BY kind courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government our national incarceration known as “Lockdown” is nearly over. Time to reflect on our unique experience.
It hasn’t been easy to find amusing distraction or relief from the crushing miseries and, frankly, the stupefying boredom of Covid Lockdown.
This is my tribute to some of those who added to the gaiety of the nation in Covid, who gave us succour, cheer, schadenfreude, or horror.
Step forward firstly Colonel Tom Moore, soon to be Sir Tom, whose centenary walk with his pusher raised vast sums for the NHS, dispelling the millenials’ nonsense about how our elderly folk are so burdensome.
Hello to the llamas of Llandudno, strutting around the Welsh town’s vacated streets. It was Nature’s way of reminding us we aren’t our planet’s only occupants and could be swiftly replaced after viral Armageddon.
Of course, Boris in peril, and then Boris and Carrie and Wilfrid, was a true-life Soap cliffhanger to beat any TV plot-line.
What better than a pantsdown farce to titillate, and who better than po-faced Professor Lockdown himself, Neil Ferguson. This bearded boffin was the Pied Piper of ‘Stay Home’ Lockdown. Stepping out of your home was now akin to murder. No exceptions, er, except for the randy professor himself who needed some rumpy-pumpy with his lover. Top marks, Professor.
Outside our embattled isle, the rest of the world faced their crises too. The leader of the Western World stepped up to the plate. Behold, President Trump as a global snake-oil quack doctor. Doctor Donald was happy to endorse any number of medications and treatments as “game-changers”. Maybe the medics should fire laser beams at the infected, he pondered – that should see off the virus – or what about injections of bleach into the body to “cleanse” the virus. Why ever not?
For a bit of ‘Keep Calm, Carry On’ re-assurance and homespun advice, we Brits are blessed to have Queen Elizabeth II, and the monarch was there for us again, which was nice. Vivat Regina.
A decent drama needs a baddie and auditioning for this role was Virgin tycoon Richard Branson, quickly out with his begging bowl at the first hint of government bailouts.
Suddenly his Virgin airline would fold without hundreds of millions of public dosh. As collateral for British tax-payers, Branson put up his Necker Island Caribbean hidey-hole. It’s taken a virus to expose this slippery Ponzi player.
None of us are immune from a fascination with gruesome horror, and along with Life’s other two certainties, death and taxes, so Murder must out.
The grisly headlines screamed: “Pair caught scattering young woman’s sawn-off torso and charred body parts in ancient forest”; the pair, from Birmingham and Wolverhampton, strewed a woman’s dismembered and decomposing body parts from battered suitcases into the medieval depths of the Forest of Dean. What more could you ask for?
Murder, dismemberment and bit-by-bit dispersal in one of Britain’s last remaining forests. Forget Dominic Cummings, this was surely the Mother of all Lockdown floutings. You couldn’t make it up.