Captain Dr Sir Tom Moore died the other day. We’d never heard of him until last April but he immediately became the most important man in the country. At a time when the high point of our entire week was eating a Milky Way, when there was no movement allowed, no traveling, not even football!!!, Sir Tom’s laps of his garden with his little walking frame became the focus of our lives. He became our hero. He set out to raise £1000 for the NHS workers and ended up with 39 million.

How is that even possible. He’s not even a proper influencer. Doesn’t have a 36 inch synthetic chest. Doesn’t have peroxide hair extensions. Doesn’t spend lockdown traveling round the world at everyone else’s expense and shitting in the face of covid rules for ‘work’. Because don’t kid yourself, lying on a beach in Anguilla for 8 hours a day drinking only the right kind of rum is hard work. Taking fourteen selfies of your sandals can be really exhausting. Yet old Captain Tom didn’t even have a contract with Zimmer. And his Instagram account showed just 9 ‘followers’ but 32,562 crierchers. They’re like ‘followers’ but just do it much more slowly and stiffly. And normally by mail. Or telephone, (landline only).

It’s worth mentioning that although we all lionised this exceptional man, he was very ‘normal’. Although normal for his time as opposed to this one, hence the shirt-and-tie, the jacket, the medals. No trackie bottoms for Tom. No death metal t-shirts. And yet the transition from ‘ahhhh, sweet’ to ‘I love that man with all my heart’ came with his first tv interview. Because old Tom was not just lovely, but very very funny. He could have been a stand-up, other than his frailty preventing such a thing. And such charm. That’s why we loved him. And the Queen loved him, so she knighted him. She did it with him standing up. Because if he’d have ‘taken a knee’, as is usual custom, he would never have got up again. And the army loved him, so they promoted him to Major for the last few months of his life. 

And then his maker called him. “Ground control to Major Tom…”

The world lost a true legend this week. 

Happy Friday, unless you’re a Spurs fan, in which case I’ll message you with the Samaritans number.
 
A xxxx