I was always pissed off with Jeremy Corbyn (generally and totally) specifically about his constant use of the term ‘working people’. With the implication that unless you’re risking industrial accidents with a lathe or ending the day with a really dirty face, then you’re not a ‘worker’. Like England is some pre-Victorian feudal land segregated by the toffs, who end the day cleaner than they start it, usually because they employ teams of serfs to maintain their cleanliness, or you’re a 9 year-old boy going down the pit from 6 in the morning til 8 at night with a canary for company. Bankers aren’t ‘workers’. Lawyers aren’t workers. Doctors aren’t ‘workers’, but nurses are. Go figure.

As an aside, Corbyn criticised Kier Starmer yesterday, because he’s a tosser and can’t stop himself, to which a Starmer aide replied: “Corbyn has nothing to pass on to the new leader except bad advice, an incompetent team and an 80-seat Tory majority”. I’m liking this new opposition more and more.

Anyway, workers, dirty fingernails, severed fingers, overalls and me.

I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. First ‘Saturday job’ when I was 14, for a tailor in Soho. And Soho in 1970 was not the hipster-foodie cool place it is now. But that really warrants a story to itself (doubtless coming soon). And then I always had jobs. Weekends, holidays and eventually, when I could put it off no longer, a ‘proper job’. And that’s where I’ve been for 40 years (zzzzzzz) until… Coronavirus!!! Gave me the sabbatical I’ve always wanted but no-one’s ever offered to fund. Not that anyone’s funding this one. But now, when I have to go in to work, I actually find myself getting excited. Not, like, ‘Jennifer Lawrence is upstairs waiting for you’, excited, or even ‘Spurs are 4-nil up against Liverpool with 2 minutes to play, we might hang on for a draw!’ excited. But just ‘work!!! I remember!’ exited.

So I went in yesterday. I had to go in to meet the rubbish man. He was coming to pick up the display stand that the burglar had dragged out the hole in the window he’d made with his crow-bar and smashed to bits to get the sunglasses out before the police asked him, politely and calmly, to LIE ON THE FUCKING FLOOR WITH YER HANDS ABOVE YER HEAD AND DON’T FUCKING MOVE A FUCKING MUSCLE!!! Then they kindly brought it back to me. Dragged it back. But I had 3 people to see while I was there, all pre-arranged in a new, virusy, sanitised, mask’n’gloved kind’a way. And I sorted out their broken specs and, for one, his burning need for a new pair of sunglasses, and then I washed, disinfected, sanitised, unmasked, de-frocked, showered in Detol, mainlined Brobat, burned my outer garments and drove home. In my underwear.

And noticed how much busier the roads are now than even 2 weeks ago. Not BUSY like rush hour busy, or even Saturday night going into town busy. Just, much busier than they were at the beginning of ‘lockdown’. Don’t know what that means exactly, but it must mean something.

Happy lawn-mowing Day

A xxxx