Remember when Covid first started? All those years ago? And the first thing people did, quite sensibly, before they’d sorted out their home workstations, picked up the kids from school, worked out what ‘2 metres’ looked like, was to go and buy toilet rolls. I did. I rented a van, took Mel and two wheelbarrows to Tescos and loaded up. Then, because the minimum rental was 4 hours on the van, we went back for a second load. It was the only sensible thing to do in the face of the crisis.

Well now I’m facing another panic.

Lateral flow tests.

They’re going to stop giving them away. MY government, for which I voted, are intending to take away the last pleasure we’re allowed in current times. That of repeatedly sticking sticks up our nostrils and watching for pink lines to form.

THAT IS MY LIFE!!!!! AND YOU’RE TAKING IT AWAY!!!!

Take away testing and my life has no meaning. So I’m going to stock up. Big time. So I can keep testing for months to come. Just for the fun of it. No more ‘showing it to people’, like in my dad’s care home, like before tai chi class, for work, no more ‘registering it’ with the NHS. Just me, cotton buds, pink lines.

Today’s picture shows you what can happen when your dreams turn to shit. Though perhaps ‘dreams’ is not the best analogy, because dreams are free and Newcastle United cost lots of millions of pounds, plus the benefit of massively increased debt should relegation occur.

Because Armanda Staveley, on the right, was the one who put this deal together, funded by Yasir al-Rumayyan (that’ll be him on the left), the Saudi dude who put the funds up on behalf of his State, looking none too pleased as their team were ‘giant-killed’ by Cambridge United. Unfortunately, the punishment for gaint-killing in the UK is not death by stoning, nor castration, not even removal of hands and/or feet. Like it is in Saudi Arabia. The punishment here is to go through to the next round of the FA Cup.

For Newcastle the immediate future doesn’t look quite so bright as their only hope of avoiding relegation might come down to a new really horrendous variant in the Covid world stopping the season.

I love a giant-killing. So to celebrate, I’m going to do a lateral flow test. Whilst I still can.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx