Week 11: Pot Thumping

"Bang the frying pan harder Cathy, you know it generates an immunity field that will keep us virus-free until next Thursday. And whilst you're at it, polish that bloody rainbow, we don't want to lose the Immunity Multiplier Effect. And don't forget to put our Save the NHS sign in the window. Grandad, Aunty Mabel, your two half brothers and Ken from the gym are all popping in for drinks later. We want them to know we are taking this virus seriously!"

Names have been changed to protect the innocent (me) from possible retribution from the guilty (them), but this sums up the attitude of a set of our neighbours. They are first out on a Thursday, thrashing the non-stick coating off of their kitchen-ware, honking their car horns as if their very existence depends upon it, and generally making sure all those within 5 miles know that they are Good Eggs and Support Our NHS Unstintingly.

Which is clearly all they need to do because heaven forbid they should actually take steps not to catch the bleedin COVID in the first place.

Aaaannnnnnddd breathe Mr H. Have a sniff of that nice Cozy Glow "Linen" Air-freshener to calm yourself. Being rushed to hospital with an aneurysm is not what the Doctor ordered. And seeing as you have virtually no life insurance these days, even Gin (the Mrs, so called because of her habit of filling her jogger's water bottle with the stuff when she goes "out for a run") has stopped finding ways of encouraging an untimely death.

Week eleven then, and what a half-in, half-out sort of week it has been.

When I say half in, the half that has been in is Gin. Following an instruction from her school (she is a teacher when sober), she has been wrestling with teaching via a video-conferencing app called "You useless piece of electronic crap". School has sent her a little mini-white board to draw on in lessons, and some sort of USB overhead projector/camera thing, which appears to be called "Why aren't you appearing on my screen, shit-for-brains?". Where do they get these snappy, off-the-wall names from these days?

So Gin has been in, brushing up on her IT skills and actually doing some real face-to-face (camera-to-camera) teaching. She has had mostly a Good Week.

I on the other hand have been out. Out on my bike (no change there), and out hitting a small white ball around a field with Sticks. Some people laughingly refer to this as Golf. I know it "Hit ball into bush. Look for ball. Get scratched to buggery by gorse. Can't find ball. Hit a new ball". It's like a game of hide-and-seek in the open, currently for you and one other friend, where the prize is to find a ball that you didn't want to lose in the first place. Still, I've been Out with a Non-family Member Chum losing balls and it was bloody glorious!

It seems though that this glorious state of affairs has a life span that is more limited than that of Cathy and her COVID-Catchers over the road. Two weeks to be exact. In two weeks Gin may have to go back to school, leaving me at home to look after B (for Boy) and G (for Girl). And because B can't be left for too long because of his anxiety, I can see the end of the halcyon days of cycling and Look For Ball on week days looming, and therefore I am pursuing both like a condemned man. I'm not saying I've been neglecting my Cleaning Duties, but when I opened the kitchen this morning, C (for Cat) was stuck to the floor by the sauce from last weekend's coconut spiced roast chicken.

It's strange to feel sad at the potential loss of freedom just as everyone else starts to get their's back. Still if Cathy has her way, it won't be long before we are all locked down again.

And with that, we enter Week 12. Blimey doesn't time fly when you are having fun?

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

PS A special mention goes to the two Teenage Neds (lets call them Bigger Matalan Jogger Bottoms Wearer and his side-kick, Dick Head) who thought it was funny to try to block Farthing Downs road as I hammered down it at 40mph on the Carbon Steed earlier in the week. Seeing sense as I approached, they challenged me to a race. Ha, you ain't gonna beat this amount of Chunk on a downhill section boys. Momentum = Velocity x Mass. And there was plenty of mass being accelerated down that hill).

PPS Happy Birthday to Gin's very special sister, Di. We promise to get the participant order on the next family Skype call into the correct order (of importance).