Pre-lockdown.

There have been scenes all over the country beautifully depicting our charming nation’s love of the toilet roll. Beyond love. Obsession. People are dropping to their knees and hugging it. As did Joey when his latest batch arrived from Ocado. Even though he doesn’t actually use the stuff himself, his natural empathy for everyone else caused this outpouring of emotion and attachment. A beautiful metaphor for the (sad and sorry, stupid and moronic, panic-buying, supermarket-depleting, irrational, pathological, pre-infected) wonderful people of our fine nation.

In Italy there’s been no panic-buying and no shortages of anything. Except old people. Got a bit of a shortage of them now. And they’re ‘ahead’ of us in this silly game we’re currently, globally, ‘enjoying’.

But to call it ‘the only game in town’ is in fact an understatement of immense proportions. The only game in the town they shut down, is perhaps more accurate. Because its happening. To my beloved City. Tube stations closing today, schools all shutting nationally tomorrow, it is reckoned that we’ll be in ‘lockdown’ by the weekend.

If only we knew what, precisely, that meant. Does it mean we can’t leave our homes at all? Only for ‘essential’ things. In which case, what is essential? Getting out and about is pretty essential for me, drinking coffee made by a ‘barista’, letting car tyres down, all pretty essential. And how will Mel cope? Locked in with the world’s most annoying person? We also have the younger daughter with us as she came home for a week and is now locked out of Berlin for the foreseeable future. So we’ll be ‘locked down’ together. Ahhhhhh. And I need to see Lila and Joey. Badly. Though we can sneak there under cover of dark.

I want soldiers on the streets. With guns. I want martial law. I want… life back. And by ‘life’, I obviously mean ‘football’.

Stiff upper lips. Just don’t let anyone else touch them.

Happy Doomsday

A xxxx