Half Life – 2 - Mr Johnson and me.
6th November 2020
I tripped over my crutches trying to punch Boris Johnson. It hurt like hell as I twisted my bad ankle and knocked the ingrowing toenail on my big toe. He, Boris, wasn’t even aware of my vicious assault, mainly as he was on the television at the time and I had become so annoyed at the smug announcement he was making I was willing to sacrifice my own TV for the gesture. It was probably a good thing I didn’t succeed. Life without a television in this second lockdown would be dismal, and the response from my family on finding out I had hit our own telly would have been unbearable.
When you are already almost completely locked in the house by immobility and just starting to get out and about, be it on crutches or in the hated wheelchair, to then be told to stay at home is infuriating. It’s almost like owning a restaurant, having the government put an incentive in place to drive people to eat out and then, a few short weeks later, close all the restaurants down again. Talk about cats playing with mice! It would be a brave Mr Johnson to order a Deliveroo over the next few weeks; the queue to spit in his food would be around the block (at a safe two meters between those wishing to add this special seasoning to his order, of course).
My intimate relationship with members of the UK government didn’t end there this week. I had a deeply personal and caring letter from not one, but two Ministers of the Crown telling me I was an extremely vulnerable person. Well, in some respects I already knew that. Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable than trying to navigate the world on crutches, and my admiration for people who have to use wheelchairs every day is off the scale these days. Their ministerial advice to try to stay two metres away from people I live with is, however, simply absurd. The two boys would not remember, my wife might try but would hate it, and JJ the dog simply can’t control herself – and our house does not allow it. I might take advantage of the ability to get priority supermarket delivery slots – that, like the blue badge for parking, is worth having. As for hiding for the next four weeks and not seeing anyone… that may not happen, but don’t tell Boris or his friends. I might get another letter.
The debate over the virus rages in living rooms, on phones, over zoom, and in the media. What should we or should not do? The reality is all the ravings and opinions mean nothing as the government is bumbling from one place to another on this but taking all the decisions, robbing all of us of any choices. I don’t want to get the virus – after all I am apparently ‘extremely vulnerable’- and I don’t want my elderly relatives to get it either, or others for that matter. I am now, however, very worried about the free and easy approach taken with everyone’s civil liberties and freedoms. It seems we trot back into our cages on the command of ‘our masters’ rather too easily. Not a habit we want to get in to, or a power we want any government to believe it has. Not even in a pandemic.
So now I am trapped in the house by both by a semi-despotic government and by my cancer driven immobility. Until, of course, the magic vaccine turns up and we all live happily ever after. While they are in the game of chucking huge sums of money at medical remedies then a lot more funding for cancer solutions would be nice; it’s killing a lot of us. If cancer was contagious, and Boris caught it, I am sure money would become no object pretty quickly.
Time to go back to something even less sane; watching the minute by minute updates on the US election. Trump may be an egotistical lunatic, but he certainly provides a curious form of entertainment for housebound television bashers like me.
🥰 loving reading these ...keep ‘em coming
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. You had me at trying to punch Boris Johnson! 😂