Well, this is a proper pickle isn’t it? A month ago we were
all leading our lives as normal, and now we’re all reading The Stand to find
out where the hell we’ll be in a weeks time. As a single man working, sleeping
and living in the same room pretty much 24/7 my problems have scaled back from
find a way of moving forward in life, and are now; how to avoid turning my room
into a masturbation furnace. Turns out that a lack of access to toilet roll is
actually a boon in this situation.
Communication with my kids, who currently live with their
mum (on account I rent a room, not a house) is mainly via video calls. This
means that most of our conversations consist of the word; “What?” or the sentence
“This connection is really bad.” And how weird is it that when you have a bad
connection on a video call, it’s always the other person’s fault? It’s the
modern equivalent of lending someone your favourite mix tape only for their tape
player to eat it. And now the internet is the single most important thing in
the world. So well done Tim Berners-Lee. Pop your feet up Tim and have a can of
Stella (he seems the sort).
As the children of key workers both the Kids are eligible
for school. News they greeted with expressions that roughly translated as “What
the fuck?” and “You couldn’t be cool, could you?” The Boy, now a full fledged
teenager with spots, random erections and a penchant for opening the fridge and
grunting, doesn’t go to school. He’s trustworthy. So trustworthy he spent £150
in micro transactions on his PlayStation in two days. So he gets to be at home
on his own, which for the first week was super awesome, and for the second week
has been dull as arseholes. Yesterday the Girl went to school and was
outnumbered by the teachers 4-1. And she still won the lunch time knife fight
and made the Head Teacher cry, and left the school with a cheery "Toodle-oo, motherfuckers!"
That's not true that last bit. But it could be true.
I see them as often as possible, within the strictures of
the lock down. We take the Dog for a walk, or rather we take the Dog out and
watch her fuck off into the distance whilst we shout at her to come back. She
is the epitome of “One word from me and she does what she wants.” It’s a habit
she’s picked up from the Girl.
And meantime the Kids and I talk about the pandemic I spend
most of the time diffusing the crap they’ve picked up from social media. In
particular this week that the Corona virus is linked in some way to the Chinese
5g networks. Not that long ago they were shitting on the sofa. Now they’re David
Icke. My favourite so far is that it’s a plan to improve the Chinese economy by
destroying the Chinese economy. That’s some mental acrobatics right there. Pop your
tin foil hat on, watch out for the drones.
But the main takeaway from this whole situation is this. Now
we know what’s important like we never did before. Family, freedom, the NHS, education, time with our kids. And it doesn’t matter what
happens after this, because we’re all going to be okay, because we’ll all have
a better understanding of what’s really important in the end.
Us.
Stay safe. Keep calm. Stay the fuck at home.
