How did I manage that?

Well, I am set to achieve my now-seemingly-pointless challenge of posting an acronym of blogs during the month of March. If you take the first letter of each title I put online in the past thirty days, it spells out ‘THE MERRY MONTH OF MARCH.’

It’s a shame it hasn’t turned out as merry as we might have hoped.

It’s also a shame that I didn’t plan it better in advance.  I forgot that the new ones appear ABOVE the old ones, so when you look at the list of blog titles on my homepage, you have to read upwards to see the acronym. With a bit more forethought I could have got it reading downwards.

Maybe next time…

I’m just amazed I managed to remember to see it through. We’ve all been a bit distracted in the past two weeks or so, have we not?

RC 30-3-20

Can I call it Fri-ku on a Saturday?

Eerily quiet

Country lanes with no traffic

Surreal; beautiful

Clocks will change tonight

Brighter nights from tomorrow

An hour less to fill

All contact online

Everyone working from home

Not so much rushing

Self-isolation

Will we help each other more?

I can only hope

Changing the subject:

I’m reading the whole works of

Arthur Conan Doyle

RC 28-3-20

Remote worker Rory

Things are so quiet on the fuel front that I’m mostly able to work from home. I’ve been given off-site computer access to all the systems I need, and I’m having daily video calls with all sorts of people, from my own staff all the way up to Head Office. I will still go into my nearest station if I need to, but the thinking is, as far as us Sub-Division Managers go, it’s not a great idea to be travelling between four different sites, going into four different buildings and meeting four different groups of employees. So, new protocols are in place, and they seem to be working well.

I hate to give my employers credit, but I have to say I’m incredibly impressed with how they’ve adapted things so quickly, while also dealing with the most insane period of supermarket footfall ever seen in Britain, while also dealing with their own fears and uncertainties and constantly changing circumstances. The worst of times can bring out the best in people and some of Those Above Me – who I would previously have considered to be nothing more than wage-banking, layabout loafers – have worked incredibly hard in incredibly trying conditions to keep the company, and the industry, and all their employees moving along as they need to. All good stuff that makes you damn proud to be a part of it.

Wishing you good health, and good MENTAL health, in these stressful times….

RC 26-3-20

A different topic

Today I am concentrating on good stuff. What can I learn from the current situation? What will I do to pass the time if I’m self-isolating? What suggestions can I make to those who are having to stay at home?

Here’s a few ideas I’ve come up with. I’m not offering advice, I’m just sharing how I intend to make use of the extra home-time, and maybe it’ll help someone else:

NEW SKILLS I CAN LEARN

French (or another as-yet-undecided language)

Gardening

THINGS I CAN PRACTICE AND GET BETTER AT

Cooking

Drumming

Harmonica

Fatherhood!

MOVIES TO REVISIT

EVERYTHING by Laurel & Hardy

Every Woody Allen film

…but absolutely NOTHING about disasters, apocalypses or viruses!!!

RC 25-3-20

My tuppence-worth, today...

As has been said by many – we are seeing the best of some people, and the worst of others, and it’s a shame we can’t all settle somewhere in the middle.

I imagine we will, at some point. When we start getting used to a new routine, and a new way of life, and people realise we’re not all going to die by Summer, or all going to run out of food by Easter, maybe then the country will settle.

It’s just all so big, and so scary. But it’s only scary if you make it too big. If you try to keep on top of everything that’s happening in every country around the world; if you try and sort out how the economy will recover or how a vaccine will ever be mass-produced, then you’re going to feel overwhelmed.

All we have to do right now is look after ourselves and our loved ones, and the vulnerable. The rest is out of our hands. The world’s best scientists are working out the science stuff, so we don’t have to think about that. The world’s best economists are working out the financial stuff, so we don’t have to think about that. The education stuff will be sorted by the education experts, etc, etc, etc.

All we have to do is look after ourselves and our loved ones, and the vulnerable.

That’s all we’re being asked to do. And that’s all we have to think about.

RC 23-3-20

For f**k's sake, why now?

This may seem strange and petty in the current circumstances, but something is causing me anguish and I need to get it out of my head, and I’ve always found that typing stuff into this blog is a good way of alleviating inner turmoil.

So….

I had a conversation with Philippa a couple of nights ago, and it’s really starting to bug me.

I was making a cup of tea, and I had left the spoon in the tea while it brewed. When I took it out, without thinking, I passed if from one hand into the palm of the other, giving myself a slight burn. It made me laugh, because it reminded me of something from my sixth-form college days. We had a fad for a while called ‘hot spooning’ where, every time you made a hot drink, you would hold the spoon on the arm of the person nearest to you, making them yelp. All very childish and a bit sadistic, but it kept us amused for a while when we were preparing for our A-levels.

Anyway, I told Philippa about it, and then noticed that she had a strange smirk on her face. I asked what she was thinking about and she said, “Oh – ‘hot spooning’ meant something else when I was at college.”

You can only imagine what that has done to my mental health.  Now my mind is full of all sorts of visions of her in close clutches with undeserving 17-year-olds.

So do I ask her for clarification?

Or do I shut the Hell up and get over myself?

Sorry to burden you with my internal struggles in these times of great international unsettlement, but I need to get it out or it’ll start to affect our home life.

RC 22-3-20

Oh boy

I think this has been the longest, strangest, most stressful week of my life, but I imagine that has been true for most of you, so I’m not going to whinge on about my own particular corner of the globe when you’ve all got your own anxieties and paradigm shifts to deal with.  (That may have been my longest opening line ever on this blogsite…)

It’s amazed me how QUICKLY things have changed. It’s also amazed me how I seem to have coped quite well. Maybe all I ever needed to help me see how capable I am was a massive international health emergency that impacted every single section of society!

I’m tired, but not as tired as the poor stackers in the supermarket. I’m scared, but not as scared as someone with asthma or diabetes. I’m overwhelmed, but not as overwhelmed as all the Intensive Care nurses, now preparing themselves for the onslaught caused by this shitty illness. We all have to adapt and advance, and it will be a whole lot easier if we do it together, not against each other.

That’ll do for now. Having said a few days ago that I wouldn’t blog about coronavirus again, I feel I have a large portion of egg on my chubby, middle-aged face. I was too flippant, too unconcerned and too disinterested. I think I’m probably not alone in that. None of us knew how this would impact us, or how fast. Now it’s here, and it’s dominating everything, so what choice do I have but to mention it?

RC 21-3-20

Hello from the edge of insanity!

My, how quickly things can change!

I’m not going to go on about the state of play at my place of work. Like anyone in the supermarket trade, we’ve had a ridiculously trying week. I’ve spent more time helping deal with footfall in the store than I have spent running things at the garages! It’s been all hands to the pumps (or all hands AWAY from the pumps, in my case). But I won’t go on about that, as you’ll have been seeing it on the news, reading about it online, or experiencing it first-hand for yourselves. The bottom line? People are arseholes. Selfish, self-serving, expert-advice-ignoring arseholes. The food supply chain is running and will continue to run even if we’re in national lockdown. The only thing causing problems is over-buying. This happens every time bad weather is forecast, it happened during the fuel protests, it happened during the Beast from the East, and they tell me it happened back at the time of the Gulf War (both of them, in fact).  People go mad, and selfish, and they don’t need to. We’ll bounce back. The shelves will restock, if you leave us alone long enough to do them. Extra staff will be taken on, and we’ll catch up and meet demands, IF the demand is a sensible one.

And if that fails, I say we bring back rationing!!!

One final thing on this – it makes me laugh that every time I venture over to the store, there are no boxes of chocolatey cereal bars, but plenty of bags of salad. Good to know that these panic-buyers are panic-buying the right stuff to keep their families healthy!!

RC 18-3-20

Today was a good day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, one and all.

I imagine it has been one of the weirdest in recent history, but I imagine our Irish friends threw themselves into it with their usual, customary, legendary vigour.

I had an ‘open office’ day today, so any of my employees could pop in and see me for a confidential chat, to air any fears they may have and to ask any questions. I couldn’t answer them all because, let’s be honest, no-one really knows how things will unfold, but I think they appreciated the gesture, and I felt better for trying to help other people with their fears, rather than concentrating on my own.

Had some truly lovely chats with customers too. It’s a weird, weird time for everyone, but there are some great attitudes out there. People are planning for a lockdown, but planning positively, rather than in a panicked way, which is good. One van driver nearly reduced me to tears when he said, “I see my children for about 8 hours a week. If we have to stay in for 14 days we can be a real family again.”

Maybe this will all be good for all of us.

And I’ve bloody well blogged about it again. Sorry.

Now for something completely different

It’s hard to talk about anything other than the obvious, because that is all anyone is talking about, but I’ll do my best.

Mathew is continuing to barrel on through his childhood, unaffected by any of the ‘scary stuff’ that is going on around the world. I might follow his lead. Maybe ‘Ignorance Is Bliss’ is the best policy. If we all ignore everything that is happening everywhere else, and just make sure we’re keeping those close to us well, then there’s less to fret about and we might make it through the next few months with our sanity intact. Personally speaking, if I keep seeing all the reports from around the world I’m going to concentrate on the negatives and collapse into a pit of doom and despair. Global community is lovely, but I can’t take on the pain of 7 billion people around the world and worry about the health of every one of them. Every headline is horrible, every photo from a locked-down city looks apocalyptic, every forecast makes you feel fecked.

Someone, somewhere, please set up a website that is full of positive outlooks and interviews that give us hope! Don’t go for the clicks or give voices to sensationalising ‘experts’ who want to make a name for themselves, give us graphs that look good, and chats with people who have already recovered from this thing. There are LOADS of them out there. Tens and tens of thousands of them. Let’s hear from them so we can all stop seeing it as a guaranteed death sentence.

I fell into the trap on the first day. I hate myself….

RC 16-3-20

Optimism returning

I probably will mention ‘The Virus’ today, but then I’m going to try very hard not to bring it up again, for at least the rest of the month.  EVERY bloody website, Twitter feed, facebook account and broadcast media output is full of it, and I want to be a little oasis of calm and fun in the midst of all this panic and uncertainty.

So – just to cleanse my palette of the whole thing before I put this blog into a Covid-free state – Yes, it worries me that I have a young child who may have an underlying condition we don’t know about. Yes, it worries me that we have elderly friends in Ted and Beryl who are firmly in the ‘at risk’ group. Yes, it worries me at times that this is the closest we’ve ever got to my old fear of complete social collapse, and it wouldn’t take much to push us over the edge and into anarchy.

However – that is an irrational overreaction. The truth is, I don’t know anyone yet who has been affected, and that may well stay the same. If we all keep calm and follow the advice of the experts, this will be kept under control and we’ll be through to the other side in no time. Even if we did nothing and it wasn’t kept under control, my understanding is that most of us wouldn’t even get coronavirus, and of those of us that did, most of us would make a complete recovery, so we don’t all need to act as if we’re living through ‘The Walking Dead’.

I’ve seen some shitty people doing some shitty things this week, but I’ve also started seeing the good side of humanity. People are being very courteous and kind to each other. There seems to be a genuine sense that, as we’re all in the same situation and feeling the same way, it’s best to help each other through it rather than take it out on each other. People are no longer elbowing each other out of the way to grab powdered milk off shelves, they’re queueing nicely and taking sensible amounts of stock.

There’s still a part of me – that horrible depressive part I call The Dark Bastard – that is trying to push me down the stairs of sanity and into the cellar of panic, where I can get lost in the expectation of a country in utter chaos, but that hasn’t happened in China, and it hasn’t happened in Italy, which are the test countries for this virus, so why should it happen here?

It’s the ‘newness’ of it all that trips us up; the unknown factors that drive our anxieties, and the pathetic ways it’s being reported on that lead us to dread the future. My feeling is that every journalist in Britain should be rounded up and coughed on. BREXIT is done, Harry & Meghan have drifted away, and they daren’t go after celebrities after the sad Caroline Flack incident recently, so they’re throwing everything at The Virus as a way of getting sales and viewers, and not caring if they’re filling their output with helpful fact or hurtful hearsay.

Bastards, they are.

Anyway – now I’ve got all that out of my system, I can move on from it (I hope) and make the rest of March light-hearted!

My honest belief is that, in the long run, this can only have a positive effect on our spirit of community. Yes, it will be a difficult few months, but our crazy way of life has been unsustainable for a while and maybe this is the moment we all change direction and remember what’s important, and live our lives accordingly. I certainly hope so. I spent most of this week buying into the doom scenario and thinking ‘WHAT’S THE POINT IN ANYTHING NOW??’ but I can honestly say that, today, as I sit here typing, I am hopeful about what the future holds in store.

Now wash your hands……

RC 15-3-20

My (flawed) Covid-19 Limerick

There once was a virus from China

Which everyone hoped would be minor

Now it’s starting to spread

So they say We’re All Dead

But if you believe that you’re a twat.

RC 12-3-20

You ignorant turd

My urges to wipe certain humans off the face of the planet grow stronger with each passing day. This coronavirus fear has got beyond ridiculous. We’ve had a fight in the supermarket over a tin of tomatoes, we’ve had toilet rolls stolen from a pallet while being unloaded at 4am, and we have people panic-buying petrol. This morning, an elderly gentleman brought in his Citroen Picasso for the FIFTH day running. Topping it up cost him just over three quid. I asked him why he was popping in every day and he said, “The country could be at a standstill within two weeks. I need to make sure I’ve got fuel before it stops being delivered.”  I said, “With respect, though. If the country is in lockdown and we’re all quarantined, you won’t be allowed to go anywhere, so why would you need the petrol?” His reasoned response was to throw his cash across the counter and tell me he’d be buying elsewhere from now on.

In another comical encounter, I asked someone else why they were wearing a B&Q DUST MASK while filling their Saab. “It was on the news this morning. 80% of British people will get it. I want to be one of the 20%.”

Ignoring the obvious point that wearing a DIY mask was about as much protection as a soggy sock, I asked him where this 80% number had come from.

“Government spokesman. Official numbers.”

I said “Not being argumentative, but this virus was running unchecked and unidentified in China for months, and only 100,000 people have had it there. That’s 100,000 people out of a population of 1 billion, which works out at 0.01%. We were aware of it before it even got here, and it’s containable. So, with respect, where the Hell has the 80% come from?”

He blinked and said, “Why would the government lie to us?”

And that was the point that I officially gave up on humanity.

RC 11-3-20

RORY'S ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

I should probably state straight away that there won’t be anything ‘special’ about this blog posting, but I wanted to get your attention and it looked good in the title. (You see – I’m learning something from having to sort out newspapers every day.)

Today was the day, back in 2008, that I first set forth on the Stormy Sea of Blogdom.

Wow.

Since that time, I have moved house (several times), changed employment (ditto) and become a husband and father. Since that time, we have had 3 Olympic Games (with a fourth arriving soon, if coronavirus allows it), 4 different UK Prime Ministers, several new additions to the Royal Family and 4 new James Bond movies (1 still-as-yet unreleased; thank you, coronavirus)

I have, I suspect, bored you, frustrated you, confused you, intrigued you and dismayed you in equal measures. I may even, on occasions, have made you smile. But most of the time, I’ve just used this as an outlet for my innermost demons and despairs.  

I make no apologies. All I can say is – you can expect more of the same. (Sorry!).

RC 10-3-20

Ready to change the world?

In case you think you might want to consider me as your candidate for the US Presidential elections later this year, I present a Brief Manifesto:

THINGS I WANT TO SEE ERADICATED

Sensationalism

Newspapers (all of them. They’re an environment catastrophe and full of shit)

Open access to the internet for anyone under 14

Celebrities who have no discernible value beyond being ‘a celebrity’

Winter

THINGS I WANT TO SEE MORE OF

Free public swimming pools in every town

Trees

Cookery lessons for all High School students

Books by Robert Harris

Sunshine

RC 9-3-20

Exactly MMD

Somehow, and somewhy, I have reached 2500 postings on this blogsite.

In the millennia to come, people can look back on the scope of human creativity and see 37 plays by Shakespeare, nearly 500 songs by Bob Dylan, and 90 paintings attributed to Vincent Van Gogh. Those guys are undoubtedly at the top of their fields, but their achievements pale in comparison to mine. In the 13 calendar years of ‘The Chesworth Chronicles’ you have seen my life unfold, in real time, and so I am, and this is, Living Art on a scale never before achieved.

My only disappointment is that number 2500 wasn’t posted on March 10^th, as that’s the anniversary of the day this all started, and that would have been pure poetical perfection. But to do that, I would have had to miss a couple of days before putting this one online, and I’m already up against it so far as my current Challenge is concerned, so I didn’t want to wait.

I am, in case you hadn’t noticed, a f**king headcase.

RC 8-3-20

My Inner Truth

My life can be summed up thus:

‘When I need a black pen, I can only find a blue one.

When I need a blue pen, I can only find a black one.

When I need a pencil, I can never find one that is sharpened.’

There.

RC 6-3-20

Every Bit As Good As They Said

We had a belated ‘Proposal Anniversary’ celebration evening last night. Philippa agreed to come and see ‘Parasite’ with me “to see what all the fuss was about”. (I’m hoping you don’t need me to explain that ‘Parasite’ is the South Korean film that is being hailed as a masterpiece.)

I won’t go on for long with one of my cack-handed movie reviews, but I would like to say two things:

Never again let me go and see a film just after it’s won ‘Best Picture’ because the cinema was full of couples in their 40s and 50s trying to look cultured by going to see an Oscar winner.

And don’t let anyone tell you ‘Parasite’ only won awards out of some kind of positive discrimination conspiracy. It is a joy from start to finish.

RC 6-3-20

Head of Meandering Thoughts

I think I set this idea up back on 24^th Feb, or something, but my Challenge for March is to use blog titles that make up an appropriate acronym. Having decided on that as an aim, I now have to finalise the phrase that I wish to convey.

My initial thought was to go for ‘The Merry Month Of March’, which would require 20 blogs in total. (The first one starting with a ‘T’, the next with an ‘H’ and so on and so forth) but then I thought ‘well – I did 22 blogs in Feb, which is shorter than March, so maybe I should aim bigger’, so I considered ‘March Is My Favourite Month’ – which would require 24 postings. But THEN I went the first few days of the month without any postings at all, prompting me to think that 24 blogs in the remaining 27 days might be a bit of a stretch. So my next idea was ‘My Favourite Month.’ But that’s only 17 letters, requiring only 17 separate scribblings, and I thought that might tempt me to be lazy and not bother writing as often as I normally do, so after an hour or so of this, I have decided to stick with the original plan, and the original target, and the original phrase, because I can, after all, if I’m feeling overly creative, add another word on the end like “Yay!” (giving me the option of extending my 20 postings to 23. Or more, if I choose a longer word than “Yay!” (such as “Hooray”))

Therefore, my latest Blog Challenge is officially this: At the end of March, if you take the first letter of the titles of each of my blogs posted during the month, it will spell out ‘The Merry Month of March’.

So - what was all that internal wrangling in the end?

A complete waste of time.

Which is probably what you consider reading this particular blog posting to have been.

RC 5-3-20

1805 GMT

Twats

I don’t like to swear in the title of a blog, but the fact is we have people panic-buying in case of a coronavirus shut-in, and I’m having to resist the urge to slap them all to death.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m loving the fact that we are their purchasing venue of choice, and my sales figures will once again be boosted considerably by the unending stupidity and unnecessary overreactions of Joe Public, but my need to see human beings acting like responsible, sensible, intelligent animals is over-riding my capitalistic training. Any time someone says “Do you have tinned fruit? Like – a lot of it” I want to drag them into my office and hit them over the head with a copy of Michael Crichton’s “The Fear Index” (if you’ve read it, you’ll understand why).

The worrying thing is that this is just the start of it. It’s not the ‘outbreak’ that’s the issue, it’s the way it’s being overhyped and abused; the way a collective cloud of uninformed fear is making millions easy to manipulate. Everyone’s diving into blind panic without actually analysing the facts, and that’s great for companies like us who are making money out of it, and for the powerful few who like to control the population, so this pattern will be continuing long after this current scare has passed.

My suspicion is that, in about a year, you’ll be having a chat with a family member or close friend and suddenly go “Oh, yeah, coronavirus. What were we all worried about, really?” but then you won’t learn any lessons. The media, reporting without responsibility and obsessed with a daily click count on their website stories, will have moved on to some other ‘pandemic’, ‘crisis’ or ‘meltdown’ and will be misquoting experts so they get a good headline, and 98% of your everyday Britons will be buying into it and running around headlessly like the nuclear fallout alarm has been triggered.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, and Covid-19 may well be the Armageddon Bug that wipes all humanity from the Earth, but that’s fine, because if I am wrong, there’ll be no-one left alive to point out my error.

RC 5-3-20