Hallowe'en Haiku 2021

Hosting a party….
I used to hate Hallowe’en
What a turnaround!

Working a Sunday
But at least I’m not at home
For trick or treaters

Hallowe’en gives mums
An excuse to eat Snickers
and dress like a witch

The thirty-first day
Of the tenth month of the year
Is called Hallowe’en

That last verse (above)
Was the laziest haiku
I have ever done

Spicy pumpkin soup
A strange, yet gorgeous liquid
We have once a year

The clocks have now changed
It’s November tomorrow
Where has the year gone?

RC 31-10-21

Final preparations, etc.

Almost all systems go for our Halloween party on site on Sunday.
I’m starting to get a bit nervous now. It was all my idea and most of what is happening has been organised by me, so if no-one turns up, or it doesn’t go well, it’ll all be on me. I was fine about it until today but now its so close I’m starting to have doubts. It’s been a good year for my first year ever in tourism, it would be such a shame if the last big weekend of the whole holiday season is a damp squib and that’s the thing that my employer and colleagues might remember all Winter.
I’m sure it’ll be okay.
No, really, I am.

RC 29-10-21

What the Hell? (a poem)

I genuinely know not what was in my head at 4am this morning when I wrote this….

Clubs, diamonds, heart and spades
How would you know if I have AIDS?
Temperamental temperature checks
Needing comfort, scared of sex
Back is itchy, eating figs
Going grey for guinea pigs
Waltzing wildly while in bed
Flightly figments in my head

Swimming pools awash with honey
Racist thugs awash with money
Grandad likes his boiled egg runny
Liverpudlians are funny
Autumn skies are bright and sunny
Rabid multicoloured bunny
Joke one-liners, often punny
Margot Robbie on the dunny

Inner monologue’s a bind
Bacon with a crispy rind
Death certificate unsigned
Toilet paper should be lined
Is Nirvana there to find?
Wait and watch and wend and wind
In the maelstrom of the mind
Subconscious swill can be unkind

RC 27-10-21

Back in the office, back in the doghouse

I was allowed to return to work today, although a few staff members looked at me as if I should permanently have a mask stuck to my face. I don’t understand how people are still confused about the virus and how it spreads after nearly TWO YEARS of cases and advice. If someone doesn’t have it, they can’t pass it on to you. Isn’t that true of all illnesses??? By the logic of some of these worryworts, I should probably wear a condom all the time just IN CASE I have AIDS without knowing it and just IN CASE it has suddenly developed the ability to leap from one unsuspecting body into another.
Anyway, I must let all this weird rage subside or I won’t get anything done.

There’s quite a nice atmosphere on the sites at the moment. It’s Autumnal, without being too cold. It’s half term, so there’s lots of excited children around enjoying a family holiday. For many of them, this is their first time away since the pandemic started, and they’re just delighted that there isn’t another holiday-cancelling lockdown to deal with. If you’re eight years old, and you’ve been stuck at home due to the Covid restrictions, that’s A QUARTER of your life that has been dominated by this bloody thing. So I’m not surprised that young Jennifer from Wolverhampton is charging around the play area like an unleashed dynamo. It’s her first time away since October 2019 and all that pent-up energy is exploding out of her like a fireworks night rocket exploding from a milk bottle (in years gone by when people still did that). She’s determined to enjoy her week, and I’m determined to help her.
This is so much more satisfying than petrol station management, even when my colleagues look at me like I’m Plague Patient Zero.

RC 26-10-21

Over-reacting over-reactors

I’m working from home today, for reasons I do not quite understand. Gavin contacted me yesterday and told me to keep away for another day, which seems ridiculous. My PCR test was negative, I am starting to feel better, and the medical advice is that you either isolate for 10 days (if you have it) or carry on as normal is you haven’t. So asking me to stay away from the office for a fourth day, then welcoming me back on the fifth, makes no sense whatsoever in any scenario. Maybe they’re waiting to see if my bug-that-isn’t-Covid suddenly becomes a bug-that-is-Covid. Has that happened to anyone in this long, ongoing Pandemic Of Fun?
The whole decision-making process seems to be based on ‘Just in case…’ But just in case WHAT? Just in case I have it after all, and the PCR was faulty? Just in case all the advice from experts is wrong and I may be infectious, even though I don’t even have it? By that rationale I should be kept away every day ‘just in case’ I might become a deranged lunatic who decides to scoop everyone’s eyes out with a sock.
Anyway, enough whinging. Time for another coffee and a look at some advertising ideas for next Summer.

RC 25-10-21

Shortages, schmortages

I have to say that this bout of illness has brought back a bit of my Covid fears. I wouldn’t want to feel as bad as I’ve felt this week and to also have the threat of a possible imminent hospitalisation hanging over me after a positive test for The Virus. But it’s not just a worry about catching it myself, it’s something deeper and wider than that; a return to my previous thoughts about huge social problems and the collapse of our whole way of life! I have visions of a near future in which we are queueing up for our weekly allowance of bread and milk, and in which most of Suffolk resembles something from the Third World. I keep having to remind myself that all these irrational ideas kept cropping up last year, but we’re no nearer any of them coming true. And we have better treatments, and vaccines, and we have proved that – as unpleasant as they are – lockdowns are effective at cutting down transmissions, almost to the point of the virus being a rarity. So there’s no need to get panicky and start buying tinned peaches and Lemsip. BUT – it’s hard to remember that, and think clearly, when you have a temperature, and you’re sleep pattern is knackered, and you’ve just had a dream in which one of your neighbours was barbecuing your son ‘for a much-needed bit of protein’.
I’ve said it before, etc. – being me is fun!

RC 23-10-21

An early Friday finish

I got sent home from work this morning. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but I know last night was another unpleasant night of torturous dreams, night sweats and seeing and hearing things that didn’t exist. So I may have been a bit disoriented and spaced out when I arrived. I can’t remember having a shower, or shaving, or cleaning my teeth either, so I may have been in a bit of a state. Anyway, Gavin was in for a meeting at 10 and said “You shouldn’t be here, dude. Go and get tested for Covid so the girls can stop worrying you’re contagious and get yourself rested over the weekend.”
So I have been to a drive-thru NHS testing site to get my tonsils swabbed and then I had an afternoon in bed. I can’t remember getting home, but there’s no blood or dents on the car so I guess I drove safely, and I’ve just woken up with my head on my pillow, so my autopilot-while-ill seems to be functioning well. I must say, I feel better after 4 hours kip. I’m still coughing painfully, but it’s a deep chesty cough with some real phlegm behind it, rather than a problematic dry cough that I understand is a symptom of The Covid. So I’m pretty sure tomorrow’s test result will be negative.
Have you noticed, by the way, how often I call The Virus by its proper name these days? Throughout the first lockdown I used any phrase I could invent that would let you know what I was talking about without mentioning it by name. It’s almost as if, psychologically, I thought that avoiding the word COVID meant it wasn’t real, and then it couldn’t affect me. Or maybe I have just subconsciously decided that it’s much less effort to call it Covid 19 instead of constantly coming up with alternatives.
Have you also noticed, by the way, how often the words “So” and “I can’t remember” have turned up in this blog posting? I normally try very hard not to be so repetitive but today I am failing miserably. I blame my illness.

RC 22-10-21

I think Covid might have been easier...

My cold, which yesterday seemed to have given up its assault on my body, now seems to have woken itself up again for another attack. I woke up in the night, sweating profusely and coughing like a smoker. Then I stumbled back to sleep, in which I had incredibly vivid dreams about weird things like being lobotomised by Barbarella or being forced at gunpoint to juggle babies over an open pit of hungry crocodiles. Then I woke up an hour later, sweaty and coughing again, and hearing things like sirens. At one point I opened the bedroom window, convinced I could hear a cat asking to be let in. I was so surprised that there was nothing there that, like a moron, I stood there with the window wide open for at least 30 seconds before cottoning on to the fact that I had been hearing things. Then Philippa shouted “What the **** are you doing? Its freezing in here” which I hoped was another auditory hallucination but wasn’t.  Then I climbed back into bed, tossed and turned and turned and tossed, found it hard to breathe laying on my back, convinced myself I was coming down with a chest infection, propped myself up with pillows and drifted off to sleep again, and then woke up again about 45 minutes later, soaked in sweat and shivering like an infant in a snowstorm.
I don’t know what the Hell is wrong with me, but it’s not very nice.

RC 21-20-21

Medical paraphrasing, by Rory

As quickly as this ‘cold’ took me over at the weekend, it has equally quickly left me in peace. There are truly some very odd things floating around in the atmosphere this Autumn. I remember reading that we might encounter some unpleasant bugs this year, as we were all kept away from them during the lockdowns and the mask-wearing. Normally, one is exposed to small amounts of pathogens throughout our daily lives, and our body learns to fight them all off. Because we’ve lived such insular, solitary lives for most of the past 18 months, we haven’t been exposed in that way and our bodies have forgotten how to operate that bit of defence. When we encounter something unpleasant now, instead of our immune systems going “Ah – I recognise this. It’s nasty. I’ll fight it off,” it is effectively putting its fingers in its ears and going ‘la, la, la’ while the virus multiplies within us, making us ill. So, instead of having a sore throat or a bit of a temperature for a couple of days while our body sees it off, it breaks through our barriers and sets up home for a while and we end up feeling like utter shit.
I may have got that description slightly wrong – I’m a chemist, not a biologist. But I hope you see the point I’m making. We’re all going to have multiple, weird illnesses this Winter and I’m not looking forward to any of them.

RC 20-10-21

Self-hatred, on top of bacteria

I’ve probably mentioned this before sometime, but I’m really not good at being ill. Especially when it’s something as annoying (but not too debilitating) as a cold. If I’m under the weather, my self-pity ramps up, my self-care plummets and I make terrible decisions that probably prolong my misery. Instead of resting, giving in to the illness and treating it, I try and stick two fingers up at it and plough on regardless, or deliberately do things that I know will make it worse. If I have an upset stomach, for example, instead of following the received medical advice and drinking lots of water without eating solids, I’ll say ‘stuff you’ and eat curry. I do NOT help my body and myself.
Last night is a case in point.
What I needed; what would have lessened the unpleasantness of the bug and increased my chances of waking up feeling better, was an early night and a good rest. But what did I do instead? I said “F**k it – if I’m going to feel like shit anyway, I might as well enjoy the night’ and I sat up watching the NFL until finally succumbing to sleep at about 4am this morning.
So I still feel racked with cold, but I also feel sleepy, exhausted, and mentally out-of-it, and I’ve reacted to that by drinking lots of coffee, which has given me indigestion.
Jesus.
There is an age a man reaches where he stops doing these stupid things, right? Please tell me ‘Yes’ and please tell me it happens before he reaches 40, because I could really do with a break from my own stupidity.

RC 18-10-21

Covid light?

I am feeling bloody awful today. I’ve done a lateral flow test and it came up negative, so I’m guessing I’ve picked up another of the post-mask, back-in-full-contact colds that seems to be ripping through the country like a drunk driver ripping through a bus queue. My throat is so sore it hurts to breath, I can feel thick gunk at the back of my sinuses and when I blew my nose first thing this morning a blood clot the size of a penny came out with the thick green snot.
So I’m having a great day, thanks.
I always believe that food is the answer to everything, so I’m dosing myself up with paracetamol and spending the afternoon in the kitchen, cooking up a roast fit for two kings and getting ready to feast myself silly.

RC 17-10-21

Not being rude or controversial, but...

Let’s be honest – 6 billion doses of vaccines have been handed out now, with no major issues arising. So – if you’re still holding out against getting a vaccine, you’re selfish, and an idiot.

RC 15-10-21

Addiction, attitude and altitude

After the weirdness of the last few days, I have decided to take the sensible option and give myself a break from caffeine. The problem is that, being me, I haven’t tapered off or cut down gradually, I have literally woken up this morning and gone “ZERO CAFFEINE!” and abstained completely. So I’ve ended up feeling – depending on the time of day – panicky, nauseous, emotional, exhausted, insane, elated and/or close to an imminent heart attack.

In slightly nicer news, I have pulled a bit of a fast one, but got away with it. Gavin had refused my request to have a big Bonfire Night fireworks display, but he did give me a free hand with organising the Hallowe’en event. So I’ve booked someone to send up some fireworks at the end of the Hallowe’en party…
He chided me for my cheekiness, but allowed it to go ahead.

Speaking of Gavin, he wants to organise some kind of adrenaline-fuelled weekend away for the staff early in 2022. Partly a team-building exercise, partly a charity fund-raiser and partly an opportunity for publicity, I’m hoping this will end up being one of his flash-in-the-pan, spur-of-the-moment, fizzle-and-die ideas that burns bright in his head for a few days before disappearing into the ether, because the suggestions he has are quite disturbing. Option 1 seems to be that we all do a skydive. Option 2 seems to be a trek to the top of Snowdonia. Option 3 seems to involve llamas, Land’s End and a launch pad, but I may have got that wrong as I’d tuned out by then. I’m all for a staff outing, and I’m all for doing something different (or even dangerous) to raise money for a hospice or something, but being thrown out of an aeroplane, climbing to the top of a mountain or getting involved in whatever Option 3 was are not items I’ll be placing on my 2022 wish list.
Why can’t we have a raffle and be done with it???

RC 14-10-21

Nemesis

There is one fly in my office, and I can’t seem to hunt him down and finish him. The little bastard keeps buzzing by my ear and putting me off my e-mails. Then he runs off to hide so I can’t twat him with a rolled-up booklet.
I love Nature, but honestly, sometimes I could happily napalm an entire district to get rid of a little annoyance like this.

RC 13-10-21

Relaxed, or remissive?

It’s funny how my attitude to The Virus has changed. Until recently, I was anticipating, nay dreading, a Winter of rising cases, stupid behaviour, and inevitable lockdowns of some description or other. Now I just feel a kind of nonchalant apathy towards the whole thing. Maybe its just CoronaPanic Burn-out. There’s been so much dread and fear and scaremongering and speculation and page after page of “Shortages!”, “Crisis!” and “Doom!” in the media that maybe I’ve just hit a saturation point and my body can’t fit in anymore giving-a-shit. Whatever will happen, will happen, I guess, and it’s pointless to worry about ‘What If’s…’ when the list of possibilities is endless. We might have another Winter of Horrors, with hospitals over-run and every family experiencing deaths. We might have an onslaught of other viruses; those which have been kept at bay by mask-wearing and hand-washing and are just waiting in the wings to pounce when the weather turns cooler. We might have another, unrelated pandemic incident, with a flu variation that comes along and wreaks even more havoc than Covid 19. We might even sail through the next six months with no problems at all, and reach next Spring confident in saying ‘the pandemic is now behind us.”
We don’t know, do we? But, somehow, I am seeing that as a positive, rather than as a thing to cause concern.
And anyway, after the way people have behaved during the recent Fuelishness, I think I’d welcome a few more months of excessive deaths, especially if they could be targeted among the people who were queueing up at the petrol station every day to squeeze a few more drops of fuel into their car, despite the fact they had no need to travel, and despite the fact that they had been assured there were no shortages.
Pricks.
Jeez – I started this blog today wanting to write about how pleased I was that I have zero virus-related anxiety and ended up ranting about my fellow man and hoping many of them suffer a gruesome death!!
As I may have mentioned before – I think I might be drinking too much coffee again.

RC 12-10-21

I should have been a Redcoat

Most of my day has been spent working on plans for the Hallowe’en party.
I’ve managed to get my hands on a massive cauldron, which we’ll brew up some soup or punch in (haven’t really decided yet). One of the family entertainers that we have on site weekly during the Summer has agreed to come in and put on a bit of a magic show, and we’ve got a local bod to do some spooky storytelling. I think he’s a retired teacher, but he comes highly recommended and he has a long beard, so he looks the part. A neighbouring farm is providing us with a load of apples so we can do apple-bobbing, and that thing where you tie a piece of fruit to string, dangle it from a washing line and then have to eat it without using your hands. I’m going to set up a bit of a ‘treasure trail’ as well, with families following clues that lead them around the whole site, looking for certain key words that they then have to rearrange into a Hallowe’en-themed phrase. If they come back to the office and get the phrase right they win a prize.
Some of the permanent residents are keen on allowing little ones to do ‘Trick or Treat’ around the caravans. Others are more reluctant, with one of them saying, “I live here so I can avoid all that real-world, neighbourhood-friendly crap” and another one saying, “If they knock on my door, I’ll spray them with a can of Raid”. But there we are – you can’t please everyone every day, and besides, this is first and foremost a family holiday centre, so people can’t complain if we do family holiday activities. If they keep moaning, I’ll suggest they relocate to our adults-only site, where they can spend their whole time in peace, quiet and boredom, surrounded by like-minded killjoy pensioners.
Man, I think I might be drinking too much coffee again….

RC 11-10-21

Weather to die for

Another glorious late-Summer Sunday here in Suffolk.
It was so nice in our back garden, and we had so few opportunities to eat outside during the damp horrors of August, that I decided to throw up an impromptu barbecue for tea tonight. It was gorgeous. As we finished eating, and as Philippa took Mathew indoors for a bath, I sat near the slowly cooling barbecue coals and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen unwind before me.
It was almost spiritual. I genuinely felt lost in the utter beauty of it. All those negative thoughts I have about myself, and my fellow man, and the terrible future we have contrived to create between us, disappeared as I realised we are all – all of us, individually, and all of us collectively – nothing. We don’t matter. We are insignificant spots on an insignificant planet in an insignificant corner of an uncaring, unknowing universe. As much as we like to convince ourselves we’re important, we’re not doing anything that will affect anything other than the inhabitants of this Earth. We could bring about the death of every breathing creature in existence right now, but in the grand scheme of things that will mean f**k all. The planet will survive, and change, and thrive again, as it has done after every previous slew of extinctions that it has witnessed.
In a way, it takes the pressure off me. I don’t need to feel guilty every time I use a plastic bottle and I don’t need to get angry when other people put cardboard in with their everyday rubbish. Because it doesn’t matter. We’re finished as a race and as a society, but the world we call home will live on. It will re-absorb our constituent parts and re-use them for the next, better species that comes along.
I thought all this, as the sunset blazed and flickered and spewed cyan, crimson and lilac across the Suffolk sky.
And then a passing pigeon shit on the barbecue coals, and it stank.

RC 10-10-21

Double-Oh Chesworth

As I shall be making my way to the cinema to see “No Time To Die” soon, I thought I would write an arbitrary list or two about my least and most favoured aspects of Bond movies past. These are just a few ‘top of the head’ statements that are fun to think about, and I can almost guarantee you that if I asked myself the same questions, and gave myself the same topic headings, tomorrow I would come up with very different answers to most of them.

BEST BOND THEMES:
Nobody Does It Better by Carly Simon
We Have All The Time In The World by Louis Armstrong
All Time High by Rita Coolidge

WORST BOND THEMES:
Die Another Day by Madonna
A View To A Kill by Duran Duran

BEST BOND VILLAIN:
Javier Bardem in Skyfall
(with Scaramanga a close second)

FAVOURITE JAW-DROPPING STUNT MOMENT:
Rolling out of the back on an aeroplane on a cargo net in ‘The Living Daylights’ (and the subsequent mid-air fight)

BEST PRE-CREDITS SEQUENCE:
Tomorrow Never Dies

MY FAVOURITE BONDS (in order):
CONNERY, DALTON, BROSNAN, CRAIG, LAZENBY, MOORE

MY CHOICE FOR THE NEXT 007:
Nicholas Hoult

BEST FILMS:
The Man With The Golden Gun
The World Is Not Enough
Skyfall

WORST FILMS:
Die Another Day
Moonraker

RC 9-10-21

Things warp and warble

A strange day, all round.
Not sure why, it was just one of those days when everything seemed to be happening at a strange pace, and everyone seemed to be struggling with the basics of life. I had to deal with calls from people who couldn’t find us, despite us being a large campsite just off a main road, and despite us being signposted from about 100 miles away. I had to deal with calls from people who couldn’t work out how to turn on the shower in their caravan, because it happened to be very slightly different from the one they have at home. I even had to deal with a couple from Wolverhampton who had lost their 6-year-old daughter within an hour of arriving on the site. When I asked when they had last seen her the father, in all seriousness, said “I’m not entirely sure she was in the car when we got here.”
Anyway, despite its insipid strangeness the day did not defeat me, and I have made it to the end of this Friday with my body and my sanity intact (if bruised) and with a glass of red wine in hand.

It’s hard to believe we are nearly at the end of my first Summer season as a manager in the tourist trade. Once half-term is over, I won’t be working Saturdays anymore! The Winter months are more about maintenance, and keeping our onsite residents happy, and that can be taken care of Monday to Friday.
It felt like such a long, overwhelming season when I looked at it as it was approaching, but now I’m (almost) out of the other end it hasn’t been too bad after all.

RC 8-10-21

Compromise, oh compromise

Gavin and I have struck a deal, of sorts. If I ‘shut the hell up’ about fireworks for the next two weeks, he’ll give me the go-ahead to plan a big event for November 2022.
I’m pleased with that. I have so many ideas for costumes and side-stalls and food providers and games and decorations, just IMAGINE what I can do with a full year to put it all together!

Meanwhile, at home, the subject of providing Mathew with a little brother or sister has reared its ugly head again. Inspired by my encounter at work, I have told Philippa that if she promises not to mention it again until Saturday, I’ll promise we can have a proper chat about it on Sunday.
Now I need to see if I can get called into work and avoid her.

RC 6-10-21

Weekend Look-Back/November Look-Forward

I felt very pleased with myself on Saturday, after coining an alternative phrase we can use instead of ‘The Fuel Crisis’. As it’s not really a crisis, as there’s plenty of fuel around, and the only problems are being caused by people’s behaviour, I suggested we call this latest little spell of unrest ‘The Fuelishness’. Everyone else at work looked nonplussed, but I was rather pleased with myself.
If I didn’t think newspapers are an unforgivable scourge, I might consider a career as a headline writer for them.

Sunday with Sophie was delightful. We had a fry-up, we had a walk, we had a mid-afternoon Rory-cooked roast, and Mathew spent all day clinging to her like she was suddenly his favourite toy. I fell asleep in the evening watching the NFL with a glass of red wine and then went to bed feeling very satisfied with my Sunday.

In other news, I am trying to convince Gavin to let us do a Bonfire Night party at our biggest site. He is reluctant, as he says he doesn’t want something ‘thrown together at short notice’ and thinks we’ll get stiffed by fireworks providers who are hiking their prices up after Covid/Brexit/The Fuelishness. He’s already forking out good money to throw a big half-term Hallowe’en event and doesn’t want to blow ten grand or so on something else just a week later. Personally, I don’t think that’s a problem, but maybe that’s me being selfish, as it’s probably my favourite night of the year. I’ve always had dreams about putting on a massive November 5^th Spectacular Extravaganza and suddenly realised last week that I’m now in a position to do it! Every Bonfire event I’ve ever been to, I’ve found myself making mental notes about the good and bad things and what I would do differently, given the chance. I really think I could put together a winning night, and one that would grow and grow year on year and become one of the premier fireworks displays in Western Europe!
Yeah, maybe I should calm down a bit.

RC 5-10-21

A list of 10 things I am pleased about

I don’t work for a supermarket anymore.
The fuel ‘crisis’ (or ‘people behaving like selfish, ignorant twats’) seems to be easing.
Just had a very pleasant weekend of light work and family fun.
I get to plan an onsite half-term Hallowe’en Happiness event for families.
Bonfire Night is just a month away! And we may get to have fireworks displays!
I live in a country with free healthcare.
I have clean water to drink, lots of food choices, and a warm house to live in.
The new Bond film is finally out.
I don’t live in a city.
I am 30 minutes-drive away from the beach.

RC 4-10-21