So, Coronavirus!
Note: the following was written while inebriated. It’s not an excuse, it’s just a fact.
I’ve been avoiding my blog for the last few weeks because it turns out that I don’t like to dwell on current issues. Current issues date the blog posts and tend to preserve the negative. For example, I have four posts from 2015 I don’t like because they preserve a particularly unpleasant time of my life, although since then those posts are trivial in nature compared to current events.
Incidentally I have a particularly vindictive post regarding some ex-neighbours that hasn’t seen the light of day yet, purely because I’m still paranoid that the people who bought our house might use it to sue us. Give it a year, maybe I’ll publish it online for “funsies”.
The point is that I don’t like to dwell on the negative, and yet I’ll happily devote several paragraphs to the people in suits who run the country trying to censor the internet. I’m a hypocritical blogger, apparently. I’ll accentuate the negative quite happily as long as it’s about something that doesn’t directly affect me.
It would be absolutely foolish to not at least mention the virus at least once on this blog, if just for the vanity of looking back on it as a reminiscence (and I’ll admit it’s nice to partake in assuming one will get to look back on it). At the time of writing I am on day 12 of isolation. Colleagues and friends have been at home a lot longer, up to two or three weeks. I have seen the paradigm of my workplace switch to working from home pretty much overnight. I have heard the horror stories, some of which have been closer than I’d like and have genuinely brought me to tears through empathy. I have worried about running out of bog roll and thrown my hands up after claiming one of the last four-packs in LIDL, declaring proudly “WHO RUNS BARTER TOWN? SEAN RUNS BARTER TOWN!”.
Mentally I am as unsound as ever, in terms of apparently taking being locked at home 24/7 immensely well. I casually shaved all my hair off the other day because it was long and greasy and was getting on my tits and I harbour no regret over doing so, only regarding it when I catch myself in the mirror. I broke my record on my static bike this week by pedalling 12.5K in the space of half an hour (on my work lunch break, I might add) because of a passing paranoia about carpal tunnel or deep vein thrombosis. I have allowed myself a mid-week drink or three, because I don’t have to get the car out the next day and I realise I will be able to function as well as I would do any other day (does this make me a high-functioning alcoholic, or a run-of-the-mill British bloke who just likes a drink?).
It strikes me that I would potentially like prison life, since it appears I am happy existing within the 7 walls that make up my house1 and I am more than happy to communicate with friends, family and work colleagues via phone or video call. I don’t pine to walk the streets or leave the house (yet). I am introverted in nature and a lazy sod at best. Dystopian nightmare futures about only communicating remotely sound perfectly fine to me.
At most I miss the small things; a work colleague’s smirk as they casually barb at me, a casual hug from a friend I have known since school, buying a pint of Thatcher’s Gold on draught at the pub (again, probably a high-functioning alcoholic). The most galling of all is not knowing when I can take my old man down our local after visiting my old Mum…but they’re always at the end of the phone, at least.
My home is a paradise, to me. The house we bought at the tail end of last year is in dire need of an overhaul and we have completed only one room, fortunately my “office”, which was completed just in time to be told I would be working from home. Not many offices have a PS3 and a Mega Drive plugged into the computer monitor. I have all the games to play I could ever want and all the TV or films I could ever watch. I have two very needy pets who desire human companionship constantly to keep me company, along with my wife, the absolute centre of my universe. I am immensely lucky and grateful.
My wife doesn’t work for the NHS but she is considered to be on the “front line” of this “war”, working for a popular supermarket. She regularly gets up before five o’ clock in the morning to do her job and that was pre-COVID, now she’s lauded for doing her job and rightly so2. My Dad’s a lorry driver and, as such, he’s on the front line, too. I sort of vaguely know what those wives must have felt like during WW23, since I am a kept man during this crisis. I don’t know what I’d do if Sam or Dad got Covid and…well, you know. I don’t even want to type it. I guess I’d drink, probably. And cry until I couldn’t breathe.
This is a blog of vanity. It’s about me, and my family. Apologies, this is my therapy. I’ve just decided to shove it in your face.
I don’t have any cure-all suggestions or platitudes. Call your loved ones regularly. Find your paradise. Watch The Tiger King on Netflix. Wash your hands.
This is the last time I’ll talk about the virus on this blog. It’s fun and japes from here on out…
I hope.
- It’s more like 6, I don’t really live in the garage at all. ↩
- There was one old lady decided to call her lazy because there was no bread on the shelves on account of the supermarket not being able to keep up with demand but fuck that old lady and I hope she caught the virus, the bitch. That’s my humble opinion. ↩
- I’m not belittling WW2 but I’m a Millenial, cut me some slack. The biggest threat my generation has ever encountered is being talked down to by Boomers. Okay, Boomer? ↩
Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | April 5, 2020 at 12:30 am | Real Life, This Stuff Probably Isn't Relevant Now | No comment
Tags: That bloody virus