung from the ICU and now back on the ward like the Carry On grotesque he is - dipping his thermometer in his tea and making Dominic Raab take his cod liver oil so he shits himself at the podium - will have learned nothing from his ordeal. The pandemic will have stopped the NHS being sold off in bits to America by five years tops. And contrarians on the internet will tell us that that's great too because, hey, at least its an opinion.
The internet is a rose garden: it comes in a million subtle shades and hues and is full of pricks.
Here we are. Staring through the glass. Nature, like a sarcastic prick, has given us the nicest March and April that I can remember and we're all stuck inside the house, watching bees headbutt the windows and the birds get cocky. Birds are loving this. They are singing their heads off and if we could just understand their sweet, mellifluous language we would know that they are roaring "WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?" like underemployed football hooligans, over and over again. Unedifying bastards.
People seem to be doing okay. They're mostly keeping their distance. They're doing their best not to kill one another. Its the base level you would expect from a civilised society but I'll take it.
Remember it too as you will soon not be reading any of this in the press, in the same way that the non-event that was "A Clap For Boris" was inflated even beyond the confines of the man's ego. Or even as the tabloids trilled "what a great day" when he got out of intensive care, and failed to mention the THOUSAND people who had died of the virus that day.
You will read in the press that Johnson is a "fighter" and that he beat this illness with "pluck" and "character", as opposed to early testing and the most advanced medical facilities available to the country. We know how he caught this illness, possibly alone outside of medical front liners (who are dropping like flies) and it was because he refused to take medical advice and went around hospitals cheerily shaking hands with the sick. Of course he did that. He thought he could charm Covid19. Or bamboozle it with posh joshing. Or bully it. That's what he's done with everything his entire life. And when it didn't work he listened to experts, did what he was told and got better.
Will it change him? Has he learned a lesson? No, of course not. It'll be proof of his "strength" ("I beat this"), proof of his character and most of all a boost to his every-man status ("Even I can get this - I am just like you"). This will be the turnaround. When he returns to fronting this plague it will be with renewed gravitas. He's had to take it seriously and now so will you. If you get it from here on it it will be your fault. The papers will soon be choked with stories about selfish idiots making inessential journeys and demand the return of capital punishment for treachery. We will see buying a morning paper escalate into civil unrest. The police will be given greater powers. These powers will be vague and threatening. Suss laws will be extended to include non-black people.
We are charting choppy and chilly waters and all because Boris Johnson reckon's he's too cool to wash his hands after leaving a hospital. This is how the world ends - not with a bang but with a wanker.
Once a week we are allowed out to clap the key workers and wave at our neighbours whom we never used to talk to. Then we go back inside and read on social media that we're twats for doing so. Confused people contend that the government are forcing us to do it and internet tough guys still maintain that anyone applauding the NHS is attempting to physically slap the guilt of voting Tory out of the palms of their hands like a religious mortification of the body. Others are saying they're bored with just clapping nurses and doctors and we should be clapping Amazon delivery people and shop workers. I'm not sure how they found out I was deliberately excluding those people from my applause. But they ARE right - if I even suspected another kind of key worker, a bus driver or somebody volunteering to make soup for the poor, was appropriating and enjoying my very specific applause, I would bundle them physically to the ground and bite their ears off despite this contravening governmental health guidelines. The bloody cheek. And neck. And collar.
I'll still go out and applaud the key workers because the government, who have appropriated this gesture and confused a load of paranoid hippies, certainly won't be. I have no doubt that Boris Johnson, freshly sprung from the ICU and now back on the ward like the Carry On grotesque he is - dipping his thermometer in his tea and making Dominic Raab take his cod liver oil so he shits himself at the podium - will have learned nothing from his ordeal. The pandemic will have stopped the NHS being sold off in bits to America by five years tops. And contrarians on the internet will tell us that that's great too because, hey, at least its an opinion.
The internet is a rose garden: it comes in a million subtle shades and hues and is full of pricks.
Here we are. Staring through the glass. Nature, like a sarcastic prick, has given us the nicest March and April that I can remember and we're all stuck inside the house, watching bees headbutt the windows and the birds get cocky. Birds are loving this. They are singing their heads off and if we could just understand their sweet, mellifluous language we would know that they are roaring "WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?" like underemployed football hooligans, over and over again. Unedifying bastards.
People seem to be doing okay. They're mostly keeping their distance. They're doing their best not to kill one another. Its the base level you would expect from a civilised society but I'll take it.
Remember it too as you will soon not be reading any of this in the press, in the same way that the non-event that was "A Clap For Boris" was inflated even beyond the confines of the man's ego. Or even as the tabloids trilled "what a great day" when he got out of intensive care, and failed to mention the THOUSAND people who had died of the virus that day.
You will read in the press that Johnson is a "fighter" and that he beat this illness with "pluck" and "character", as opposed to early testing and the most advanced medical facilities available to the country. We know how he caught this illness, possibly alone outside of medical front liners (who are dropping like flies) and it was because he refused to take medical advice and went around hospitals cheerily shaking hands with the sick. Of course he did that. He thought he could charm Covid19. Or bamboozle it with posh joshing. Or bully it. That's what he's done with everything his entire life. And when it didn't work he listened to experts, did what he was told and got better.
Will it change him? Has he learned a lesson? No, of course not. It'll be proof of his "strength" ("I beat this"), proof of his character and most of all a boost to his every-man status ("Even I can get this - I am just like you"). This will be the turnaround. When he returns to fronting this plague it will be with renewed gravitas. He's had to take it seriously and now so will you. If you get it from here on it it will be your fault. The papers will soon be choked with stories about selfish idiots making inessential journeys and demand the return of capital punishment for treachery. We will see buying a morning paper escalate into civil unrest. The police will be given greater powers. These powers will be vague and threatening. Suss laws will be extended to include non-black people.
We are charting choppy and chilly waters and all because Boris Johnson reckon's he's too cool to wash his hands after leaving a hospital. This is how the world ends - not with a bang but with a wanker.
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