Corona Diaries: a bad no-hair day

Yesterday was a bit of a ratty day. I started to shout at the TV. It happened during the Downing Street briefing. I then fired off two intemperate tweets, which is rare for me. In the first I said:

I do wish that the “health advisors” at the Downing St briefings would, for once, say what they really mean: “it’s complex. You don’t understand. You will never understand. Now shut up and f**k off.”

In the second:

We are reviewing. We are considering. We are thinking. This is the sound of bureaucracy at prayer.

Which just about sums up my jaundiced view of the government’s efforts to communicate with us at this time of crisis. I actually think that the time has come to consider whether these daily briefings are helpful. Do we really need to be told the same stuff, day in, day out by an assortment of mediocre politicians and health advisers who are clearly under orders to say nothing that suggests that the government’s performance has been anything other than optimal?

Am I suffering from lockdown fatigue, or has the government run out of things to say? Either way, perhaps these briefings should take place every two or even three days. At least then there might be something new to say other than the steady thud of death statistics.

Another example of my COVID-related bile is that after repeatedly swearing that I would never consider terminating with extreme prejudice the squirrels that are scratching away in my loft and waking us up at 6am, I actually went so far as to look on the web for air rifles. That’s as far as it went, and I still don’t think that I could kill an animal in cold blood, even though I happily eat those that have been terminated with equal prejudice.

But the fact that I even thought of the nuclear option was telling. Perhaps it would be OK if we ate the squirrels that we shot, but then the task of skinning and disembowelling them would also be beyond me, metropolitan wimp that I am. Cooking them would be no problem though, because the other day one of the readers of this blog very kindly sent me link to a website that had a recipe for squirrel stew. No so benign was the picture that accompanied it of a teenager with a very powerful-looking rifle.

It was clearly a bad no-hair day, at least on my part. What it suggests is that I’ve been watching too much TV coverage of the pandemic. And possibly too many movies featuring men with weapons who take out the bad guy with a single shot.

One upside is that overdosing on TV has given me a fresh insight into the mind of Donald Trump. It’s been reported that he spends hours every day in his bedroom searching for TV news stories about, for and against him. I imagine that the White House has cleaners who on a regular basis have to come in and wipe down his multiple screens after he’s pelted them with cheeseburgers and ketchup.

I’m reminded of the scene in Downfall in which the Fuhrer is ranting at his generals, and outside his office aides are weeping and cowering at the fearsome racket. The Trump scenario also brings to mind the last days of Robert Maxwell, and the lurid tales about the state of his bedroom before he jumped, was pushed or fell from his boat in the Mediterranean.

Fortunately we don’t live on a boat or in a bunker. And if I were to start throwing hummus or porridge at our TV I would have to do the cleaning myself or face the consequences.

Why, you might ask, do I not comfort myself with those nice natural history programmes, or shows about gardens? Because these days they rarely end without warnings that the gorillas are doomed, or that Japanese knotweed is taking over the world.

Another insight that came to me yesterday is that the dog population has multiplied during the lockdown. What’s more, they all seem to be hanging out in the park near us. In our little town we don’t have much of a problem with joggers, cyclists and sunbathers. But we do have all manner of strange dogs. Labradors with tiny sausage dog legs. Wolfpoos (or should they be called Woodles?). Saint Bernards the size of grizzly bears.

It’s as if somewhere in Surrey, the sedate English county where I live, there’s been a radiation leak nobody’s told us about. Or possibly there’s a Dr Mengele at work at the National Veterinary Laboratory, which happens to be a few miles away. Is it me, or have dogs always looked this odd?

Their owners seem normal enough. They congregate in socially-distanced groups and chat, presumably about doggy things, while the mutts bound around with a freedom unavailable to their minders, trying to eat each other. If only there were groups of squirrel owners who could tell me what to do about the renegades in my loft.

Ah well. Today is a glorious new day. There are no pee patches on the lawn (our dog passed away last year, which probably explains the emboldened squirrels). The lilac in the garden is in full flower, as are the rhodies. The rosebuds are on their final push, and so far there have been no scammers knocking on our door asking for their iPhone back (see previous post). Kim Jong Un is still alive, Trump is still trumping and from Downing Street comes the mewling of a hungry infant.

Nothing to complain about. All’s well with the world, n’est pas? Comfortably numb is a good place to be.