Contains adult themes and material that some people may find offensive!*
Date: Saturday 4th April 2020
Quarantine: Day 12
Location: 🙄
Specifically: Reclining in my ‘bedroom’ above the cab.
VR: Getting confused now between what‘s real and what isn't. Bloody quarantine!
CORONA: COPING MECHANISMS
....and how are your neighbours coping with Lockdown? I will tell you how one of mine is coping, by making the rest of us miserable with trombone practice! I shit you not! This twat is bellowing on his trombone at 9.40 a.m with the window wide open! Furthermore he is still blaring away on the damned thing in the afternoon. Which suggests it‘s someone no one dares to challenge (they never heard of rocket launchers!?) or they are a very good natured and forgiving community. Except to date the neighbours activities seem to consist of;
Singing songs completely out of tune 24/7 (teenage girl next door to Alex).
Revving up car engines and motorbikes while there pals stand around enjoying the racket as though it were some kind of transcendental meditation.
Random people involving the neighbourhood in their domestic crises by shouting and swearing at each other in the street! Better than the telly!
... and the best laugh I’ve had since lockdown. Today I set off for a combined walk/shop to Aldi. A group of neighbours are chatting. The topic?the importance of social distancing! You really couldn’t make it up!
LOTS of children playing in the street 9.00 p.m! Reason?
1. Exercise?
2. Collecting medicine?
3. Essential work?
4. Shit parents?
Tick whichever you think is most appropriate!
FRIENDS OR FAMILY
I mentioned earlier having no close family. Not strictly true; it’s just that the people I regard as family are the friends I’m closest to. I’ve never believed in the blood is thicker than water argument.
Which brings me back to my sister, a bit sooner than I intended.
We don’t get on. Simple as that. As youngsters we were quite close, enjoying games, having the same friends, hating the same parent (my father) going to the same school.
But somewhere along the line it all came unstuck and my sister and I diverged along very different paths. She towards a large circle of friends, being out on the town and bringing home boyfriends who wouldn’t look out of place masquerading as stone sculptures in a rockery.
We haven’t seen each other in ages, my fault, she was doing her best to bring us together something she knew my mum would have loved. She was actually doing a great job - she took an interest in my life, she asked about my job, seemed interested in my friends and didn't turn her nose up when I started talking about geeky things like video games, sci fi movies and fantasy literature (not THAT type of fantasy literature go wash your teeth out with hair - or whatever the saying is).
But for me something rankled. I said earlier that our paths diverged as though we had just grown apart but there was one incident that drove a stake straight through our relationship. Even today (or at least right up until the last time I saw her) we have never spoken of it. She had begun seeing a guy called Steve who, at the time, was a nightclub manager. He was OK, but not really my sort of person. Their relationship was serious and I could tell my sister worshipped him ....
It wasn’t a conscious thing on my part, I didn’t wake up one morning and think to myself “right from this point forward I’m having nothing more to do with my sister.
In fact, so many years have passed I can barely remember what was going on in my head at the time. Heres what I do recall - though I doubt it will be much help. I was at work checking my emails when I spotted a message from someone whose name I didn’t recognise, Kathy or something or other (My sisters name is Katherine pron. Kathareen but had begun to call herself Kathy) the surname was unfamiliar to me but it sounded like one of those made up names that sex workers use (absolutely no disrespect to my sister because at this stage I had no idea who this person was),
Getting these messages wasn't unusual; a sizeable proportion of my job was teaching sex education so it was quite normal to get odd messages from time to time offering all manner of products and ‘services’. I deleted the message and thought no more about it.
A couple of days later another message appeared in my inbox, same person, same name. Again I deleted it. Except this time a light was beginning to shine through the cobwebs of my clouded brain. My sister had gotten married recently to a guy called Danny. I couldn’t recall his surname except it sounded like it wouldn’t be out of place for a sex worker.
Thats when I should at least have looked at the next message, just to check the identity of the sender. But I didn’t. I do recall seeing the word ‘emergency’ or ‘urgent’ in the message line but deleted it. What could possibly be going on in her life that would concern me as a matter of urgency?
Stop right there!
Oh dear thats the trouble with writing these things, you expect, or at least hope, that people will accept you writing about private aspects of their lives, the problem is you then have to do the same with yourself. Not a problem, except that reading back the above about my sister I sound like a schmuck.
I don’t want people to think of me as a schmuck.
Having said that who’s perfect? None of us. Besides its good to be aware of the things we like and dislike about ourselves, our strengths and our weaknesses.
Anyway, I think thats enough for now. More on my sister later.
Me towards a solitary life, with few friends (one actually, and he was an eternally miserable, down in the mouth, self-obsessed, moron. His only interest being playing his guitar and moaning - constantly. That and putting down others, usually me since I was nearest.
If I had the misfortune to run into him somewhere while I was with someone (usually a girlfriend) he could barely find the grace and the energy to acknowledge their presence; the most we would get was a rather indiscernible upwards tilt of his head. That, if it could be referred to as such, was the extent of his interest in either my friend or myself.
Then he would begin his ‘conversation’ with us in the same way every time; “nah then man I’ve ‘ad a reight fuckin day me” and then he’d be off, droning on in an endless diatribe of moaning and abject misery, talking at us about all the supposedly terrible things he'd had to put up with during the day, how dreadfully people and organisations treated him, the unfairness of everything.
He wasn’t responsible for any of it of course “we’re all victims of society” was one of his favourite sayings. Why did I stand there and listen to it? Politeness?don’t want to walk away while someone’s talking, being too good natured? lack of assertiveness? whatever the reason he never paused for breath long enough to allow anyone to make their excuses and leave. On one occasion I was with Judy, a friend from university. We’d seen him coming and ducked into a doorway to avoid him. Just as we were thinking we’d had a lucky escape the back wheel of his bike trundled into view followed by Mr Misery himself wanting to know why we had tried to hide from him.
One of the things he used to do that irritated me even more than his moaning was making up songs or rather, I should say, his attitude towards me while he was demonstrating them. There I would sit, listening to him go on about where the idea for a tune came from, why he chose a particular riff or chord sequence. Then he would play, stopping ever few seconds to elaborate further on a particular passage or sequence. It was so totally and insufferably boring. Yet I put up with it because I was his friend and listening and providing constructive criticism is what good friends do. Until it came to my turn to play him something I had put together..
I would be about three chords into a song when he would suddenly motion me to stop playing, “waut, wait, wait, wait, hang on, hang on, just play that part again.
I played that part again.
Then his face would broaden into a huge mocking grin, his eyebrows rose to meet his hairline and his eyes beheld an expression of impish glee. It was as if he had just returned from a hard day with nothing to eat and been presented with a scrumptious meal.
It was one of the very rare moments where his miserable mush approached anything like a smile. It was the grin of the gleefully triumphant of someone who's expecting a final demand but finds a tax rebate instead. He would then start to sing/hum a familiar tune, all the while maintaining his gleeful expression. The implication being of course that what I had put together had been done before and I had simply stolen the original. I hated it when he did this I felt crushed and humiliated, especially after all the effort I had put into the tunes he tried to put together. I did tell him this a number if times but it was hopeless he never listened.
I remained friends with him for a number of years but my life had broadened out somewhat by then. I had gone to college to study for my GCSE and A levels which I completed and passed in a year. Then went on to university. Eventually he faded out of my life and I never saw him again. The last I heard was when his ex partner (poor long suffering girl) told me he had been put in prison following an incident where he had had sex with an underage girl.
Apparently some of the neighbours turned up at his front door to confront him, forced their way into his house and beat him senseless in his own living room. I made some effort to find which prison he was in with a view to hearing his side of the story, but it was a half hearted effort. I knew that, whatever the story, none of what took place would be his fault.
I have often wondered where he might be today and what he might be doing. Wherever it is it wont be where he used to live, that‘s now been boarded up with those big ugly metal shutters that the council put over windows to protect a property from vandals. Whatever he’s doing I hope he’s managed to find some way of moving on with his life.
CORONAVIRUS: FOOD STOCKS
No one likes panic buyers although I understand they act out of fear rather than selfishness. Either way the results are the same. Supermarkets with endless rows of empty shelves where food and other sundry items used to be. Sad, because it’s unnecessary - have these buffoons (yes Im going down the selfish route because panic buyers aren't morons - we hope - they understand the impact of their actions and they have the power to make different choices.
The problem is this is the sort of nonsense that leads to food shortages - panic begets panic as others realise that they need to be quick offthe mark if they are going to get anything. To date we've had panic buying on; toilet rolls (shortage in Australia as their rolls are sourced from China so people in the UK rush out to buy them by the trolleyload even though ours are made within the UK) pasta, alcohol, sanitary wear, vegetables, meat etc in fact the only stuff left seems to be sweets like chocolate - who would have thought it eh? You'd think that stuff would have been first off the shelves!
It’s anazing, how in times of crisis prople are very quick to lose their inhibitions. Toilet rolls were second only to condoms in terms of things people were too embarrassed to buy. This is why supermarkets took off; not because they sold everything you needed in one place but because people could buy bog roll without actually suffering the embarrassment of having to ask for it at the counter ”..and a packet of toilet tissue please“ eh? What‘s that luv? a copy of the Big Issue?”
Now people are falling over themselves to shout “OK OK we admit it, we have anuses, we shit out of them, its horrible and messy and stinky and disgusting, we need something to wipe our asses with to avoid our pants being covered in shit and we have to go home walking funny, please fill our trolleys up with 20 packs of triple ply this instant!”
Worst case scenario - if things get out of hand (and weve seen how quickly and easily this can happen) were are we going to get food!? Way I see it we could end up having to go out and catch our own - though I’m sure it would be classed as an essential outing.
“I do apologise for our being out of doors officer but we are in urgent need of a loaf and must hide behind this wheely bin ready to pounce if and when one should happen across our path”
TODAYS FACEBOOK HUMOUR
Sorry peeps - bit thin on the ground today (a lot like my hair).
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