Kale and Hearty

This may be something you’ve never read before in the first line of someone’s blog, but I have really got into my brassicas. (I could have put ‘cruciferous vegetables’ but I didn’t think it sounded as funny)

Kale, in particular, is something I can’t get enough of at the moment. I know it can be chewy and it has a strange texture, but I love it. The strong taste, I’m sure, puts a few people off, but that’s exactly what keeps pulling me back. I’ve tried it all sorts of ways this week, each time without disappointment, but the tastiest so far is this: Boil a load up in a big saucepan, drain it, then add some butter, soy sauce and ginger to the pan and stir it all around for a few minutes more over a low heat. Gorgeous, sublime and delicious. I had it last night with a couple of pork chops and a nice glass of red wine.

For lunch today, I made some soup that contained copious amounts of kale, spinach and asparagus – another favourite of mine that is thankfully back in season now. Ate it outside, where a cooling breeze is cutting through the garden and keeping the temperature very pleasant. I made enough for a few days but ended up downing the lot.

Philippa is refusing to let me back in the house.

RC 31-5-20

End of Month Fri-ku, kinda...

It’s a day late to be Friku, and it’s a day early to be ‘end of the month’, but what the Hell….

Football back in June

Shopping back two weeks later

Lockdown back July?

People are smiling

It’s been a long, hard two months

But things now look up

Six in the garden

But keep two metres apart

Good luck with your dogs!

RC 30-5-20

Optimism. Enthusiasm. Hope.

Less than 48 hours after the PM announced a change to the lockdown rules and we’ve planned a family barbecue already!

I can’t wait.

Both my sisters are available, and willing to travel, next Wednesday, so our garden will be open for a Chesworth Family Reunion Extravaganza! Obviously, I’m making it sound bigger than it will actually be. No hugs, no trips indoors for the loo, no chance for Hannah or Sophie to cuddle their little nephew. But the point is we’ll all be together, in the same place, talking face-to-face (although with those faces 2 metres apart).

I’m so excited I’m tearful.

The simple things are the ones that mean the most, that’s the lesson I think we’ve all learnt since February. I hope it’s a lesson we don’t forget….

RC 30-5-20

Everything Is So Green (a poem)

Everything is so green

Spring skies reign blue

I walk upon a tender lawn

Daisies tickling my feet

Birdsong trilling; my ears tingling

Breathing clearer air

Hedges full of bud, full of future

Buzzing bees bring beauty

The heart swells, fulfilled

Everything is so green

An explosion of life abounds

Crops swelling, reaching, rising

A new day springs anew

Swifts swoop, swallows show

Broods and hatchlings prosper

Senses joyfully assailed

A natural painting of wonder

Everything is so green

Never before encountered

Situations unknown, results unclear

Path to tomorrow unsteady

New friendships uncovered

Outreaching love abundant

Old acrimonies forgotten

Green shoots leading to survival

RC 28-5-20

What day is this?

I watched Springwatch at 3.05am this morning, when a bout of cramp-induced insomnia swept upon my person like a seagull sweeping upon a discarded chip. There was something quite mystical about absorbing myself in a programme about nature as the sun began creeping its light through our living room. Mathew chose to join me at 3.37, greeting the morning with his own version of the dawn chorus – a wailing cry for attention that turned out to be wind, rather than hunger.

So – Springwatch 2020, Episode 1. Without trying to pull it apart like an orca pulls apart a seal, I have to say IT WORKED. It was strange, it was different, it was quiet, it was minimalist, but it worked! Thank goodness. I can look forward to the next 3 weeks of programmes without worrying that it’ll descend into something that looks like a poorly managed Zoom meeting.

I’m glad they’re going to be talking about beavers a lot, and I hope they don’t keep labouring the point about how good nature is for your mental health, and how good the lockdown is for wildlife. I think we all need a break from the constant Covid coverage, and showing us the wonder of the world outside without referring it back to the current situation might appeal to people more than ramming a message down our throats, the way the BBC seem obsessed with doing with all their programming these days.

But what do I know? I’m a messed-up, middle-aged manager who has already been awake for 8 hours, and it’s not even lunchtime….

RC 27-5-20

Better for sleeping

My body feels better today, thank you for asking. My mood has lifted, too. Sorry about unloading my unhappinesses on you in cyberspace last night. Bit naughty of me, but better than going home mardy and filling my house and my marriage with my filthy mental state.

I’m now deciding whether I should take the old bicyclette out again this evening. My last two rides have seen me get lost, and then fall off. Beryl (of Ted and Beryl fame) would tell me that these things always happen in threes and that if I plan a trip out tonight I’m guaranteeing myself more woe. I don’t hold with such superstitious truck and nonsense, but maybe having a break for a couple of weeks might be a good idea. Why tempt fate? Plus – the new series of Springwatch launches tonight and I’d really like to give it a chance to impress me.

Flip side arguments? – well I need the exercise. Generally speaking, cycling is good for my physical AND mental health (when I’m not frustrated by own sense of direction, or nursing grazes and bruises after a tumble). During the dark Winter nights, I’ll be moaning about the fact that I CAN’T go out in the evenings, so I really should take advantage of it while I can. It’s also important, I think, to get back on the bike quite soon after you’ve been thrown off, otherwise it can become a sticking point anxiety-wise and you might NEVER do it again (or maybe that’s horses…). Oh, and the most persuasive thing – cycling means I’ll use up lots of energy, which will use up my fuel stores, which gives me an excuse to eat more when I get back home.

That’s sorted, then. I’ll go for a ride after tea. Springwatch will be on iPlayer, after all.

RC 26-5-20

Not best luck with bicycles

I fell off my bike yesterday. God, I feel like I’m 11 years old after saying that. I got so fed up with waiting for it to stop being windy that I stubbornly decided to go out anyway. The first couple of miles were okay – mainly because the roads all had high hedges, so I was sheltered from the blustery gusts. But then I went past a couple of open fields and it was like being in a sodding wind tunnel. The head-on blasts were knackering me, so I decided to change direction and swung round in a tight turn in the road. My front wheel caught the soft, gravelly verge and skidded, and the bike threw me off sideways. I landed heavily on my arm and grazed my shoulder on the road, so today I am feeling stiff and sore and generally quite sorry for myself. Philippa laughed and called me a clumsy twat, when I came in seeking some kind of marital sympathy.

I hate it when things like that happen. I mean – what did anyone gain by me tumbling off my Velociped? How is this part of Almighty’s God Grand Plan? If I actually believed in Him I’d be pretty pissed off. I mean – I am pretty pissed off anyway, but not at some omnipotent being, just in general. Every time I lift something up my shoulder hurts and my knee is sore where I grazed it, because my work trousers have a thick seam down the side and it’s rubbing on the gravel rash on the side of my knee. Yeah, that’s another thing – I’m at work on a Bank Holiday, on the hottest day of the year, on the first day in a week where it’s sunny and warm without being windy so I could have been sitting in the garden with a book and a glass of wine. Instead, I get to bake to death in a filling station, watching various lockdown-shunning bastards coming-and-going armed with barbecue food, alcohol, and snacks.

Anyway – Happy Bank Holiday Monday, everyone!

RC 25-5-20

Very much a first-world problem...

It’s too hot to have the windows closed, but it’s too windy to have them open.

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO???

RC 22-5-20

2000 BST

I f**king hate nettles

Seriously, though, what is the sodding point of nettles? I don’t believe in God, but if I did, I would accuse him of inventing nettles just to piss off Man and keep us in our place. No matter how many plants I pull out of the ground in our garden, they seem to grow back and spread. They seem to spring up overnight and they seem to sit deliberately in the places where we want to walk or cycle. If you carefully move one aside to get past it, another one will flop over from nearby and wipe itself across your leg or forearm. You try and be nice and not napalm them and the bastards constantly torment you. I HATE THEM.

RC 22-5-20

New Overnight Tradition?

My cramp came roaring back at 2am this morning. Jesus, it was painful. I thought someone must have snuck into the house and taken a baseball bat to the side of my shin. Either that or my calf muscle had decided to start a fight with my fibula.

I suppose I can put it down to the cycling. Having been sat at a desk for the best part of two weeks, with barely a walk between work hours, I stupidly got lost last night and ended up biking for about two and a half hours. I guess that shit catches up with you.

I’m starting to think this nocturnal cramp might be a recurring thing that I just have to live with and deal with. I’ve had years of being plagued with insomnia, now I have something else to make me dread the midnight hours. Poor me, eh? Occasionally feeling uncomfortable in my lovely big bed with the comfy mattress and the gorgeous wife beside me and the perfect son laying in his nearby bed. Poor me…

RC 21-5-20

Random Ride

Been out on my bike this evening. God it was lovely. A bit weird, when you meet people walking the other way and they climb up onto the hedge as you cycle past, even though you’re a whole roads-width apart. That’s the way things are at the moment, I guess.

It was great to see everything in full growth. Remember two years ago when it was still freezing cold in May and none of the trees or bushes had filled out? Not this year. With all that heat in April, and the hot weather this week, we’re almost into early Summer judging by what’s already in bloom.

Love it.

Then I got lost on the way home. What an idiot. I would like to blame it on the fact that I haven’t been out-and-about very much in the last three months, but really I just switched off my brain and biked on autopilot for about 20 minutes, missing several shortcuts back to my house in the meantime.  So now I am exhausted, overheated, dehydrated and in Philippa’s bad books because I was supposed to be back to bath Mathew. I shall make it up to her by falling asleep on the sofa soon so she doesn’t have to talk to me.

RC 20-5-20

I need a BBQ

It’s amazing how quickly these Mondays come around.

I had a disturbed nights sleep after suffering with cramp in my left calf muscle. Absolute bastard. I don’t know if I was sleeping in a funny position or hadn’t drunk enough during the day or what, but I woke up about 3.15am thinking someone had snapped my lower leg. How is muscle cramp so sodding painful?

I got up, hobbled about, stretched it, fell back into bed, started to breathe properly again, at which point it came back for a second attack. Absolute bastard.

Anyway, one struggles on through the constant ravages of age.

In work life, the frequency of online meetings with various levels of management is increasing week on week. I suppose it’s hard for them all to justify their salaries when they’re not driving around the country constantly pretending to improve things at different sites, so calling people together via Zoom or Teams gives them something to put in their diary.

Everything has felt like a struggle today, and I have to confess that this blog posting is included in that. Every word I type seems to have taken four hours to work its way from my brain down through my body to my fingertips. Do I need more caffeine? Or an early night? Not sure, but before I head for home I’m picking up a bag of charcoal and a box of firelighters and I thoroughly intend to barbecue the shit out of whatever meat products we have sitting in the fridge.

Nothing makes a man feel better than burning food outside.

RC 18-5-20

The Colour of Hope

Now that the DIY shops are open again, Philippa is desperate to decorate. She’s downloaded a virtual paint chart and keeps waving it under my nose. It’s weird. None of the names even sound like colours. I guess they used all the obvious names already and now they’re having to find more and more elaborate ways to describe their shades and hues. I’m so confused. In the good old days, it was obvious what they meant by ‘Canary Yellow’ but when Philippa asks me ‘does Mountain Mist sound good for the bathroom?’ I don’t know what kind of colour I’m considering. Mountains can be covered in snow, or full of trees, and exist in both daytime and night, so Mountain Mist could be green, grey, white, black or blue.

My suspicion is that they employ people to come up with random two-word names that sound roughly painty and then apply them to whatever colour mix fits closest.

Sounds like a job I could do – so I’ve made up a few of my own:

RORY’S LIST OF PAINT NAMES:

PROSTATE DISCHARGE

MELANCHOLY MELON

SCARECROW DREAMS

IMITATION AUBERGINE

DARK ICE

KILIMANJARO TANGO

HALF NELSON

JUXTAPOSITION OVERSIGHT

HALLOWE’EN ROOFTILE

TESTICLE ROPEBURN

SPRINGTIME SATURATION

FLAT-TOP GUINEA-PIG

HANGOVER AFTERTHOUGHT

READY ROLLER

UNKNOWN BATTERY

QUINOA HATSTAND

YO YO

RC 16-5-20

Entertainment Essay, no. 4

I wonder sometimes how something so ever-present can have become so meaningless in my life. We have televisions in the house, but to me they are no more than monitors that can be hooked up to other machines so I can watch films, or play games, on a bigger screen. I can’t remember the last time I even bothered to look at TV listings, much less actually tune in to watch a broadcast. I suppose it could be argued that I’m still absorbing the output. I occasionally find a documentary on BBC iPlayer worth a look, and I snaffle up the odd series or two from Netflix or Amazon Studios, but television in the traditional sense has been cast into my past like pocket money and regular exercise.

I’m sure I’m not alone.

The fact is that so much of what gets churned out as ‘programmes’ is just terrible. So bad that it makes me invent new words and phrases. Most TV is just bumwrenching arsetrench of the highest order. It used to be educational, informative and fun. It used to be that programme makers were more intelligent and more moral than everyday folk and they would try to show them things that would improve them. Now they seem to be voyeuristic facebook-surfers who aim their programming nine levels lower than the lowest possible person that might be watching. They take the worst of society and highlight it, making it something to aspire to. It’s an ongoing spiral into the basement of behaviour and I have no interest in watching it continue.

So what is there to be optimistic about? SpringWatch will be on again soon, but in recent years it’s gone from being a flagship, topnotch example of exemplary broadcasting by exceptional professionals, to a poor imitation of an amateur nature-loving YouTuber. I’ll give it a go, but my hopes aren’t high. Most dramas are rehashes of ‘Morse’ from the 80s or cheaper versions of American crime shows. Most comedies contain an average of one laugh per series. Most presenters look like they’ve learnt their craft by watching 1970s washing powder adverts. I really do think it’s a dying medium.

Give me a book, a puzzle, a game or a quiz, and leave that space on the wall free for a nice family portrait, not a flatscreen Box of Bollocks.

RC 15-5-20

Entertainment Essay, no. 3

PORTAL 2 – An Appreciation

I’m not a huge one for gaming. I say that, knowing that it’s a statement that can be disputed easily, depending on your perspective. I’m not one of those guys (and they are mostly guys) who will sit up for three consecutive nights, shooting their way through a new release of a game series they’ve been enjoying for a decade, but I can quite easily lose five or six hours to a session of Madden NFL. I think the difference with me is that I like the games to be challenging, mentally. I’m not interested in just accruing weapons and slowly slaughtering the entire population of a fictional town, or laying waste to a post-apocalyptic Zombie-strewn wasteland, and that seems to be the premise for 95% of games released in the 21^st Century. I’d rather have to think, than just be a thug.

Which brings me to ‘Portal 2’.

Released by Valve in 2011, I must confess that I didn’t know anything about it until I found it in a second-hand shop in Norwich two years ago! If you’re not familiar, it’s basically a problem-solving game where you make your way through various rooms, each one trickier than the rest, in which a homicidal computer operating system has designed obstacles that you have to get around, over or through. I said ‘basically’ and that is putting it VERY basically. With my background in scientific learning, the physics of it are superb. You are armed with a gun that fires ‘portals’ onto certain surfaces. These portals allow you to transport instantly from one part of the room to another. By using these, you are able to navigate your way around seemingly impossible rooms.

I feel like stopping now, because I’m just not doing it justice.

So – to change tack slightly – let me just endorse it without explaining it.

There is so much I love about it that I don’t know where to start. The backstory is brilliant, the scientific knowledge involved in the processes you use is faultless (although sometimes barely more than hypothetical) and the characters, although there are not many of them, are incredibly deeply realised and enjoyable. I don’t believe there has been any game before or since that has nailed their casting choices so completely. Stephen Merchant as a wise-cracking piece of software that helps, hinders and harasses you in equal measure? J.K. Simmons as Cave Johnson, the ‘voice from the past’ whose pre-recorded messages explaining the story are genuinely hilarious? Yes please, and yes thank you.

Have you ever read a book that was so good you felt gutted when you reached the last line? Have you ever watched a film that meant so much to you that you wished you could see it – for the first time – all over again? That was how I felt, and still feel, about this game. I can go back and play it again, and I may not remember all the sequences of movements needed to complete each task so it will still be a challenge, but it won’t be the same as experiencing it as a fresh new set of problems. I can play through it and enjoy the wonderful script, but the lines won’t surprise and delight me in quite the same way as they first did. It is nearly ten years old, and it is still as good as anything ever produced, for any console.

If my personal genie is reading this and preparing to appear before me, let me save you the trouble of climbing from your lamp. I have one wish and one wish only. PORTAL 3 TO BE MADE AND RELEASED SOON, PLEASE.

On an unrelated, but not completely unrelated topic - it’s ridiculous that the computer systems they use in Jurassic Park look so dated, and yet the computer graphics on the screen still hold up as good.

RC 14-5-20

Entertainment Essay, no. 2

Yesterday I asked a question, and then proceeded to not answer it. I pontificated on the joys of watching Laurel & Hardy, without explaining why I think it’s still funny, 80 years after it was made. But maybe I proved the point I had made in my opening paragraph – finding things funny is such an individual experience that it’s not easy to explain to someone else? Yes- that sounds like an excuse I can get away with!

I may try and revisit that later in the week and answer my own question and tell you what I DO find so funny about them.

The point of this rambling opening paragraph is this: I’m not going to frame today’s writings in the style of a question. I’m going to learn from yesterday’s error and just title today’s essay in the form of a statement of fact:

WHY I FIND MUSIC SO POWERFUL (using 5 songs as an example)

Again – I’m not sure this can be quantified, but I’ll give it a go. To me, there is something that a beautiful melody can stir inside me that mere words on paper, or a performance on a screen, can’t generate. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve read books that have reduced me to tears, and I’ve cried away at a movie or two, but I haven’t been MOVED by those in the same way as I have by music. Sometimes it can be provoked by a personal memory. “Birds” by Kate Nash, for example. It isn’t a masterpiece, but reminds me of my early days with Philippa, as she played it to me to explain how she felt.

Other times it’s the combinations of meaningful words, and their perfect placement within the tune, that turns on the waterworks. Bob Dylan’s ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ can still make me blub after hundreds of listens. Knowing what is coming doesn’t diminish the power, if anything it heightens it.

And in other instances, it is just the sheer beauty of the musical composition that renders me a gibbering wreck. John Barry’s soundtrack to ‘Dances With Wolves’ is full of tunes that stir my heart and pull it apart at the same time. Why? I don’t know. There is just a magic in a certain combination of notes that my emotions find impossible to resist.

It’s not just tears, either. There are the certain songs that provoke anger, excitement, optimism, laughter. I can be in any manner of dark mood, but if I put on Morecambe and Wise singing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ I cannot help but feel uplifted. I can feel flattened to a sofa and lifeless but give me the full 2m 33s of ‘Twist and Shout’ by The Beatles and I’ll be on my feet happily dancing. I think it’s something primal, unknowable. Those with the ability to craft music that changes us are alchemists. Songsmithery is a gift akin to miracle making.

I think what I’m trying to say is that I don’t care what it is that makes me react in this way, I’m just incredibly glad that it happens.

RC 13-5-20

Entertainment Essay, no. 1

This may be cheating, but I thought I’d use this week’s challenge as a way of sharing some of my favourite films, books and television shows. Just about everyone I’ve ever met has done a recent facebook list of ’10 Albums That Changed Me’ or ‘My 7 Best Books EVER’. I hate all that shit, but I’ve always been a keen reader and a real cinephile, so why not see if I can persuade you to cast an eye on some of the things that have brought me real pleasure, or insight, or both, over the course of my life?

Today’s topic:

“WHY DO I LOVE LAUREL & HARDY FILMS 80 YEARS AFTER THEY WERE MADE?”

To me, comedy is not something that can be explained. Trying to work out what will make people laugh is as futile as trying to guess their favourite shape. Some things tickle us, others don’t. Some of us love slapstick, others go for wordplay. All I can say is – whatever style of comedy you love, whatever sitcom or sketch show you have roared at over the past few decades, it almost certainly has its roots back in the 1920s and 30s. Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, The Marx Brothers – these are the people who found the funny in film. I love all those guys and would probably still rather sit through their back catalogues again than see most of what passes as ‘comedy’ in cinema nowadays, but to me Laurel & Hardy were the best. Some of their shorts are almost perfect. I’m not kidding or exaggerating there – I think some of their work is so good that you literally wouldn’t change one frame of it, even if you could. Whatever modern comedians you find hilarious, I would lay a huge bet that they watched Stan & Ollie and were influenced by them. Whatever it is that makes you laugh – they probably did it first and did it best.

But don’t take my word for it. I’m here to share my thoughts, not to convince you of something. I bought the entire Laurel & Hardy collection of shorts and features on DVD for just twenty quid. Most of them are free on YouTube. Watch them. Just watch them. Give up 20 minutes of your time today to view ‘The Music Box’ or ‘Tit for Tat’ or ‘County Hospital’. If you still prefer Adam Sandler, Catherine Tate or Ricky Gervais, so be it. Go back to them and have fun. If you find something you like though, I urge you to look back on Stan and Ollie’s whole output. You may open yourself up to a whole new world of entertainment. You will certainly, I suspect, laugh, and laugh lots. And you will be laughing at something that was created when your grandparents hadn’t even started school.

Think about that, while you’re smiling, and wonder if today’s product will be so accessible and relevant two generations from now?

I’ll leave it there.

RC 12-5-20

A PLEDGE!

I shall post a blog every day this week, and none of them shall contain ANYTHING to do with coronavirus, lockdowns, outbreaks or people’s behaviour. It’ll be a challenge, but I’m determined!

RC 11-5-20

Nature is Nourishing

Please be assured we stuck to the rules while doing this – but we had a nice little picnic yesterday!

God it was lovely.

There’s a big path not far from ours, and the kindly farmer has expanded it so it’s more than two metres wide! So now dog-walkers and ramblers can use it without having to climb into the hedge to keep two metres apart when they pass each other. Isn’t that awesome? I’ve never had a high opinion of farmers, but that’s such a great gesture.

Anyway – to the point – to the picnic – if you take said path, it leads you to a little meadow bit that has been left growing wild for about five years now. At this time of year it’s resplendent with Spring flowers, horny birds and assorted insects.  So we marched down there with out blanket and our basket and our son and our suncream and had, as they used to say, a Gay Old Time. There is something about eating a pork pie in a field that is just so refreshingly wonderful. Everything tastes better in the open air. I apologise if you’re reading this and you live in a City. I’m not trying to rub your nose in the fact that I live somewhere where lockdown isn’t like a prison sentence, I’m just trying to point out how incredibly, incredibly, incredibly grateful I am to be living where I am, with who I am. The lesson to be learned from all this, I think, is that family and friends are everything, material value is limited, and we all need to slow it down, stop accumulating and appreciating what we already have.

God, won’t it be nice when I’m talking about something else?

RC 10-5-20

Everybody is an infant

The last two days at work have been crazy. When the Prime Minister announced on Wednesday “We might relax some of the restrictions next week” there were obviously lots of people who heard “Crisis over! Go out and do what you like!”

I’m not going to go on and on about it here because a) I do that too much, b) I don’t want to think about it anymore, and c) I have to remember that not everyone is blessed with a mind that works properly. I can’t assume that these people are deliberately flouting the laws when in fact they may have simply misunderstood them. I have been lucky enough to be blessed with a fair level of intelligence. Yes - I have studied hard and read lots and (to use a phrase that I hate) ‘improved myself’ but I also understand that I was only able to do that because I was born with the necessary tools to begin with. I do believe that Intelligence and the capacity for knowledge expansion are in your DNA. Some of us are simply built differently. If I had been born to a drug-addled single mum, raised in a problematic household and never allowed to attend primary school, then I would imagine that lockdown would be incredibly difficult to get my head around. I have a degree, I work for a big company that has lots of information direct from the government, and I listen to lots of debates and read lots of articles, and I still can’t grasp the complexities and scale of this outbreak. What chance for anyone with only one GCSE?

So I have, somehow, kept my irritation to a minimum and my anger under control, even when customers were trying to barge their way past each other to get into the paying area, which already had six people in it when we’ve limited it to three, as if Covid didn’t exist and the lockdown had never happened.  I took it with good grace when some bearded twat said “You gonna take these spit-screen downs now, then?” and I even managed to smile when we were approached by a family of five adults – FIVE! – who thought it was okay to come shopping together, fan out through the aisles, and ignore our much-lauded one-way system of shopping.

Sorry if this has been a bit of a strange post. Red wine was involved in its creation.

RC 8-5-20

A Short Lesson from Rory

I may have bored you with this before, but when we step out into a post-Corona world (whatever it looks like, and whenever that might be) I think people will remember what their neighbours, colleagues and online friends were like during lockdown. If you were one of those dicks who still had family round when we were all supposed to be in our own homes, it will be remembered. If you’ve been the kind of inconsiderate arsehole who chose to stockpile food you don’t even like, rather than leave in the shelf for someone who might need it, it will be remembered. The way you behave in these times will determine how people react to you for years to come. I hope you might have kept that in mind.

RC 7-5-20

Press to Depress

Let’s be blunt – British journalists are a pack of wankers. I’m sure there are odd exceptions to the rule, but most of them have shown themselves up as complete c***s of the first order.  I’ve actually heard a debate on one of the News channels about how untidy the government representatives making announcements look. Is the obsession with image so important that they think the Covid19 briefings should be done by immaculately turned-out politicians? Personally, I think the British public can see beyond the tiredness and hear the messages the experts are trying to get across, without being distracted by how their fringe looks. And the point is – they ARE experts. The people trying to trip them up and dissect their announcements to death are just pseudointellectual garbage-spewing pond scum.

And the MPs and specialists are being so NICE to them. It amazes me. I’d love to see an honest answer given one day. Like this, for example:

“I have a question. Isn’t it difficult for people to feel confident in your plan because they know there’s no exit strategy?”

“No, I think it’s difficult for the public to have confidence in us because they’re being constantly bombarded by broadcasters with misinformation, and when we do make a clear point it gets pulled apart and pissed on within minutes of its announcement by self-serving, responsibility-swerving people in TV studios. If everyone watched this announcement and ignored everything else, they’d feel more reliably informed and more optimistic.”

I also have an idea for a way to improve the morale of the public, and probably to help the NHS feel more supported at the same time. That hideous waste of a body called Laura who works for the BBC (I can’t even bring myself to acknowledge her full name) should be locked in the Tower of London with her hands stuck over her mouth. I think that would help improve EVERYBODY’s mood.

RC 6-5-20

Rory's Grand Plan for Restarting

We should hear this week what the government plan is for releasing some people from lockdown, and how they hope to get the country up-and-running again.

I have a few ideas of my own:

Ice cream vans are essential – let’s get these out and about as soon as possible.

Driving ability will be a determining factor in how soon you can go back to work. Careful drivers will be the first to be set free.

Anyone who ignored the rules and kept meeting up with people outside their homes should be locked inside for a further six months.

You’re only allowed to stop for petrol if you’ve pre-ordered it online and booked a time slot. (bit self-centred this one, I admit…)

Anyone (especially Chesworths) should be allowed to have gatherings on the beach, as long as they strictly stay 2metres away from each other. This would give those of us in counties with coastlines a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the Summer, without endangering lives.

RC 5-5-20

No mention of Star Wars here, I promise...

Another Monday has arrived. Another week of confusing, frightening, disconcerting, happy, optimistic, heart-warming days ahead. I heard it described this weekend as ‘a coronacoaster of emotions’ and I think that’s spot on.

Everyone is keeping on keeping on, but I have to say I think the novelty has worn off for most people.

Personally- and it feels weird to admit this – I feel MORE anxious now we’re being told that we’re past the first peak, and that restrictions might soon start to be lifted. I think I’ve got used to the current rules, and I’d rather carry on as we are for a bit longer rather than be let out too early and risk having to lock it all down again at a later date. I honestly have faith in the people in charge. I think they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re not going to do anything that would jeopardise the long-term plan for surviving Corona, but there’s still an arrogant, stupid part of me that thinks I know best and I should be allowed to make the big decisions. And my decision would be ‘carry on as we are for another month until we’re ABSOLUTELY sure we’re on the mend’.

But I can say that because my life hasn’t been hugely affected. If anything, my life is easier under the current conditions. I haven’t lost any income. I’m still able to work every day. I get to do what I was doing before, but with less customers about and less hassle from Those Above Me, who have far more important things to concentrate on. So for me, this is a bit like a working holiday. For most of you, I imagine it’s been a disturbing time spent in unusual circumstances, and you can’t wait to get back to some kind of ‘normal’ life. So my apologies to you if you’re finding my thoughts today annoying.

RC 4-5-20

May! (...be I'll soon be dozing)

I’m about to go to bed, and yet I have the complete conviction that I will NOT be getting much sleep. That probably means that my insomnia will return, for no other reason than I have willed it into being by the simple act of expecting it. Just like a nightmare that you have because the last thing you think before you go to sleep is ‘I hope I don’t dream about spiders’ and because you had that thought, your subconscious mind was full of it when you dropped off so that’s what it placed in your nightmares. If that makes sense. Which is probably doesn’t.

Anyway, it’s been a good day up until this point.

RC 2-5-20