Twit & Twittering

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, The C-Word

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of Covid-19 symptoms, must stay at home.

I say ”universally” – obviously, with the exception of Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings who, in an obscure little news story last weekend which you could easily have missed, interpreted it to mean nip back to work, then go home, then travel to Durham, then… Well, you probably know where that (and he) is going don’t you?

I must admit, the story itself when I noticed it on my newsfeed on Saturday morning, didn’t particularly surprise or outrage me. Yet another government figure who thinks they can do what they like, is barely even newsworthy in these cynical times.

What I wasn’t prepared for was all the tweets from senior political figures who weren’t just excusing or supporting, but positively endorsing his actions – to the point where the implication was, anybody who had any kind of issue with them must be some sort of idiot.

So, in case you missed it, the Health Secretary (“It was entirely right… to find childcare for his toddler, when both he and his wife were getting ill”) and the Foreign Secretary (“…an explanation… has been provided: two parents with Coronavirus were anxiously taking care of their young child”) and the Chancellor (“taking care of your wife and young child is justifiable and reasonable”) and the Attorney General (“protecting one’s family is what any good parent does”) and number 10 (“it was essential… to ensure his young child could be properly cared for… His actions were in line with coronavirus guidelines”) and the Leader of the House (“caring for your child is entirely reasonable”) and– well, and whatever role it is that Michael Gove actually fulfils, him too (“caring for your wife and child is not a crime”).

I could not, as Victor Meldrew used to say, believe it! And must admit, spent rather too much time on Twitter moaning and berating to that effect – on the grounds that nobody in their right mind would reach the conclusion they had.

Obviously, it’s risky (or the height of vanity) to assume that everybody thinks the same way you do, but in this case I’m confident that the man on the Clapham omnibus, if given all the facts to look at, and assuming he’s not gone blind from finally being allowed to read Lady Chatterley, would agree that somebody with symptoms of the virus leaving his home to travel halfway across the country, is NOT keeping to the guidelines which say that if you have symptoms of the virus you should stay at home.

One week and a press conference later, we are of course no further forward, and without wanting to use leading or biased language, he has got away with it. Frankly, from the moment when the ranks of ministers popped up to nail their colours to the mast it was clear they couldn’t possibly get rid of Mr Cummings (even if they’d wanted to before then) because it would mean that their judgement was at fault too.

And that’s the aspect which really wound me up about the whole affair. I don’t actually care whether Mr Cummings keeps his job or not, but what it has highlighted is the extremely poor judgement, the questionable decision-making abilities being exercised by the PM, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, the Health Minister, and all the rest of them.

Which would be bad enough in the normal course of things. In these very abnormal times, over the next week or two, based on the decisions and judgements of those people, schools will be opened, and shops, and sporting venues; people will be encouraged to go out and more often and for longer and with more interaction…

In other words, we’ll all be putting our faith and trust, and ultimately that means our lives and our loved ones’ lives, in the hands of people who’ve shown themselves singularly undeserving of, and unsuited to, such a responsibility.

I’m afraid I just can’t see the sense (or sensibility) in that.

Should I Laugh or Cry?

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, The C-Word

I’m pleased at getting an ABBA song into the title, but just to warn you it’ll be downhill from here.

In common with the legendary Scandinavian pop-sensations, I am feeling ambivalent. Or plain confused, maybe. That is to say, I find myself unsure what I should be feeling, and how I should be reacting.

Is it OK to say, for example, I’m pleased to hear the Prime Minister is out of ICU and recovering (even though it’s clearly going to be a longer haul than we were initially led to believe)? Or should I not allow his illness to detract from holding him to account over the ongoing issues around insufficient supplies to the NHS, and inadequate levels of testing?

Am I allowed to be reassured by the fact that the vast majority of us have, as instructed, shut ourselves away, going out only if necessary, and then only sparingly? Or should I be angry that these restrictions aren’t being enforced more strictly, or weren’t introduced more quickly?

Bringing it right to the heart of the matter: should I have spent yesterday afternoon gardening, which left me with an incredibly short lawn and an unappealingly smug sense of a job well done; or should I have been in some kind of mourning for the 980 people listed as having died that day? And again today, am I wrong to have been innocently occupied in mopping the kitchen and singing along to Pick of the Pops, when another 917 people have died?

It’s knowing what I should be feeling, to be frank, which is troubling me, or confusing me (or ambivalenting me, if you insist) because I’m fortunate enough (at time of writing, natch) not to have been personally affected by this.

Well, obviously that’s not quite true, nobody is leading an entirely unaltered lifestyle. But if the worst that happens to me is that I have to work from home, and can only go shopping once a week, then… frankly, it’s very hard to put any kind of negative spin on that at all.

So in terms of real impact, I’ve not (at time of writing) been affected. I’m a bit like a man who’s just fallen off a twelve-storey building, and is currently dropping past the eighth floor. Clearly I’m in the middle of a bad situation and it may not end well – but at the moment if anybody should stick their head out the window to ask how I am, I’d have to say so far so good.

For the hospital workers, and for the families of the nigh-on ten thousand victims so far (I’m also troubled by how glibly I’ve typed out that staggering figure, and how ‘easily’ we have reached it) their feeling towards the situation is clearly determined by the ill-fortune which has forced them to confront it head on.

But for the rest of us that hasn’t happened (at time of writing) and rightly or wrongly that gives us licence, indeed in a sense it absolutely requires us, to carry on. Not carry on exactly as normal of course, but carry on carrying on with our daily, run-of-the-mill lives, gardening and mopping and, yes, and singing along to the radio.

Still I feel… I feel I should feel something, when I’m mowing the lawn, or machete-ing through brambles, against a backdrop of almost a thousand deaths per day. Of course it’s shocking, but in the same way as the Hillsborough or the Herald of Free Enterprise tragedies were shocking, or even the Twin Tower attacks – it’s a response to the event as a whole, not grief over any individual.

I’m comforted at least by the fact that the few people I’ve seen (at a distance) and spoken to (at volume) this week have been similarly composed, enjoying the weather, gardening or otherwise occupying themselves reading a book, watching TV, or whatever. Nobody dressed in black, or speaking in hushed tones, or wailing.  So, at least I’m not alone.

I suppose, given the implications of the alternative, there are worse fates than to remain ambivalent.

So far, so good. (At time of writing.)

Within These Walls

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in The C-Word, Work

I’ve been sent home from work!

I was sent home from school once, when the nit nurse told me and my little friends that we had to leave. And over the years I’ve left work unexpectedly for many reasons: accident, power cut, redundancy, childbirth. (Is it me, or did I go a bit ‘Tom Baker’s speech in The Ark of Space’ there?)

But it’s none of those this time (especially not childbirth!) It is of course the dreaded virus.

I don’t have it, I hasten to add before you leap the statutory two metres back from your computer screens – but after Monday’s blunt “work from home if it is at all possible” speech from number ten I went into the office on Tuesday morning to be told that it is (possible).

I needed a little bit of training on how to access work’s computer from home, but luckily my colleague is much, much smarter than me on that score, clever enough that he could talk an idiot through it in five minutes – and so five minutes later, with a big wad of paperwork under my arm, I left. I have to admit, I felt unexpectedly emotional as I drove slowly back down the road with Let It Be echoing in my ears. (They were playing it on the radio you understand, my colleagues didn’t spontaneously pipe me off with a haunting acappella version).

I’ve never worked from home before, but I knew instinctively that in order to avoid it becoming an excuse to be lazy (and I don’t always need that good of an excuse, frankly) I would need to establish a clear schedule for myself.

At the risk of sounding smug, in just a few days I think I’ve settled into a pretty strong routine. First thing in the morning I check for new emails in my dressing-gown (yes I know, strange place to have… well, you can see where that’s going). Then there’s the board-meeting with the dogs. Following a bit of spreadsheet jiggery-pokery (because frankly, who doesn’t love a spreadsheet) it’s time for the lunchtime video-conferencing with my colleagues in Erinsborough and Weatherfield. And, well, before you know it, it’s time to clock off and have tea.

I jest of course (well, mainly) and in fact it is taking a bit of adjusting to. The flipside of the modern technology that enables me to be working from home is a partly-irrational sense of being constantly ‘visible’. There isn’t a webcam or a phone tracker logging my every move; I’m not expecting to get my payslip next month with a huge chuck of time deducted for every time I’ve walked over to the biscuit tin; and frankly, lockdown or not, I’m not convinced my boss would have ever suggested I work from home if he didn’t think I’d actually do any work. But at the same time, there’s a constant sense of needing to demonstrate that I am taking the instruction to work at home seriously, and not just interpreting it as meaning ‘Upstairs Downstairs marathon’.

Despite that, though, I suspect the usual distinction between home and work time will become blurred for the duration. As a rule it’s clearly defined by the ten mile journey between the two but now that’s meaningless. I don’t normally work Fridays (I know that sounds a bit like the old “How many people work here?” “About half of them” joke; what I mean is, I don’t normally go to work on a Friday) but today I’ve been able to do just an hour in the morning and another hour late this afternoon. In the normal course of events that would be impossible, unless I swanned in partway through the day in an “It’s only Sonia!” kind of way. Keying in or crunching numbers, even replying to emails, doesn’t actually require office hours, or even daylight – and I suspect I may end up doing an hour or two in the evenings instead.

Frankly I could stay up till 1am and do all my work then couldn’t I – I mean, it’s not like I need to get up to go to work in the morning!!

Keep safe. X

Going Viral

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Family, Little Bit Of Politics, The C-Word, TV

Coronavirus is a bit like Kennedy’s assassination.

I don’t mean that everyone remembers where they were when they caught it; and unlike certain corners of the Chinese administration, I’m not blaming it on the CIA either. No, in fact I’m recalling David Frost being interviewed about how they’d put together TW3 the weekend of Kennedy’s assassination.

As a big news story, they couldn’t just ignore it, but equally it hardly screamed ‘comedy gold’. So, he said, they decided they would deal with JFK’s death for the first five or ten minutes, and then get back to ‘business as usual’ with the rest of the news.

It quickly became apparent, he went on, there wasn’t any other news.*

And that (a mere hundred or so words later) is what I meant, when comparing the two at the top of the page.

Because there isn’t any other news at the moment. The race for the Democratic nomination is now, what candidate Biden said about the coronavirus; the debate about whether Trump is fit for office or not, has become criticism over his response to the coronavirus; even our dear old friend Brexit has been reduced to, should the negotiations be delayed because of (you guessed it) the coronavirus.

It’s a global story – but one with the potential to become a very personal one in an instant. It’s difficult to get one’s head around statements like “another 133 dead”. But it’s very easy to imagine (indeed, to dwell on) what might happen if my Gran gets it, say, or Bernard next door who has had lung cancer.

I’ve chosen those examples very carefully, in that my grandparents all passed away some years ago; and I don’t know anybody called Bernard. But that’s really only an avoidance technique because less abstractly, my parents are both in their seventies (and, although I suspect he still thinks we don’t know, actually we DO know that when Dad pops to the garage it’s for a cigarette); and my brother in his early fifties is both asthmatic and diabetic.

In other words, all three of them are in what the media has given the less than comforting tag of “the high-risk category.” The regular comment that fatalities seem to be confined to the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions is all very well, but it’s hardly reassuring if you’re elderly or have a pre-existing medical condition…

At time of writing at least, none of them are reporting any illness, and as yet I’m not aware of any cases in our area at all. But that entire sentence is, as they say, subject to change – and things seem to be changing so rapidly.

For all that though, if it wasn’t for the constant news bulletins, and the newspaper headlines, and my colleague at work who is almost obsessively fascinated by the information available on the spread of the disease (which is fine, but only up to a point – it’s good to be informed, not always nice to be reminded); if it wasn’t for all that, in day-to-day life I don’t think I’d be aware that anything was going on.

The British have a reputation for ‘keeping calm and carrying on’ – although before we get too cocky about that, it’s not always been on show this past week. Loo roll was the first (inexplicable) thing to suffer panic-buying followed, at least based on local observation, by stockpiling of dried pasta and onions. I have to say, a diet consisting of just that is a horror which none of the many entries into the ‘post-apocalyptic’ movie genre has ever dwelled on, but it would certainly explain why Max was so Mad.

In general, though, at ground level we are, if not keeping entirely calm, at least carrying on. Other than a great deal more attention to handwashing this week, I’m not aware of anybody having made much of a lifestyle change. And I was in an odd way filled with a little flush of patriotic fervour when ‘variations on a theme’ of the government-issue handwash poster appeared online, with the default ‘Happy Birthday’ replaced with everything from ‘Ooh Ahh Just A Little Bit’ to ‘God Save The Queen’.**

My own particular favourite, incidentally, was the version set not to a song but to Davros’ “such power would set me up amongst the Gods” rant from part 5 of Genesis of the Daleks. Given the somewhat megalomaniacal edge to it, I’ve not had the nerve to adopt it, so instead I’ve been washing to Colin Baker’s character-defining “Ten billion years of absolute power” tirade from The Trial of a Time Lord part 13, which I’m clocking in at around 22 seconds.

I don’t know of (m)any other countries where this would happen. Obviously in some it would be considered insurrectionist to interfere with Government documentation, but even in, say, the US and other lands of the free where you wouldn’t be shot for it, I’m not sure the national psyche is quite so attuned to that sort of small-scale irreverence.

At least it’s made us all very aware of the need for cleanliness, even if it’s a shame that there’s not much more we can do apart from wash our hands. Well, wash our hands, bin our tissues, avoid excessive contact, keep our loved ones safe – and wait. As the token ‘not too old, and irritatingly healthy’ one in the family, I’ve offered to shop for my parents if it gets to the stage where they’d prefer (or are told!) not to go out; and at the other end of the scale I gather that the Queen has cancelled her forthcoming appointments. So it seems, on this occasion at least, that we really are all in it together.

Because, I suppose, we all breathe the same air – and we are all mortal.

Stay safe. X

*Which is why the programme was different that week to any other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_the_Week_That_Was#Kennedy_tribute The whole thing is well worth a read if you have time, the bit about The Third Man is especially entertaining.

**Credit where it’s due, the genius behind the hand-washing poster variants is a teenager from Northamptonshire: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-51823214  We salute you, sir.

There’s Nothing New Under The Sun

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Writing

I’ve got a new phone.

Whenever this happens my wife insists on getting a screen protector for it, and this time was no different. It makes sense of course, I know that – in fact I’ve only needed to replace my old phone because its screen protector broke (giving its life in the line of duty) and then before a new one could be fitted, the screen (now unprotected) broke too.

Nevertheless, when I came home on Wednesday to find the screen protector for my new, Trump-baiting Huawei phone had arrived, I must admit my heart sank; and sure enough when my other half got back from work soon afterwards, literally her first action was to demand my phone and to render its screen duly protected.

I don’t know why I resent the whole screen protector thing – well, I do, but it’s wholly irrational. There’s something about the newy newness of a bright, clear, new phone screen that is in someway tarnished, or at least diminished, by being placed behind a protector. It’s the same kind of minuscule bereavement when the first icon is put on the desktop of a brand-new computer, or the first footprint into a fall of snow.

Of course I know nothing can stay new forever. But knowing it isn’t quite the same as accepting it. There’s something hard to explain about the appeal of newness, whether it’s the semi-mythical ‘new car smell’ or the electric buzz of a new relationship. Or the shiny-but-unprotected pixels of a new phone.

“After the passion fades,” my Dad told us before we were married (this was his pep-talk in his role as officiating minister, I hasten to add, it wasn’t an awkward after-dinner conversation) –“After the passion fades, there’s a great joy in companionship and support.” That’s true, and no doubt if it had been ten years later he would have used the analogy of a new and ‘naked’ phone screen versus the wisdom of applying a screen protector.

New things carry with them a sense of unbounded possibility, whether that’s in the excited imagining of what might happen on that first date, to all the ludicrous things promised in adverts for mobile phones. But it’s not real, and when the newness wears off, when the passion fades, is when we get to the truth of things. It’s nice to have a shiny phone… but one that works when it’s needed, where the reminders pop up on time, where it gets a signal when I really need to make a call, is much more useful.

Even this blog, which started last year with a hoover repair and almost started this year with a washing-machine repair until my wife (at a bit of a loose end without any phones in need of protecting) interceded and did it while I was at work; even this blog isn’t new any more. The notion of adding to it weekly lasted quite a while, but in truth when I’m moaning about TV programmes or praising The Sound of Music there’s a clear element of padding to it, a bit of classic Doctor Who third episode ‘running up and down corridors, getting locked up/escaping/getting locked up again’.

I don’t want to let it disappear completely, but it turns out I don’t have burning issues to address every week – so I should blog when I need to, not because I have to. The passion has faded, the newness and novelty has faded, now it’s got to have a reason and a purpose. We’ll see how that goes.

After all, it’s a new year now, I don’t want to just… phone it in.

Advent #24

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

I’ve left this a bit late, as anybody with any sense will of course already be in bed. I must admit I never entirely understood the logic of ‘getting to bed early otherwise Santa won’t come’ – and, call me a daredevil risk taker if you like, but I’m still awake and not worried about it at all!

Much to my surprise, this Christmas has been largely worry-free and in fact pleasingly low key. We’ve not gone mad with present or food buying, and even at work today there was a ‘just another day at the office’ feel to proceedings (even allowing for the appearance and subsequent rapid disappearance of a pile of Quality Street).

Christmas Eve is often a mad domesticated dash to the finish line – and while it’s true that this evening has seen the vegetables peeled and the stuffing alchemised into existence, the usual frantic cleaning regime has simply not materialised. Usually I have an unavoidable urge to hoover and scrub everything as though we’re going on parade – but this year that urgency has simply not arrived, despite the fact that… well, I wouldn’t say Curnow Towers is a mess exactly, but nor would I say it was especially tidy.

And yet, a little Christmas Miracle if you will, it’s not niggling at me at all. I hope somebody appreciates the extraordinary theological pun that ends this sentence, when I say that this casual attitude to the usual frenetic cleaning might be me wishing upon myself a ‘Mary Christmas’, as opposed to a Martha one.

Clearly, now I’ve resorted to puns like that, it’s way past time for me to sign off and shut up. Thankfully, there’s just time, and word count, enough to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Now, quick, off to bed with you…

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

For many years my grandparents opened their presents on a Christmas Eve.

In hindsight it was rather reckless telling us that, because as children we might well have thought they were onto a good thing and started nagging to be allowed to do the same. In their case, I don’t think it was unbearable excitement, it was more likely pragmatism – Grandpa might well have had a sermon to deliver in the morning (or, in a previous life, a reindeer in need of emergency shoeing) and Gran would certainly have had some cooking to do. So getting the tedious chore of unwrapping done and out the way early was probably a good move.

Certainly, it gives you something to do on Christmas Eve rather than hanging around all a-jitter like an expectant parent in the delivery suite. As a kid it seemed an unbearably slow drag of a day, although “luckily” adult life has saved us from the misery of a Christmas Eve just waiting for things to get started, by giving us jobs to go to. I’ve one day left, after which as far as I’m concerned that’ll be work finished for the year.

Of course, some sisters-in-law (and other people probably) have to work over Christmas. It looks lovely on TV, manning a hotel reception desk with a plate of mince pies and a sherry-induced glow; or cheery nurses, a stick of holly jauntily hanging from their non-regulation santa hats, joining the patients for impromptu carol singing amid cries of ‘mince pie, stat’ – but in the real world I suspect that, frankly, it’s a pain in the butt.

So to all those working over Christmas, good on you, I hope that it’s really appreciated. And to the rest of us, who AREN’T:  Brace yourselves, here we go!  

Advent #22

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

We’ve been tucking into a box of Celebrations at work this week, donated by a grateful customer; and although not exactly a rigorous scientific study, it’s nevertheless interesting that we all to a man dislike the Bounty. Which means of course that we now have a Celebrations tub containing eleven Bounties and a solitary Snickers that won’t make it past first break on Monday.

Obviously we’ve asked the question (not of the Mars Incorporated organisation, more in a rhetorical sense of a cold unfeeling universe) why they bother putting Bounties in there at all. It’s the same dilemma that I remember with Quality Street from the Christmasses of my youth – given that there is going to be a sad collection of blue ones left all alone in the bottom of the tin come New Year, why include them in the first place?

Thankfully this is the 21st Century, and society has arrived at a solution. Namely, buy Heroes instead. Granted they’re not ideal for Mrs C (them being all milk chocolate, and her being all lactose intolerant) but between my daughter (Dairy Milk, Fudge and Creme Egg Twisted) and me (all those, and all the others as well) we can manage to empty the entire tub without leaving any embarrassingly unloved also-rans.

As luck would have it, there is a large tub of Heroes in the kitchen cupboard not twelve feet from where I’m currently sat – albeit with an implicit ‘not to be opened until Christmas Day’ warning applied to it. So come Christmas afternoon, Miss Curnow and I, and if they’re quick off the mark our houseguests too, will likely make short work of them and eat the lot!

Living the dream, my friends. Living the dream.  

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be a time for family, so I was shocked yesterday to discover that my wife’s Auntie Bessie has turned against her, and now puts lactose in her frozen Yorkshire Puddings. I’m not sure what’s prompted this falling-out (unless she spotted us buying McCain oven chips that time) but it means we’ll have to resort to cooking Yorkshires from scratch on Wednesday.

In all honesty, I like to ‘cook my own’ at Christmas anyway, not just YPs but roast potatoes too. I use the “brief parboil/shake to roush up the edges/put ‘em in” method, and the duck fat generally crisps them up well – although no matter how diligently I place them on their edges, there’s always some that feel the need to cling protectively to the baking tray when it comes time to get them out. I of course cover up this fact by eating the ones with torn undercarriages myself.

As for the Yorkshires, I get the fat really hot and all looks well going in… but as the Puddings rise up and emerge from their recesses it always reminds me of those horror films where some hideous,  unstoppable blob just keeps on coming. It may also be true (possibly a hangover from my bachelor days when the best way to make sure something was cooked was to leave it in the oven until it starts to burn) that they often stay in a little longer, and come out a little darker, than is strictly necessary.

Despite all that, though, there’s something about making the extra effort which seems entirely appropriate for the season. And I’ve not had any complaints so far. Well, not many. Well, nobody has offered to cook instead – so I’m going to take that as a win!

Advent #20

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas

I don’t want to set myself up as some sort of guru (unless there are any tax breaks for doing so). I’ve only passed on two pieces of wisdom to my daughter in her twenty-two-and-a-half years: how to blow bubbles with a straw, and always to give a straight answer to the question “tea or coffee?”. And I’ve probably taught my wife even less.

Yet by osmosis if nothing else, some small degree of tact has been passed on. I appreciate that may sound improbable (especially to anybody who knows her) and in fact I hadn’t quite realised it myself until a few years ago.

I bought her the DVD of Pan’s Labyrinth for Christmas, and all seemed fine until several months later when I discovered it hidden away in a cupboard. I was baffled, and may even have done that double-take thing that people do on TV, because I could also see the same DVD still out on the shelf!

I had, of course, bought something she already had – and she had declined to tell me, actually hidden the duplicate away. So as to spare my feelings!

It works both ways, mind you. An earlier Christmas, Mrs C bought me the complete Rising Damp on DVD – having mixed up Leonard Rossiter in Reggie Perrin (which I love) with Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp (which I cannot stand). I was not only similarly tactful, I actually worked my way through several episodes before finally giving up.

We’ve all had presents we weren’t all that enamoured of – and, logically speaking we must also all have given presents that the recipient didn’t like. Thankfully society has provided us with a solution. So, while tact and good manners get us through Christmas, eBay and the Charity Shop help us get through the New Year.