Who’s Leading Us Out Of The Coronavirus Mess?

It seems as though every country is currently exiting Corona lockdown in some form or another. For Europe and the US this has come in the nick of time for the annual beach binge as the end of May marks the beginning of summer.

Huge bets have been staked on exit directives holding up and people acting responsibly. ‘Social distancing has to be maintained’ is the new battle cry for 21st Century leaders and their weary law enforcers. Have they seen how packed some of these beaches have gotten? Mind you, the strategy might work, after all who wants to get too close to sweaty, dripping, half baked sun worshipers on New Jersey board walks.

Our leaders are clearly frayed and fatigued from the lockdown stage of the battle against Covid-19 but they would do well to pace themselves as the next phase of the war could prove even more challenging. First they have to successfully reopen without second waves of the pandemic and, talking about waves, they need to get football back on tap. Yep, we need footie like we dream of an ice cold Corona. And let’s face it, leaders need to find some popular(ist) stuff to help their depressed and weary citizens find joy and fun and all things Dom in the spirit of holiday entertainment (not).

But, enough of us lowly citizens. How are our poor leaders faring? I mean, why care about ourselves when we could be mostly concerned about them? Like a puppy dog excitedly chasing a toilet roll after it’s somewhat benevolent owner.

It seems that world leaders wellbeing falls into one of two camps. They’re either female, full of love and compassion and generally in the glow so doing quite well or their male, a bit petulant, slow in and perhaps a little rapido pulling out so generally red faced with frustration. What’s new?

If you were to paint a stark, simplistic picture of leadership types in modern germ warfare you would have to say that women seem to come out on top. And tippy top of the ‘Hottest Tackler of Corona 2020’ has to be New Zealand, Taiwan and Germany – all led by women.

Bottom of the rankings sit USA, Brazil, Russia and the UK all run by men. And, perhaps I should add, a certain kind of man, or is it two in the UK. One who perhaps enjoys their own company more than any other, that find the image of themselves in that mirror more compelling than Mona Lisa or Madonna or Kim just not Kim Yong Ding Dong. Leaders that need golf and shooting and photoshopped jogging pants so long as it’s all in the name of good photo opps.

They have children, sometimes on purpose and mostly after a bender, which is why they can’t seem to remember where they’ve all gotten to, so they embrace us citizens as though we’re their children presumably because it’s easier than tracking down the real ones. They’re the master of the mass hug. You know like Joaquin Pheonix in Gladiator or the slightly confused kid in the horror film that accidentally squished the puppy he so lovingly held. Hopefully not the same one chasing the toilet roll.

When the macho leaders kids, er citizens, get caught misbehaving they’re naturally bounced off to boarding school or Coventry or fruit picking duties cos apparently no one else can do it. They sack ministers as fast as Astra Zeneca presells futures on vaccines, unless, of course, you’re Bozzer for Dom like Russia with Love. They take question time like a three year old takes a telling off – not particularly well.

And when it all comes crashing down – which in the end it always does and their self imposed satire comes to an end – they’ll want us to love them even more and will not understand (with a stamping foot) why we might not want them around anymore. Like that mirror in Dorian Grey; why, oh why, do we smash them away.

Mind you there might be another way. There might be an exit plan for these poor overworked neo-bunnies. There could be a way through this Corona mess. They just need to get that gender transitioning operation and come back as Jacinda Ardern.

In the meantime I’ll dream of New Zealand. More Jacinda with Love than Russia with Love.

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Hope in the Time of Coronavirus

Hope in the time of Coronavirus has been in short supply. Lockdown loonies combined with the incessant, daily pandemic curve-watching mixed up with our precondition of job loss terror has unleashed a perfect storm for our fragile souls. And this mega storm has created a national wellbeing crisis. One that needs a different kind of leadership – a leadership of hope.

You see, when we’re all feeling a little depressed we need small, incremental green shoots, particularly as we’re heading towards the second half of lockdown loonies. Cos with the benefit of hindsight it seems that around four weeks is our limit before lockdownitis truly sets in. The walls start closing in, the routine starts to feel a little, well, routine-like and we start reliving weird apocalyptic zombie movies in our nightly dreams that are just starting to feel a little too, like, possible. Enough I hear you shout! Time to snap out of it! Time to start thinking differently, to pick ourselves up, to shake off those lockdown blues. Time to stop staring at endless news conferences in the hope that, well, there might just be the vaguest amount of hope. Time to think about a new tomorrow, a better tomorrow and most important of all time to get back to McDonald’s.

You see, we can put up with the endless negative news cycles and the stay at home teens firing up testosterone like it was a chain saw in our left ear. We can handle Donnie and Bozzer banging on and off – mostly off. One being Mr time off and the other just off the rocker. We can take the military style operation of a weekly shop or drive to pick up gas or goddamned exercise in dodging everyone else to perform the perfect social distancing dance in a napkin sized so called community park with not a lot of the community bit left given the gestapo gangs of do gooders taking pics of us getting one inch too close to other earthly beings while dodging rabied dogs snarling at our proverbial heels. We can even take the new roadblock vigilantes straight out of the cast of Hot Fuzz that keep us from going too far to take a walk or jog or simply to go have sex in a forest. Doesn’t everyone do that? And talking about Hot Fuzz, have you met our local villagers? But while we can take all of this, we cannot, cannot, cannot take another friggin second without our Big Mac and fries.

Where’s the leadership of hope from Mickey D? They just keep telling us not yet. Not yet. What the f*** is not yet! Endlessly bombarding us with this horrifically over used Corona statement ‘not yet’ doesn’t solve a goddamned thing. Just cos every politician uses it doesn’t make it right. And they only us ‘not yet’ cos it’s French for I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in my government cos it’s such a friggin crap shoot of chaos right now that ‘not yet’ is as good a statement as your gonna get from me and in any case who thought getting elected meant we had to make decisions in the first place. And btw ‘not yet’ is only as overused as every goddamned Coronavirus statement from EVERY single venue or hotel or attraction or National Trust joint starting with ‘It is with a heavy heart that we have to close for now…’ What the f***, did they all just cut and paste the same friggin statement. They pay the bosses of these joints like cash went out of fashion (which it will soon but that’s another matter) and the closest they can get to writing a goddamned customer statement on the front of their website is a cut and f*** you paste.

But, getting back to the immediate Mickey D issue, how friggin long does it take to do socially distanced drive through or take out or just goddamned click and collect. You see I’m willing to let any politician we can still remember the name of, given Donnie and Bozzer hog EVERY airwave like a Corona virus on a pollution particle, take every last shred of rights from me but I’m not prepared to go another day without my McDonald’s. I mean there has to be some kind of limit right? There has to be a line – and that line could even extend to a friggin queue across London just to be able to exercise my inalienable right to chew on shit from Mickey D.

And that, in the end, is why we need a new kind of leadership. A leadership of hope. The thing that has gotten clearer and clearer from this pandemic is that the old fashioned Putin style, populist, white male, autocratic leader type that thrives off fear and flag and slightly strange free press semantics where the truth is as popular as the Coronavirus, is dead. And when I say dead I don’t just mean Kim Jon Ding-dong, I mean ALL of these old style leaders in government, in corporates and in life. And I guess to wrap this all up in a McWrapper what I’m really trying to say is that we should invest our time not just in finding a virus for this little Corona fella but also on a major Jacinda cloning programme so we can get Arderns running every government and corporate and mostly running McDonald’s. You see, if Jacinda was running things right now, I’d be sitting down at my local Mickey D swigging a chocolate shake soaking up a good old fashioned burger and fries while listening to Jacinda on McTV telling me that everything was going to be just fine. And I wouldn’t need to believe a goddamned word she said cos it wouldn’t matter two hoots of a Corona infected bat so long as I could hang out at my kinda heaven – Mickey D heaven.

McNewNorm really can be as simple as that.

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Patience During the Coronavirus Lockdown

As a number of countries reach the mid point of the harsh (we hope) version of the Coronavirus lockdown I thought we should examine patience. After all, we’re gonna need it.

Patience is something we have to relearn cos let’s face it none of us have it any more. We’ve all pretty much gotten the saintly virtue bashed out of us by, well, life. I mean, how in Mahatma Gandhi are we supposed to remain calm and zen like and mr mystic-yogi-go-round-like-an-anorexic-loony-in-a-loin-cloth when we have to put up with CNN 24 hours a day, emails banging at our smartphone like a friggin woodpecker on coke, the bosses ragging on us like we never dumped the parents all while the debts on those damned pay day loans have us perpetually charging around at 3,000 goddamned miles per hour just to keep up with the blasted interest rates/debt collectors/online bank manager avatar and perhaps worse of all – the wife nagging. And all of that acts merely as the day time precursor to a hell bent sleepless night (I wish I was in Seattle) with the twin toddlers blaring away in my left ear like a Harley Davidson with a sawn off exhaust.

So now, like the invisible crack hand, along comes Covid-19 solely to add yet another (like we needed it) stress tanker of fuel to the manic wildfire (sorry Australia) of our clearly non patient lives – even if for one second we put aside the minor, miniature, irrelevant reprieve from the debt collector who’s gone strangely Corona quiet and my Damian like bosses who shut my frigging smartphone email up right after they delivered a warp speed, Harley sized, boot up the ass trip to benefits town presumably so the owner-likes of Philip Green/Richard Branson/Mike Ashley can just keep living in the style they’re so entitled er accustomed to. But heyho, who cares, certainly not Donald or Boris.

I do, though, have some good news for you and let’s face it we need a little cos so long as the above dynamic duo keep managing things as they are we’ll all have the curve flattened on our life expectancy meaning a swift goodbye to us (which is not the good news) but might also mean bye bye debt collector’s, bosses, bankers, CNN news presenters or whatever (and this could be the good news). Saying that, if this doesn’t come to pass then no worries at all cos we’ll just get back to good ol’ life as usual stressed and miserable as hell. What though, say you, is the good news if the latter kicks in? Well der, it’s obviously that the second wave of Covid-19 means it mutates to the point where it only targets rear-line workers like debt collectors, bankers, bosses and the dynamic duo. Tara!

Saying all this, I still believe there could be another way. There might be a more cosmic, karmic, saintly, dare I say even God like solution to this whole Coronastress life bouncing right back at ya to shitty normal thing. Cos one day, as if by some hand of acid taking fate, Coronavirus might wake up and get fed up to hell being stuck in our slightly pathetic, manic, hyper wired, last person on earth to actually still shop at the Gap, self-centrico, Kardashian watching bodies and sod off to another planet where the inhabitants are less, well, like us. You know, where marijuana’s legal. And if for some bizarre reason that doesn’t happen we can just go and get religion/foraging/yogic/a life/rid of the Donnie and Boris act or an oven to stick our heads in.

I think I’ll go download that podcast on the three minute guide to wellbeing by the Kardashians.

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Wellbeing Survival Tips for the Coronavirus Lockdown

I was watching one of those popular news channel shows when they ran a section on wellbeing tips for surviving the Coronavirus lockdown. It got me thinking (which is generally a dangerous thing).

Here are some of the wellbeing tips from the nice lady: 1. Don’t gorge on Coronavirus news and get info overload. And to be honest she kinda had me at that one. I mean how in Ted Turners sake are we supposed to dodge Covid-19 news – it’s friggin everywhere. It’s plastered all over the TV, Internet, email inboxes, Whatsapp yacks, social media, telephone chats with ANYONE and family chit chats. So I guess where she was heading was we should dump the broadband, TV, cable, satellite, mobile phone, land-line AND conversations with the family – OK, now I’m kinda listening. It would also sure take social distancing to a whole new level and presumably leave us talking to the dog which I noticed I was starting to do in any case – I mean how in the world else am I supposed to dodge the inane socio-babble with the teens. It may also prove just how clever this wellbeing lady might actually be. Or maybe not. Take a look at her second piece of wellbeing advice.

2. Make sure you have as many virtual social interactions as possible. Which probably means she’s an investor in Zoom. Or maybe not given we’ve already taken her first piece of advice by now and have no phone, broadband, Skype or Whatsapp. Which is though saving us a tonne of money and reminding us just how powerful ‘the sound of silence’ actually is and how wellbeing smart those Simon and Garfunkel guys really were and maybe they should be giving us wellbeing advice instead or maybe they already have and we just need to listen to all their songs which of course I can’t friggin do as I dumped the goddamned broadband. Mind you thanks to her advice I have at least gotten really good at hacking into the neighbours Wi-Fi and cable box.

Anyhoo, her next piece of wellbeing advice went a little like this: 3. Go out into nature as often as possible. Which is a real kick in the pants for pretty much everyone as let’s face it luvvy we all live in shoebox apartments with windows jammed shut thanks to the smog thing and the closest we get to outdoor space is the cats litter tray. So I guess that means get out onto the streets and parks and hit the yoga mat to meditate which leads straight to getting arrested for ‘sunbathing’, getting ass dumped in jail for kinda screaming that I was actually yoga mat exercising and go catch Coronavirus in jail cos let’s face it it’s kinda hard to do the social distancing thingy in there.

The last titbit I remember was wellbeing tip number 4. Gather as a family as often as possible to generally chat, play and meet. You’re friggin joking right. Have you met my Damian family?? I mean a chat has some friggin way of always turning into some whine or winge or teenage-style-endless-friggin-list-of-reasons-why-friends-are-bitchin-Netflix-ain’t-ever-got-enough-shows-my-buddys-all-have-the-iphone11x-so-where-the-frig-is-mine-oh-and-school-is-just-as-lame-online. So the only possible reason for this last (thank Damian) piece of well(not)being advice is presumably cos the nice wellbeing lady doesn’t have a family or she doesn’t have a brain or she’s hard of hearing and keeps that hearing device handily turned off. Well I can tell you, not in this house. Here we pray for the moment our ears get stood on by a buffalo so we get hearing devices and make sure they’re permanently shut off.

But thanks for those wellbeing tips. Really. Oh, and for the family wellbeing meeting bit see my last post.

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Surviving the weekly shop during Coronavirus lockdown

The weekly shop during Coronavirus lockdown takes on a whole new meaning. There’s just so much more we have to think about. Can I go in my pj’s? Is it a bit pretentious to wear the hazmat suit? Can I avoid taking the kids as they’re driving me nuts by now and the thought of lockdown shopping without them gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Or maybe it’s that ‘I’ve-got-a-Coronavirus-temperature’ kinda warm feeling meaning its my turn to waste away in basement hell for fourteen days which in turn means we can’t do the weekly shop even if we wanted to.

And what happens if I bump into a police blockade on the way to the shops. Do I a) approach, wind the window down and shout at the roadblock police really loudly while remaining in the car to minimise the chance of breaking social distancing rule/law/rule-of-law, b) freak out cos that broken wing mirror which I can’t get fixed for love nor money since no friggin’ garage is open will likely lead to one of those ass bending body frisks which when you duck to avoid ends in a tazering-cum-incarceration which ensures that the whole social distancing thing goes totally out the window sharing a cell with a bunch of really scary looking dudes, c) chuck a 180 degree handbrake turn (car handbrake not the wife) and head the other way as quickly as I can without making it look tots inconspics (my daughter taught me that one too – I mean the ‘tots inconspics’ bit and not the handbrake part in case any police are reading this).

Then, once we get to the shops how in friggs name do we follow the social distancing rule/law thing. After all, we’ve been told that if we’re out in the streets and we see others coming our way and there’s more than one of us, we should dodge the oncomers by heading onto the road – which presumably means getting run over is now safer than getting infected. But how does that work in a supermarket aisle I mean are we supposed to scramble up the shelving units to avoid people or do we turn-face and rapido head the other way until we bump into another bunch of people coming from the other end of the aisle meaning we have to climb those damned shelves in any case.

And what’s this new advice about walking as a ‘bubble’ on the streets if we’re out as a family – with the head of the family in the middle – creating a whole new argument about who in the world’s the head of this family and even if we could figure that one out which we sure as hell won’t how do we figure out the move as a co-ordinated, cohesive family ‘bubble’ to avoid others and how, in the supermarket, does a ‘bubble’ climb the shelves? Unless, of course, by ‘bubble’ they mean a family size hazmat suit.

I think I’ll just stay at home. We can always eat the dog.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Surviving Coronavirus Lockdown

Apparently a third of the world’s population is currently in lockdown which says a lot about the current state of democracy. But, as my daughter says, ‘anyhoo’, which I guess means means let’s flip the channel from CNN to the Kardashians.

But how do we actually survive our very own lockdown. Not how Tom Hanks or Boris Johnson or that really famous model wandering around in a hazmat suit (which I guess is mobile lockdown). And not how Donald Trump survives lockdown (wishful thinking) but how we, you know, normal folk of the world actually survive it.

Cos from what I can see this is the only bullet proof approach to survival: lock yourself (and your family) in your home, throw away the key so NONE of you can EVER leave, figure out how to make your food last 6 months to be super safe (we hope…), buy earplugs to deal with the kids thing, buy anything to deal with the wife thing just make sure buying doesn’t break rule 1 or 2, call your mother every day so you don’t need earplugs to deal with the mother thing, and when the food runs out eat the cat, then the dog, then the rodents, than, but only then and as a very last resort eat the kids which at the every least deals with the kids thing.

And that pretty much sums up how to survive lockdown. Oh, and if we do survive this Coronavirus thing (and not the drink that sounds kinda like it) then remember you heard it first here. Yep, spread the word on survival like your spreading your last peanut butter sandwich. God that makes me hungry…

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.