So, I am over 70 and BoJo has just sentenced me to a life behind bars. Well, that’s probably a bit of an exaggeration as I am typing this looking out of my office in a leafy North London suburb. But it feels like it. He’s an ungrateful wretch as I voted for him, but given that if there was an election today he’d want to fine me a £1000 if I left the house to stick my card in the ballot box, he’s not getting my vote again.
I broke curfew this morning and walked around the lake in Grovelands Park. There’s a Priory Hospital overlooking the water and I have to confess I did consider taking refuge there, but the sound of coughing echoing through the trees put me off a bit. So, I settled for a brief catch up with my friends the swans. They’re a lovely couple. Always swanning about the surface and I follow their offspring when they’re born with a faithful obsession. Today, they seemed a bit sulky mainly because the park was pretty much deserted except for a strange woman with a dog carefully moving worms from the path to avoid them being flattened by the odd runner. The upside was there were far less dogs being walked and given that every dog who sees me immediately think "food" I can’t say I was devastated by that.
Anyway got back home, put up the barbed wire, dug the trenches, filled them with poisonous snakes, electrified the front door (going to have to ask the Post Office to come and remove the dead postman) and I am just hunkering down for the siege.
Now, you have to understand (and people who don’t know me find it hard to believe) that I never watch the news on TV, nor do I read the boring newsy bits in the papers. I start from the back with the sports stuff, turn to the obituaries to make sure I haven’t died overnight, check my shares (well, I am certainly not doing that at the moment or else I will be running screaming into The Priory with wrists bleeding profusely….. that’s another thing). Even GP’s surgery has texted to say they aren’t open and I have to phone the triage nurse if I want some advice. Assuming I could even get through, can you imagine the conversation: "Excuse me my shares have fallen and the value of my pension fund has been reduced by half and I’ve slashed my wrists so what do I do?"
And you get a recorded message telling you the symptoms of the Corona virus and the need to self-isolate. Yeah, that’ s really helpful.
So, back to not watching the news. Friends always try to share snippets with me and I always say that they are mistaking me for somebody’s that’s interested. But the snippets I am getting are really annoying me at the moment. No football, no cricket (that’s even worse because that was going to fill my day from Thursday on with coverage of the Tests from Sri Lanka) and then to top it all I get told there is no Grand National. Now, my favourite Saturday of the year is Grand National Saturday. I watch it from the simulated race the night before right until the last bucket of water is thrown over the steaming horse who has trailed in last (usually with my money on it). That’s been taken away from me and I blame BoJo personally for that. Maybe as compensation he and the rest of his Cobra team could do one round of the Aintree circuit and if Becher’s Brook doesn’t get him the you have to hope the Canal Turn will. And just when you think it can get no worse I am told that they’ve suspended filming of both "Peaky Blinders" and "Line of Duty". What next? Are they going to take off Peppa Pig and The Tellytubbies?
So, feeling I had little left to live for (I was physically restrained by my wife and verbally restrained by my son and daughter-in-law and ex daughter-in-law from collecting my 11 year old grandson from school). Fortunately he was given a phone for his birthday last week and, as he’s also been self-isolated, he’s texting like a child possessed (at least it got him off the i-pad). I did again think of resorting to the wrist slashing process. But, you know I’ve missed out on the chance to be the first to die in this pandemic and nobody remembers the runners-up (particularly if they’ve not died from the virus) so I’ve decided to put that on hold .
I’ve created a whole long list of things to do. Big things. The biggest ever as Trump might say. Clean out the cupboard next to my bed and sort out the drawer into which I throw the contents of my pockets every night. Start the mammoth task of cleaning my office (into which nobody is allowed to pass including our cleaning lady - we’ve just offered to pay her for not coming which I told her to take as a tribute to her cleaning abilities), downloading the 3000 photos I have on my phone and actually getting some printed up so I have a more recent picture of my grandson than him at his first birthday party or my grand-daughter on the day she was born (she was one last week), oh, and writing my first blog. Tune into more news from the Home Front tomorrow if you’ve enjoyed today’s posting.