Coastalblog

Morning, so how's your lockdown going so far? Managing alright? How are you in yourself? Yes, for the first time in living memory, people are actually asking each other how they are, unless, that is, they're too busy posting intermittently amusing videos of the things they're doing to alleviate boredom to the internet. (A brief moment of snark before I continue with the positivity: Do the various "Day 2 of lockdown and I've already gone mad!!!" merchants not feel that they may have shot their respective bolts perhaps a little early in the piece? A good few weeks of this to go yet guys, there's only so many wacky dances you can do, also, doesn't this rather imply that your boredom threshold is, perhaps, a little low? Have you tried...books?) This development, is, I feel, something to be applauded, and it got me thinking of what other silver linings we might be able to spot in the looming cumulonimbus of COVID-19, because as my dear old Nan always ...

I don't propose to write too much more about the current pandemic plotline which is so gripping our national soap opera, three in a row seems quite enough to be going on with, but it does seem a bit daft to ignore it after last night's exciting total lockdown plot twist. So here we all are then, stuck at home on lockdown (bar daily exercise or essential shopping, and I wonder how far those fig-leaves will be stretched over the coming weeks) and the talk is of little else. I made a fairly weak gag yesterday about it being good news for introverts (carefully made on fb, rather than twitter, where I would have instantly had five people accusing me shrilly of not taking it seriously and, by extension, murdering their Nan) but in truth, from where I'm sat, it all feels as yet distant, somewhat other, ever so vaguely surreal. So forgive me if you find the tone too light, I certainly don't mean to downplay the seriousness of a disease which has proven to be lethal. Indeed, I...

Well, if nothing else, at least I now know how it feels to be shafted by your own government. Ah yes, the broad sunlit uplands of coronavirus have given HMG exciting new opportunities to plunge yet further in my estimation, and with his idiotic, bumbling "advice" to stop all unnecessary socialising, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, a man not noted for ability to assume responsibility, has abdicated his yet further. Anyone remember "herd immunity"? It was the Government strategy all of, ooh, about four days ago. Indeed, Britain's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, was briefing on Sunday that large gatherings of people were A-OK at roughly the same time as Downing St was saying, er, no, they're not. As if this wasn't confusing enough, they're now trying to pretend that this was never the plan at all, and that this new plan is what the plan was all along. Luckily for HMG, the current Health Secretary is Matt Hancock, a man who has el...

Say what you like about coronavirus, but at least it isn't boring. Yes, this year's health panic has well and truly arrived, and this time it's serious, so serious, in fact, that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has had to emerge from hiding and do a bit of Prime-Ministering, which gets him out of the house, at least. Possibly gives him a chance to look for a new mistress, now that he's been forced to marry the old one, so every cloud and all that. Now, I'm sure we've all got our favourite parts of the (are we going with "crisis" yet? Not sure, I'll probably stick with "situation for the time being) situation. Possibly you've been chuckling indulgently at people panic buying toilet paper, maybe, like me, you've been wondering if these are the same people who insist that Britain's "Bulldog Spirit" will see us through Brexit. Possibly you've been entertaining idle speculation as to what will happen in the event of...

SCENE The writer, a greying man in his early forties, sits at a table gazing at a job advert on his computer screen which calls for "Misfits and Weirdoes". It sounds a cushy number, a highly paid government job just for being an antisocial closet eugenicist, easy money. But he wonders whether or not he qualifies as weird enough . Sure, he has a fairly standard set of eccentricities, still buys a newspaper, doesn't drive, is prone to doing Noel Coward impressions at the drop of a hat, likes County cricket. But do these foibles make him weird enough? What curious trait can he exhibit to set him apart from the rest? How, in short, without going Full Nazi, is he going to distinguish himself from his fellow applicants? THE WRTITER: I've got it! I'll say I don't care about Question Time. That'll do the trick. Everyone always bangs on about it, like when Laurence Fox was a pillock or that racist was a racist. And then they all say how awful it is. How better t...