This photo feels like a suitable metaphor for how i’m seeing our particular corner of this planet at the moment. Frozen in time and if not dead, then clinging on desperately for the scraps of news which come our way, sinew and tendons to chew on and spit out in disgust.

As one day morphs into another, the kids trudge around bored chewing loudly on dried spaghetti and tutting at the poor selection of crisps there are after gorging on the last multi pack, demolishing them like a plague pf locusts in about 2 days flat to get through 36 packs. It’s expensive, this lockdown, this creeping triangle of not being able to see people, nor being able to go out to see people and not being able to go out to see people and speak to people. Lets face it; its really really badly shit this time; the weather is wet and freezing cold, and with the only thing to do which we all have in common is to binge watch, eat and drink, fat on a diet of gritty drama, period drama, comedy drama, the odd film and Holby City. The binge watching can’t be good for us, i’m really sick of it and last night felt thoroughly pissed off with the whole thing as I was told by this incompetent government that we must stay at home, whilst my work tells me we can go out to work in all post codes, even the ones with the South African Variant in it, because we have what is called a “Safe Way of Working” which amounts broadly to doing what we used to do, unless we feel uncomfortable on a job in which case leave that and move to the next one. Its telling that the supplies of hand gel, gloves and masks which we were receiving on a monthly basis ceased about 6 months ago. Thus far, it seems, our company has got away with it, no Covid deaths, but plenty of retirements and one suicide.

Yesterday I went to bed upset and depressed by the position we are in, listening to the news really compounds those feelings, as disparate politician after pleading commentator  after slippery interviewer tries to get a soundbite which they can play back to haunt the speaker; a misguided hopeful comment, sparking the great British Public to grab their already packed suitcases from under the beds and hop on a plane to where ever they can, to escape this hideousness and these frozen wastelands, with thousands dead and millions vaccinated, just to have an ice cold San Miguel under a parasol by the screaming shaped swimming pool, or to have Sex on the Beach, literally, and then a cocktail. 

I know we’re “in this together” but the lack of direction, the lack of leadership and therefore respect of the “leaders” is at an all time low, and yesterday we are told that there could be fines of up to £10000 or prison sentences up to 10 years for breaking the quarantine rules, whilst the people in flats with dangerous flammable cladding are living their prison sentence day to day. I wish I could go back in time to have the benefit of hindsight to see this done all over again, and done properly, like NZ or I wish I could go forward in time to when this is all over and we can get back to something resembling normal. Wishing my life away is a sin, i’m told, by some people, but i’m really struggling being frozen like a dead leaf on the side of the road, only to thaw and then rot away.