I’ve just returned from an essentials shop at the local convenience store. With it’s checkouts fitted out with clear plastic tarpaulin, aimed at providing employees a degree of protection from the COVID-19 virus, it manifested notions within me I’d inadvertently wandered onto the kill set in an episode TV drama Dexter. On reaching the till, the woman serving me asked me to join her in wearing a mask. When I […]
As world death rates continue to escalate at alarming rates, courtesy of our COVID-19 viral nemesis, I read with interest today’s the birthday of comedian/performer Eric Idle. He the writer of Monty Python’s whimsical ditty Always Look On The Bright of Life; an adage which admittedly isn’t the easiest advocacy to adopt under current circumstances. Some may inquire what’s the big deal about Idle’s song and my flimsy link to an […]
This morning, during a telephone conversation with her youngest son Ian, my mum felt moved to advise him her capability of coping under this dark COVID-19 landscape was enhanced by the fact she was a wartime baby. Her birthdate, one year into WWII, apparently providing her with a resilience and stoicism of which we 1960’s baby boomers (my brother and I) were largely bereft. Bizarrely delivered with receiver held to her […]
Commencing this journal, I’m attempting to compute the latest COVID-19 update just witnessed on TV. This concerning news, delivered during the daily UK governmental briefing, informing the British public it’ll be an achievement if, amid our war with the spiteful COVID-19 pathogen, Britain keeps the nations death toll to under 20,000. A truly disquieting best case scenario! To put that into context, the NHS England chief’s forecast, at the aforementioned briefing, indicates […]
I like to think I’m a reasonably pragmatic fellow who, where possible, seeks rational solutions when confronted with existential antagonists. Not all of my notions are successful, such as the occasion, while bereft of colander, I misguidedly used a tennis racquet to sieve spaghetti. A foolish culinary strategy in many ways, however, as Bulgarian philosopher Hardov Hearing once eruditely observed “It’s far nobler to try and fail than to do […]
In these times of logistical difficulties acquiring foodstuffs, compromises need to be made with regards meals/ingredients one craves. On occasion doing without a desired product altogether, or settle for smaller portions. Mindful of this situation, this morning saw me undertake a food thriftiness technique I’d not utilised since my youth. This simple not a compromise on my part. However, I’d like think it was a behavioural display highlighting, at the very […]
The apocalyptic sci-fi redolence hovering over existence in the wake of COVID-19 gets stronger by the day. Yesterday’s necessary escalation of restrictions to daily life arriving in the shape of governmental edicts; legislation decreeing none essential workers should only leave residences if/when absolutely necessary. In the previous week my narratives have included how living with this pandemic evoked scenes from John Wyndham’s tome Day of the Triffids, and a 1970’s BBC […]
