Trivial Musings on the Plague

Even someone who writes about as frequently as a panda gets laid really ought to mark the plague. To mark this "difficult situation" I am doing a rare post on the 'daily blog' I was going to use to practise being a writer. It has become apparent to even a common yokel like what I am that the financial arse has rather fallen out of writing so I was in fact very clever indeed to skive from daily writing practice in favour of staring into space. My career change dreams may lie in tatters but thanks to Covid-19, the working from home dream has been achieved without me tapping as much as a single key. A rare reward for indolence.This is my plague experience so far...

I confess to being remarkably calm for someone who worries about what everyone really thought about them mangling a sentence in 1987. I am worried about aged relatives and the general death toll but otherwise taking it in my stride. There are a number of reasons for this, one is having acquired a garden. If I were still living in a flat I'd be lying in the middle of the road demanding strangers spit on me to end my battery hen hell- like a wild germs bukkake fetishist. The best advice I can offer anyone living in a flat just now is to make use of parks and other green spaces but try, no matter how much you're enjoying it, to look miserable. You must appear as if you've just learned that every leaf, every blade of grass is conspiring against you. If the authorities or any passing sneaks get the sense you're happy, you could end up before the beak. Clypes are everywhere.

What a shower of foul snakes we have in our midst. The one bright spot in all of this is that we now know who would grass us up were the country to end up a dictatorship. There aren't many surprises in my circle.  Be vigilant on Facebook, if you use the awful thing, I still do for practical reasons too dull to share here. Half my work colleagues are in something close to a frenzied masturbatory state at seeing another person in public. who maybe, might just be possibly breaking a rule. The other half are having meltdowns about 5G. I am reading it all, pulling grotesque faces and murmuring "I knew this, I always knew it".

It's a firm belief of mine that one ought to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. With that in mind I have written the names of all known clypes down under the heading "anti-government subversives" in my notepad. Like all notepads I'll carry it faithfully until I see a funny cat or a bumblebee and get distracted but when we're all quivering beneath the state jackboot in future dictatorland, we shall learn it's true value as a search of my home unearths it and takes out an entire spy network. I urge you all to do the same. We can't stop them being sneaks but there's a small chance we can murder them with notepads.

The other reason I'm handling plague lockdown quite well is that I have long viewed nature as a monster ready to take us all out on one of it's whims. I have been waiting for something like this since I first laid eyes on the Old Testament. In fact reading the entire OT substituting the word God for nature isn't a bad way to view who is in charge. Nature delights us all by throwing up fluffy animals but all those bites, stings and scratches one experiences rolling about in a field are a warning. We are ruled by a murderous lunatic with a 100% kill rate. A murderous lunatic one can't evade or thwart - look what happened to poor old Des Esseintes when he tried to cheat nature.

The final reason I'm handling it so well is the rather boring observation that I quite like being at home. Eighteen year old me would have wanted to bite old me for saying that but it's the truth. I like controlling the temperature, bossing the garden about, making tea, sprouting seeds and creating wee worlds like a slightly absent God. I like pretending to be in charge. Having a big game of control is a rather fun big lie and one that I plan to play along with as long as I'm allowed to.

I have the oddest feeling I should end on some advice, like Springers Final Thought but I don't have anything to offer and I lack the the level of interest in other people that seeking to boss them about usually entails. The best I can suggest as it that you laugh as much as possible, get out in the sun without landing yourself in hot water and fire a couple of tins at the foodbank collection point next time you're out on your permitted trip to the supermarket.

Far From the Right Time.

Today, in the spirit of adventure I did something I have never done before. You'll think me mad but I went to the theatre in the afternoon. To be clear I have been in a theatre before and not just for pantos. I have have seen operas, ballets, comedians and the odd play. However I have always waited until the evening to indulge. I now realise that pure instinct kept me from experiencing the most frightful ordeal.

Oh it wasn't the show. The show was quite the hoot and along with the wine provided the only happiness I experienced during the hell of the matinee. It's hard to describe what I've been through but I shall do my best to set it out in my own words. It may well be needed in some ground breaking legal case in the very near future.

I have always loved the word matinee. It's redolent of lovely things, like Dirk Bogarde twinkling down from a cinema poster. The reality is far from lovely. We all know that strangers are just foul irritants we haven't met yet but when one is forced to encounter them, I now know it is less painful to do so at night. The evening theatre audience is rendered docile by a wee pre-theatre and a half bottle of wine. The matinee crowd want the back of their legs slapping.

I have spent four decades being herded around with you cattle but not once have I ever encountered such a relentlessly irritating bunch and believe me I've met some fiends on the way.

Naturally I took my seat early on. I was positioned on a fairly empty row Q only to find myself trapped between an awkward middle aged "date" and a family. I thought I might die. Row P was occupied by arthritic pensioners who shot up and massaged their lower backs and upper buttocks, quite without warning. Everyone in row P appeared to be called "Maggie". The one with the "tramp stamp" kept telling us to "keep smiling". I didn't. She was bossy and I was compelled to defy her.

I can only assume someone had starved this assortment of monsters before they entered the theatre. Other than the sort of eating disorder that ends in one being removed from ones digs in a crane, there is no explanation for the relentless rustling and chewing. On and on it went. Splatty chew, rustle, splatty chew, splatty chew, audible fart, rustle, chew. Right through both acts. That would never happen in the evening.

It was something of a relief when the curtain finally rose. Rather, it should have been a relief but the nasally child weasel next to me had memorised both script and songs. I thought about telling it I was best friends with Rose West or that I could get it sent to live with Karen Mathews but I kept quiet and tried to cause deafness in my right ear by sheer will power. After a time, I either deafened myself to the right or the creature ran out of puff and shut up.

Of course trouble flared up when the odd man to my left spotted the wine in my handbag and started loudly whispering to his partner that "other people" had "carry outs". He was a rotter and an ill informed rotter at that. I did not have a "carry out", I had a blue package ticket which comes with a small bottle. A small bottle that I required in order to deal with my surroundings.  I had cause to curse this gentleman again during the interval when he remarked to the red faced woman he was with that I was "having another one but not from a bottle".  I think he was jealous but it was medicinal and necessary. Like a wheelchair ramp.

Contributing to my sense of being hemmed in by cunts was Row R to my rear. This was all in the stalls. I dread to think what was taking place in the dress circle. Anyway Row R was occupied by hair tossing, up speaking, weak bladders. They barely got through ten minutes without clambering out their row, roaring sorry, like it's a question and vanishing. Only to return and do it all again. Repeatedly.

Show 3/5

Audience 0/5

I shall never enter a theatre in the daytime again.

A short play about God and the world of the humans.

I have written a short one act play in which our Lord God receives an update on the humans and their antics. It was inspired by a picture of a pink horse which clip clopped it's way on to my Twitter feed and made me have to go in to another room to be upset because people were being mean to a horse.

God: Hey Archangel Gabriel, what are the humans up to this weather?

Archangel Gabriel: Well they're planning to put Trump in charge of the USA and some guy has painted a horse pink.

God: I see.

Archangel Gabriel: Thunderbolts?

God: Fuck them. No warning call. Flood the fuckers. Drown them all.

Archangel Gabriel: Righto chief.

What kind of arse witted monster does this?