surviving – Philip Letts

Fires Raging, Disorder Spreading, Greta Rules

2nd Jun 20202nd Jun 2020 by lettsgroup

Admit it, we’ve all been a little fixated by the recent uptick in social unrest. We’ve had a few flavours to chose from this time around, whether it’s the US protests, the Hong Kong riots or the lockdown rebellions. I guess we enjoy a dose of chaos and confusion, an almost biblical rewind to fire and brimstone.

Given the extreme levels of inequality blown wide open by the Corona crisis and the somewhat ideological leaders currently reigning in Covid flattened countries, you might be asking yourself if civil disorder is a new norm in the making, you know, like Zoom video calls.

But there’s something else chewing away at this. There’s something echoing around my head a bit like a Jean-Michel Jarre concert. Something pulling at my conscience and bugging my brain only this time it’s not Cummings-and-goings. It’s something even more sinister.

For a number of years climate scientists have been warning us of the consequences of unchecked global warming. The cost of climate change. And Greta keeps telling us that we’ve got to listen to these scientists. Not just because they actually know they’re shit but because Greta’s had it with politicians offering her consulting gigs to go solve the Cummings affair, er climate crunch when she just wants to get back to hanging out with her friends and flunking school to go to the beach instead of dropping out to save the planet. (She promises to hit the beach in a non Cummingsy trash the lockdown rules kind of a way).

Environmental scientists have been warning us for a long time that continued global warming will lead to extreme Stormzy, flooding and drought – check. They’ve stated that the continued destruction of key habitats, like rain forests, in the name of industrial farming will increase the risk of desease and wildlife loss – check. And the combination of the two will lead to mass migration, social upheaval and more extreme politics – check disorder in the US, Hong Kong, Syria, Michigan and our very own one man protest at Barnard Castle.

So, in the name of Greta and every darned climate scientist on the planet, we should not only invent a vaccine for Corona but also spend some cash on a wake up pill the size of Donnie’s Trumpian ego to get us ALL to smell the friggin coffee and realise that there is a way out of chaos and confusion and pandemic after pandemic followed by Noah like flooding conditions, hurricanes every five minutes and droughts the length of the second Cummings.

The way to avoid America and China and the rest of us going to war, with Kim Yong Ding Dong chipping in, but not in a teeing up at Mar-a-Lago kind of way, the way to stop the planet going up in fire and SpaceX’s share price going up to Mars is to rewild the friggin planet and keep those pesky bat’s and pangolins and Dom’s locked up as far away as possible in some hidden, protected, untouched rain forest so the virus stays with them. And while the virus sticks to them, the rewilding of our planet bit means we get to stick to where we are – or at least for a little bit longer.

This rewilding would not only be good for us, but would also be good for our little pangolin brethren. It might keep the climate scientists off our backs, keep Greta on the beach and stop us shooting up in a rocket to go piss off some other planet in the name of industrial farming on a separate universe, only to stir up their extra-terrestrials like we pissed off the bats and pangolins down here. Yep, like a bunch of suicidal, narcissistic terrestrial muppets, right at the point at which we might finally recover from Corona, we’ll go shake up a bunch of infested aliens who’ll invade us cos they have SpaceX and Zoom too. Then they’ll unleash on us the next pandemic from hell except this time around even Jacinda won’t be able to save us.

Shit, I think I’ll start rewilding my place. Oh, I already did. I guess I won’t need to migrate to New Zealand after all.

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Who’s Leading Us Out Of The Coronavirus Mess?

26th May 202026th May 2020 by lettsgroup

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.

What If Coronavirus is a Dress Rehearsal for Something Way More Sinister?

19th May 202020th May 2020 by lettsgroup

Some thing’s been nagging me for a while. Kind of an itch really. And it’s been growing since before the Covid-19 nightmare. Like deja vue in reverse. That what we’re living through now is just a dress rehearsal for something much bigger. Maybe we’re experiencing the appetiser. You know, the precursor to a scintillating, jaw dropping main course – a goddamned Big Mac and fries!

What if Coronavirus is just the first step to something way more sinister? What if it’s like an early skirmish in a much deadlier war. And what if that war’s lurking just around the corner. What if Donald Trump was right and all the thousands of scientists were wrong about climate change but not in the way that we might expect. What if their predictions for climate catastrophe are actually too cautious.

What if we only have a few more years before we get hit by another global catastrophy – you know like another deadly virus or massive droughts, endless rainstorms, flooding, coastal collapse, or a combination of the above leading to huge population migrations, starvation and a devastating world war.

What if the world’s wildlife get so pissed off that they finally turn on us – lions and tigers roaming the streets of New York or London randomly attacking people. Snakes in our showers, tarantulas up our pj’s. What if aliens drop in to nuke us because they agree with the wildlife and have had it with watching us from afar while we fumble with the planet like a bunch of 3 year olds. Or what if, way, way scarier than any of the above, what if Donald Trump wins the next US election and we get another four years of his friggin twitter account.

ENOUGH!! ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!! ENOUGH I SAY!!

What if we DO SOMETHING. What if we stand up and fight back. What if I didn’t have to write this domesday crap of a climate nightmare that’s starting to make me wanna find the next cliff and nose dive it like a kestrel. What if my rantings were about our progress defeating Corona and climate change and inequality and obesity and all things neo-con, er Liberal, er fascist.

What if we all just wake up one day and decide that we’d had enough. Enough of just waiting around watching storms get worse, public health get more viruses, forests get more fires, politicians get more useless and ExxonMobil make more money. What if we act now to survive our extinction – to roll back global warming. To save the planet.

What if we decided that Donnie and Bolsonightmarearo were wrong and Jacinda and Greta were right and that the way to attack the Corona consuming every inch of our daily, increasingly Netflix driven lives, was to kill it by waging war on the real problem – the climate thing. Getting all the public money flying around to go on green, healthy, climate friendly initiatives including walkable, bike loving cities, green spaces everywhere with rewilding verges, parks and commons.

What if all national treasures, reserves and crown lands were rewilded, what if every country started a major national tree planting campaign, what if the politicians and business leaders went all in and insisted on 100% renewable energy by 2035. What if us citizens stopped eating meat before dinner and shopped on foot to local stores and walked to work and to school and got on aeroplanes way less. What if we invested more in universal healthcare systems. What if our carbon emissions starting decreasing on an annual basis, what if pollution became an old desease we eradicated like malaria, what if national pride was restored by living in the greenest, healthiest and happiest place on the planet. You know, like Disneyland or the Playboy mansion or New Zealand.

And then again, what if we don’t. What if we do nothing and we have another five years of Corona 1.0 and Corona 2.0 and Donnie and Bozzer and heat and rain and fire and bedlem. What if we do nothing and the planet swallows us up and spits us out like a bug in a Big Mac. Or what if China and America decide that nuclear war is easier than tackling climate chaos and more fun than the endless twitter back and forth. What if Xi Ping Pong and Donnie end up being the last men standing – you know like a same sex Adam and Eve. What if these were like our least few years on this earth – like EVER.

You choose and God help you.

I’m emigrating to New Zealand.

Are People Already Revolting over Coronavirus Lockdown?

30th Apr 202030th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

I feel an undercurrent swirling way deep down in the bowels of democracy, a genuine shift in thinking when it comes to our western attitudes towards Covid-19. One of those shifts that are so grass-rooted that Presidents or Prime Ministers remain entirely oblivious to the emerging dissidence. You see, unlike most cabinet level politicians and health officials, I believe that the people in the US and Europe (still including the UK – I think) have moved on.

Yep, we’re cruising past the Corona-rabbit-in-headlight-frozen-to-the-floor-or-tv-or-bed phase and have started the next phase of getting on with life with Corona and have kinda stopped listening to the politicians bang on about curves and ventilators and PPE and lockdown or exit or new norms, second waves, great depressions, social distancing, social gatherings or just plain socially f***ed. We’ve been doing it all long enough to get used to it and for God’s sake its gotten sooooo boring.

Also, lets face it, even our crappy school grade maths skills mean that we, the lowly people, have figured out that the pandemic bell like curve thingy we get served up daily like an upside down bowl of porridge means some time in June we’re gonna start going back to work, school, shops and maybe even the post Corona lockdown holy grail to end all holy grails which is a real friggin bottle of real friggin Corona in a real friggin pub. And for the record I have never in the past said pub lock in when I meant lockdown. Honest.

I just don’t think that we Corona-care as much anymore. We’ve become immune, not yet to Corona, but immune to the endless politico ramblings and stats and rules and generally depressing shit we get served day in and day out on every TV channel, newspaper, website and ad. Yep, we’ve finally become Corona tone deaf and started to figure out our own exit strategies cos if we wait for governments to come up with a real one we’ll be beyond broke and when you’re beyond broke who gives a shit about rules or ramblings or even Corona itself.

Mostly I see it on the roads, in the streets, shops and under-rumblings. I hear it from Dave-the-boss-man at Tesco every frigging week emailing me with how the entire goddamned nation’s back shopping with him cos he’s really cracked this Corona shop-till-you-drop in-store thingy and if you have Corona dropped then no problemo cos he’ll deliver to your door now he’s energiza bunny like gone and gotten a gazillion more delivery slots per minute than UK wide testing kits. Mind you, that’s kind of a low bar.

I also hear it from Tim-I’m-a-pubaholic-Weatherspoons telling us that his pubs will be open from June. And let’s face it no one’s gonna dare disagree with Tim cos he’s got the cheapest beer in town and drinks way too regularly with that other kinda scary guy called Far-arse. But mostly I see it in the divine Corona boredom now emanating from the Donnie and Bozzer show signalling that we really can start getting on with our lives alongside Corona cos they ain’t gonna figure it out for us mostly because they just wanna get back to Mar-a-lago or Chequers or banging other dollies. So, time to get on and off and get up-from-the-couch and start planning our post Corona, avec Corona June existence. And if our eminent Anglo Saxon leaders have confused you to the point of rigor mortis about what to do next just keep it simple and book a one way trip to New Zealand. Cos Jacinda really has got it all figured out.

See ya!

The Next New Norm – The Secret to Not Getting ClimateF***ed

28th Apr 202028th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Now that we’re used to the Corona in our lives, the lockdown loonies, Great Depression 2.0 and the fact that Kim Jong Ding-dong is dead we thought we should try to look to the next new norm. You know, the one where we start to exit lockdowns (Brits exempt) and rediscover the simple joys of visiting a park without getting arrested, grabbing a coffee at Starbucks reminding us that it’s way cheaper at home and parking the teens at the beach to accidentally forget to pick them up for a week. Let’s not, though, underestimate the importance of survival skills.

The smarty pants among us will be figuring out which of the last ‘new norms’ (Christ I’m sounding like a politician) will become permanent changes cos if they don’t we’ll all get mothered by pandemic 2.0 just lurking round the corner called ClimateF***ed. And I don’t know about you but I’ve kinda had enough of lockdown 1.0 so I’m really not into an even longer, more invasive lockdown 2.0 which by its very nature will be too late so all our proverbial little fingers in the damn will, of course, do absolutely sod all to delay the inevitability of getting well and truly ClimateF***ed.

So here are the 5 key elements to ‘The Next New Norm – the Secret to not getting ClimateF***ed’:

1. Healthier living – der yeah! You see lockdown loonies gave us material monsters the chance to step back, breathe in the polluted air from our shitty shoebox apartments and realise that there had to be something more to life and Levi’s and the Big Mac. Well, OK, maybe not the Big Mac. We’ve reconciled our lowly consciousnesses to the fact that we’re gonna have to trade in some old crappy behaviours to keep, well, living. And we’ve had the once in a generation opportunity to learn to appreciate walks in the park so long as we don’t dawdle, making our own food cos there’s no point waiting for Dave from Tesco to start stocking pasta again and even enjoying our jungle of a garden because it’s better to hang out there than get Corona on the street. Going forward we’ll travel less mostly because we’ll all be broke, we’ll want less pollution cos they’ll prove that pollution feeds Corona (not the beer) and Donnie and Bozzer will figure out that their only chance of survival beyond the botched Corona thing will be to pin their entire machine and slogan making team on the next hot trend cos more than anyone they don’t want to get caught behind yet again and get politically ClimateF***ed. Plus all those self help and yoga stretch pants books that went straight in one ear and out the other will suddenly make the smallest amount of sense so we’ll all succumb to the healthier living, deep breathing, all-avocado cool aid.

2. Home Working – yep, not because we all loved it. But because our tight ass bosses spent all that money on Zoom licenses to get through lockdown loonies and won’t want to see them to go to waste. So, bye bye company car, meetings for gossip in the hang out room, sweet company lunches and trips abroad or anything whatsoever that broke the endless monotony of working at this dump called workplace. But, hello Dave boy Attenborough who’s gonna remind us 24 hours a day that our new found zero travel life has cut emissions to the point where we just saved another rhino. But, hey, their wellbeing comes first in this green new deal, next new norm.

3. eServices – cos we all figured out that watching a YouTube video on how to fix the kitchen sink was a frig load cheaper and easier than trying to persuade a plumber to come rip us off, give us Corona and not fix the thing properly so he gets to do it all over again in a few weeks time.

4. Online Sports and Culture – let’s face it the only thing more amusing than Live Aid was watching Lady Gaga trying to coerse a bunch of geriatric rockers to rock it somewhat out of tune from their homes/gardens/the morgue. Beyond that, pretty soon PlayStation and Xbox will figure out that lockdown loonies taught us all to play soccer way better than those slightly spoilt, entirely analogue pro footballers so they’ll make the next set of games so friggin realistic with the AI thingy that we won’t need the offline players anymore making the Xbox sub a must have and the season ticket a must dump. Plus who wants to sit with a gazillion other sweaty, drunk people in a stadium or theatre or anyplace whatsoever only to get spat on, puked over, hot dogged or just to catch the Corona from them.

5. Virtual Healthcare – see 3. and the whole plumber thing. Plus, we’ll have had enough Corona hospital time to last many a lifetime and every government will have gone broke trying to (not) fix the Corona thing. So we’ll have to figure out DIY health. And pretty soon 3D printing will get us our stay at home pill dispenser, ventilator, vaccine and robot care giver which will prove more than handy given the Great Depression 2.0 meant we sold our car. At least the car bit will make Dave boy Attenborough happy which seems to be the game with this climate solving thing – right?

Christ, I think I’ll just go plant up a wildflower meadow.

Hope in the Time of Coronavirus

27th Apr 202027th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

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.

Politics in the Time of Coronavirus

15th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Politics is pretty painful at the best of times – as example the U.S. has you know who, the WHO (not the band) now also knows what it’s like to have you know who, the UK had the EU now it has the other you know who, France had Macron now has dudes in yellow jerseys, Italy never knows who the frig they have and Spain has, er, Ibiza. Don’t even get me started on what Russia or China have. But, even in the best of times there ain’t now’t so queer as politics.

Then again there’s nothing like a good pandemic to take it to a whole new level. And when I say new level I mean it’s like turning your gigantic rocket like speaker up to supersonic super-woof to the point where your ears blast right out of your head as now we have to listen to the truth serum masters of ultimate power bang on incessantly, hour after hour after 24 hour, day in day out. Frig, they make the Kardashians look like Mormons. You can’t move for getting streamed yet another daily press briefing about the newest politico BS mumbo jumbo that is ‘fact first and led by science’. Led by fact and science my left nut. These briefings are about as led by science as McDonald’s is led by Weight Watchers.

You know facts are a bit wobbly when the one FACT we do know is that we have about as many testing kits in the West as we have honest politicians. So how in the world we’re supposed to believe the Corona infected number God himself knows. In fact, it seems the daily stat for people infected with Covid-19 should be renamed the daily number of test kits we actually have that worked versus the fictional level we friggin dream we had. It seems even the number of deaths is not entirely accurate mind you ask any number of expert tyrannical despots how easy it is to bend that little reality.

But, then again, who needs fiction any more – we’re living it! I kinda feel for Matt Damon and the really expensive cast of ‘Contagion’ I mean they genuinely thought they were onto something. Then along came Corona and their supposed movie blockbuster looks, well, a bit less popular. And given we’re all finally living in the global Truman Show it could well mean that the best thing we can do right now is to look to the cast of either movie to step up and run our countries – I mean we can’t really ignore the fact that they have actually gotten through this weird shit before. And the one thing all our current politicians keep telling us is they ain’t seen nothing like this (friggin mess) before. Now that’s reassuring. Mind you as reassuring as their lockdown exit plans? Donald’s entire plan comes down to a date – May 1st. And, well, that’s actually it. A date. But he keeps telling us it’s a plan. I hate to say it Donnie but that’s not really what a plan looks like that’s just three letters and a number! Boris is at least honest enough about not having a plan which is apparently because he no longer believes in plans, after all look where his plan not to have kids out of wedlock got him.

And what would it look like if Matt Damon was actually running the UK? Well, he’s clearly quite Jason Bourne fit and having had me at fit he obviously gets my vote. So what about Jim Carrey for President of the USA? Well given his name isn’t Donal Trump then that’s an easy one too. Then again, according to the latest media ‘fact first’ (my right nut this time) it seems the only leaders getting it right just now are women. So presumably that means that if a Kiwi nurse can fix Boris (and we oh so graciously let her work here) then in the same vein we could let Jacinda run Westminster with the added benefit that a job swap the other end of the world seems like a pretty safe spot for Boris right now.

The other bit I really don’t get is given that we’re all actually living in the movie set of ‘Contagion’ you would have thought that the politicians would have it nailed by now. I mean it’s ALL fiction dudes so you don’t even need to pretend to tell the truth cos, let’s face it, we don’t go to the movies to get a dose of reality – we go to the movies to get as far away from that one as NASA can extra-terrestrially take us. So politicos this could be one of those once in a lifetime moments you’ve been waiting for pretty much all your career when you get ti legit spin it like there’s no spin class like tomorrow.

Oh………. you already are. Oh, shit.

In that case where’s Barack Obama when you need him? Christ (he) just Easter resurrected on my stream endorsing Joe Biden meaning Joe will get EVERY vote like ANYWHERE. Perhaps even less surprising given Joe looks a bit like Matt Damon a few years down the road which finally lays claim to the fact that one day we’ll all wake up and realise that this is just one big Contagion/Truman dream and the only real nightmare we can’t ever frggin wake up from is, yep, you guessed it the Donnie and Boris show. Sorry.

Patience During the Coronavirus Lockdown

14th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

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.

Outdoor Exercising during the Coronavirus Lockdown

9th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Exercising outdoors once a day is one of our last remaining Coronarights as locked-down human beings. At least it is in much of the Western world (and for the record I mean the exercise part being our right and not the being a human being human right thing or at least not yet. Mind you…). And you know just how important a right outdoor exercising is when governments keep threatening to take it away – thank you Paris!

There are a few basic rules to outdoor lockdown exercise and you know what they say about rules being made to be…

Rule No 1. Apparently exercise constitutes you actually moving so any of us seen hanging around on benches pretending to bench press or performing some slomo lying down yoga thingy should expect to be arrested. Saying that no one has actually set guidelines on what specific form of movement constitutes exercise. So, for example, when you’re really hungry you could literally kill two birds with one stone by chasing after your dog so hard that it drops dead – it’s totally legit exercise and you’ve just nailed your bbq fodder for the night without having to don the hazmat suit to go fetch it at the Tesco. The key here is the word ‘moving’ so you could argue that moving the deck chair around the park is legit exercise – though we would suggest bench pressing it over your head every so often so you really enhance that legit bit.

Rule No 2. When performing outdoor exercise you must not break social distancing rules other than with the family unit living under the same roof. So if you want to practice boxing then you CAN use toddler as punch bag but not your boxing buddy who you ‘accidentally’ bumped into in the park. Jose Mourinho might want to pay attention to this one. You can practice fencing with the teens or bashing them with a baseball bat or dropping them over the side punting down the lake. Tree hugging is allowed so long as it does not act as foreplay to something much more interesting and try not to tree hug the cat cos apparently animals can catch Covid-19 which I guess is no shit sherlock given animals gave us this friggin pandemic in the first place. So actually you might want to rethink the chasing the dog till it drops bbq bit but you don’t have to rethink the illegit sun bathing thing any further than buying a stretcher and getting the tweens to carry you round the park at a double quick march while you stretch out in the shorts with your headphones on so you get to hear ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ rather than the tweens whingeing on while you enjoy optimal tanning tactics with the sun reflector under your chops. Just make sure not to do this for too long in case you get skin cancer (maybe not in England) or park infected with the Corona – mind you if you do catch Corona (not the drink) the tweens can just keep stretchering you all the way down to A&E and if you don’t you know what excuse to pull out your rear end when you get chased down by the police – which could also get constituted as just another form of exercise.

Rule No 3: Outdoor exercise must not contravene the social gathering rule. This one is really simple – whatever Jose Mourinho tells you to do just ignore it and if Jake Gyllenhaal and that spidey kid challenge you to the outdoor version of standing upside down while taking your t-shirt on and off just remember they are paid enough to do dumb fuck things like that and they probably have way better abs than you so do a Ryan Reynolds and just say ‘no’. Mind you if Pamela Anderson asks you to do it then that’s a whole different game of socially distance compromised football. Sorry Jose. Again. But, if a whole load of you all ran round the park at the same time stretchered by tweens and on the sound of sirens you all headed in concert to the nearest hospital then please do the decent thing on arrival and put your tweens forward as recently graduated medical students which could prove to be a bullet proof way of silencing them while you volunteer to clean the toilets which would be a bullet proof way of silencing you and finally bring a whole load more meaning to listening to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ on the stretcher. Just let me know which hospital you ended up in so when I land Coronavirus I can steer as far away as possible from it.

All considered, I think I’ll just exercise at home.

Eating to survive the Coronavirus Lockdown

8th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

In one of my earlier posts we looked at what we can and can’t do during the Coronavirus lockdown. While there’s a seismicly large list of things we can’t do there is, sadly, just a very short list of things we can do. I’m glad to say that right up there in the legit list is ‘eating’. Or is it…

While modern capitalism has made damned sure that getting food, i.e. hitting the supermarket in a non-heist kinda way, was our most basic God given right, it’s now about as easy as doing a downward dog without cracking your back. But, you know you may be in some kinda food pickle when the big-ass boss dude from Tesco writes to you personally – and presumably every other potential customer on this planet – cos who can remember the last time we shopped there. I mean have you seen those deals at lidl?? Mind you, only the world’s first friggin pandemic gets Tesco boss-man to actually get off his you know what to do this bizarre thingy called ‘talking to the punter’ – but, none the less, he breaks all his permo customer distancing rules just to let us know how easy it is to shop at Tesco again, presumably so long as: a) you don’t need to spend more than a toilet rolls worth cos that’s how you can keep it within contactless payment limits and not get smeared with coronachromes banging away at the payment gadget buttons (can’t they just buy some of their own friggin cleaning sanitiser producty thing and clean those damned machines a bit more??), b) you go into their store one at a time which means you can’t dump the bill on your partner and c) you be patient with their delivery guy/gal cos apparently they’re so damned popular that the first delivery spot is in 2028.

So we decide to don the hazmat suit and head to the local supermarket following the latest, latest guidelines which state that on our return we should leave the food unpacked and outside for at least 3 hours so any germs that might have gotten onto the non dodgy food from the shipper/wharehouse/store die off outside and not in your belly meaning in turn that if you’re one of the gazzilion people living in a shoebox apartment you have to leave the food on the street so you lose it to the gits nextdoor and if your luckily enough to have a terrace it goes to the birds and having a garden just means the dog gets it. Which all adds up to going hungry for another week or hitting the store twice in a day guaranteeing you either get arrested or go broke. Mind you, what’s new. In the mean time that nice top man from Tesco gets to make even more obscene money while we all starve to death from buying his food which I guess is capitalism in a nutshell.

Or, don’t go shopping at all. Now there’s a plan worthy of a whole new food survival plan. Instead we could just eat each other which should deal with the whole social distancing thing, or eat the neighbours which not only means they can’t steal the food next time but also deals with the over population thingy that probably got us to this pandemic food-hole in the first place or just eat the dog who likely got Coronavirus from eating our food-in-the-garden that got it from the contaminated till at the Tesco that got it from their wharehouse which got it from the Tesco boss man when he visited said wharehouse which was his grand plan all along to get us to freak out about contaminated food so we have to leave it out in the street/terrace/garden so he can look like a hero for getting us all to shop more often so he can write us this goddamned self gloating email so he gets to keep his job and his bonus the size of my dogs belly even though he never spoke to a damned customer in his life – up until this email of course. Which might also be capitalism in a nutshell but, let’s be honest, might also prove that he’s actually damned clever.

But then again getting Coronavirus could mean that you don’t need food at all or that you get to go to hospital and eat their food for free. Having tasted hospital food I think I’ll just curl up, find some religion and fast until this whole Covid-19 lockdown thing goes away.