Some Favourites

Welcome to a cloudy but warm South Manchester, seven days after our incompetent and moronic government lifted almost all restrictions, despite rising infection rates. The argument is that the majority of adults have now been jabbed so you might well get the virus but will be spared the worst symptoms of the disease. 

So now we can all go to crowded pubs, crowded sports events, gigs etc, without masks and social distancing. 

The world is watching with interest.

As for me, well I am annoyed because I am self-isolating for the second time. 

We have this app on our phones for track and trace and if we have been within a certain distance of anybody who later tests positive for COVID-19 we are pinged and told to self-isolate for a number of days – a mini lockdown if you like, with the app telling us how long we have left. 

In June I was pinged to isolate for four days and this time it is six and I have four days left. I have no symptoms but I am stuck in the house and, being a sensible chap, I will remain stuck in the house until Wednesday morning when I am liberated. 

A lot of people are being pinged at the moment and the media are referring to it as the “pingdemic” – it is crazy because in many ways it is because of the freedom that has been bestowed upon us by our clown leader that so many people are having to lock themselves down again.

Still – never mind. Let’s answer some questions from Sunday Stealing shall we? This one’s about favourites and I have had to go through and correct the American spelling “favorites” to the British spelling “favourites”. 

I am pedantic that way – a little OCD I guess. 

1. Your favourite songs

There are far too many to mention in a short post like this – I could write a book about them all. Instead, I will list three of my current favourites for you.

2. Your favourite bands

My all-time favourite band is Rush, the world’s greatest progressive rock band, now sadly no more. My current favourite band is Riverside, a progressive rock band from Poland but there are loads of other bands from all over the world in many genres that I love. I could write a book about that too.

3. Your favourite actors or actresses

I wouldn’t say that I have a favourite actor or actress but a few keep cropping up in favourite films. Despite being a weirdo, I actually think that Tom Cruise is a good actor as is Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino. I also have to say that I love Clint Eastwood too – and Samuel L. Jackson.

As far as actresses are concerned, I like Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman – there are many more to be honest.

4. Your favourite books

I love spy thrillers and espionage, for example those written by Robert Ludlum. I am also a big fan of classic and contemporary science fiction, for example H.G.Wells, Peter F Wilson, Stephen Baxter, Dan Simmons and Blake Crouch. You can't beat a good horror novel either, for example Stephen King, James Herbert, Graham Masterson, Brian Lumley, Dean Koontz. Finally, I like a good comedy novel though I haven’t read one for ages. “The Throwback” by Tom Sharpe is my all-time favourite in this genre and I made a complete idiot of myself on a long haul flight once, laughing raucously and uncontrollably while people were trying to sleep around me. It is hilarious – very British – but whether it will appeal to Americans I don’t know. I think Australians would get it.

5. Your favourite movies

I am such a geek when it comes to movies. I love superhero films and science fiction – the Marvel and DC films have been amazing recently (well some of them have). Give me a StarTrek movie and I am happy – though I can easily tolerate Star Wars too. I love action thrillers too, like James Bond, Jason Bourne and similar. I’m not a huge fan of horror films, bizarrely – I prefer books. I find a lot of comedy films a bit hit-and-miss to be honest. Some are brilliant (like Shaun of the Dead and Planes, Trains and Automobiles) but others I just don’t get – particularly some American comedy movies.

6. Your favourite TV shows

There are too many to mention but they are similar to films. I like a good comedy show (Blackadder, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and a good science fiction series (Dr Who, Star Trek, Babylon 5, The Expanse). Other favourite shows include (off the top of my head) Dexter, Game of Thrones, Lucifer, Vikings, Stranger Things and many many others too numerous to mention.

7. Your favourite foods/drinks

I love Italian, Chinese, Indian and Mexican food – anything really apart from Thai which has a taste that doesn’t really float my boat. To drink, I love tea and fruit juice, though I drink water and coffee too. Alcoholic delights include beers (ales, lager and continental beer such as Belgian, German and Czech beers) and wine, both red and white (though I prefer red and I don’t like dessert wines).

8. Your favourite kitchen appliance

What a strange question. I don’t think I have ever been asked what my favourite kitchen appliance is. I would have to say a Microwave Oven because I am fascinated with the effect it has on food.

9. Your favourite animal

I love both dogs and cats. Unfortunately Mrs PM prefers cats so that’s what we have. In my life I have lived with two dogs and ten cats. The current two are black one year olds called Ziggy and Star(dust).

10. Your favourite scents

I like most perfume that women wear but I don’t like having it sprayed into my face by over-zealous shopkeepers in department stores. 

I love the smell of freshly mown grass (as long as it isn’t in June because that’s when my hay fever kicks in). 

I love the smell of food cooking, particularly bacon. 

The smell of the British countryside in summer is also amazing. 

11. Your favourite things you do in your free time

I like to do something constructive most of the time. Currently I am still trying to teach myself Spanish, I am reading a lot of books about creative writing, as well as writing daily (mostly utter garbage but at least something is pouring from my brain onto paper in cyberspace). I maintain this blog, of course and when I am feeling lazy I watch TV, read and play the odd computer game. I am a huge fan of music as regular readers will know so there is always music in my vicinity when I am at home (for example I am currently listening to a Queen song). I love to go to concerts too and I would have been at an open-air tribute band festival today had I not been self-isolating (my first gig since the pandemic). 

I love sport, particularly football and am looking forward to the new football season in two weeks. I also like cricket – which is where I was when I was in the vicinity of a positive COVID-19 victim, even though I was outside and socially distanced (the nearest person apart from my mate was about five yards away).

Finally of course, I love to travel and I am missing that more than anything.

12. Your pet peeves

I’m not going to rant about politics and the mess that our country has been in for 11 years because of the Conservative government we are currently suffering under – but that is one of them.

People who are late, people who are unreliable, nasty people, arrogant people, those who have reached their level of competence and managed to claw their way into incompetence making a mess of things and the people around them, psychopaths who have no empathy (and I know a couple of people like this), liars and people who think that the only way to resolve and issue is with violence. 

13. Things you collect

I collect CDs and music generally. I collect books too (in that I don’t throw them away which is much easier on a Kindle). I used to collect football programmes and I have quite a few upstairs in the loft that I won’t let Mrs PM throw away (though she has tried).

14. Things you like to swap

I don't think I would swap anything apart from contact details.

15. Places you've been

I’ve travelled all over the UK of course apart from Northern Ireland. I’ve been to the Republic of Ireland though. I’ve travelled on all continents apart from Antarctica and been to some memorable places like Russia, China, USA, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, South Africa, Oman, the UAE, the Caribbean, Iceland, Japan and most of Europe. 

16. Places you'd like to visit

I’d like to go back to Japan and Australia. I would also like to go to New Zealand, Egypt, Morocco, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Hawaii and other places too numerous to mention.

17. Classes you liked in school

I loved chemistry, physics and maths. I was less keen on English, French and German but if I could go back I would concentrate on those subjects more.

18. Crafts you would like to learn

I would like to be able to paint and also build things from wood. I am absolutely hopeless at both.

The Playlist

I have learned something about my relationship with Mrs PM during the year or so of lockdown and restrictions due to COVID-19. It is something that has surprised both of us. 

Over the past year, we have reserved a couple of hours on Friday and/or Saturday night to relax and just chat. Since we are locked down we cannot go out anywhere and so we just talk about life with the assistance of a glass of wine or a beer. 

We used to do this before lockdown in a pub or a restaurant and the one thing that we needed at home was some background music. Usually in a pub, you have no choice about the music that is playing in the background and, as you can imagine, the pop music that plays in these places is not my favourite. I tolerate it because I have to.

Home is a different matter. This is my home and I want to control the music. Mrs PM has the same outlook – she wants the control the music too.

The problem is that our tastes in music are poles apart. She likes dance music and all manner of modern pop music that I despise. I like older pop music and rock music, including progressive rock, heavy metal and basically (as she calls it) “weird music”.

There is no overlap. Here is a Venn Diagram illustrating the music we have in common.

I have all of my music stored electronically on my laptop and I still buy CDs because I want to own it. Mrs PM is transient in her taste and when she hears something she likes, she plays it to death and then discards it when she is fed up of it. She used to buy CDs and then commit an act of pure sacrilege that I can barely bring myself to type – she GIVES AWAY HER CDs. She thinks that I should do the same. 

I know – it’s incredible.

Now she has decided that she won’t buy any more CDs and has taken up a paid Spotify account. This is good for her and I also considered it but for reasons that I am not going to go into now, I decided against it. I have a free Spotify account that I sometimes use to discover new music which results in me buying the CD eventually.

We decided to treat ourselves to a Sonos speaker, a wireless device that you can speak to with Google Assistant and will allow us to set alarms, ask questions, and most importantly play music from Mrs PM’s Spotify account, opening us up to a vast database of music.

If only we could agree on what music to play, given that it has to live in the overlap in the Venn Diagram above.

One Friday, we decided to attack this problem head on. Our discussion was; “What music can we possibly have in common?”

At first we took the tentative steps down the path. 

MRS PM: Do you like Britney Spears?

PM: (having eventually stopped laughing) Of course not.

MRS PM: How about Rihanna? Or Madonna?

PM: NO! I hate them. Oh hang on – there are a couple of Madonna songs I quite like. 

This one:

That was a start. I asked about classic progressive rock and she agreed that this song was good:

That is two songs in common. Over the weeks, we have chatted about music for the first hour or so, popping songs onto the Sonos and either adding them to a Spotify playlist or discarding them. Both of us have been willing to experiment and listen to suggestions and it has only bloody well worked. 

We have built up a considerable playlist of music that we both actually like and this includes, broadly, 1970’s disco, some glam rock, 1970’s David Bowie, 1980’s electronic pop music, ELO, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, some Nine Inch Nails, one heavy metal song by System of a Down, Some Simon and Garfunkel, one Rush song, early Elton John, Blondie, The Police, Roxy Music, Muse and many many more.

We have between 250 and 300 songs that we can both listen to in the background without either of us complaining. And we are adding more each week.

That’s incredible.

We are both delighted because we can take this playlist with us on holiday or on trips and chat over background music that doesn’t leave one or both of us screaming “For crying out loud TURN THAT CRAP OFF!”

Here a couple of songs from the list to finish off.

The moral of the post is - you can always find common ground and something to agree on.

The Peeping Tom

 

Part of my daily pandemic routine involves getting up on a normal working day and, after feeding the two demanding young cats that are my new masters, I go for a three-mile walk. This happens at roughly 6am in the morning when most sane people are asleep in their warm beds dreaming of a time when the world isn’t being ravaged by a nasty virus.

In the winter months a walk can be an unpleasant experience; it is dark, cold and sometimes pouring with rain. You may ask what the appeal of subjecting myself to the cold and hostile elements of Manchester at 6am in January can be.

I ask myself the very same question.

However, at that time of day, whether it is January or March, it is really peaceful. There are very few cars and people around and the streets are calm and quiet. I remember that I used to love walking the streets doing a morning paper round as a kid for exactly the same reason.

I can walk along, drift into my own little world and contemplate life, the universe and everything, while at the same time getting some exercise. Sometimes I am accompanied by Mrs PM, other times I am on my own with just my iPod for company.

It is blissful, even when it is raining.

There is one downside though and try as I might, I find that I cannot avoid it.

I sometimes feel like I am a Peeping Tom.

Okay, I can imagine that you are considering clicking the little X in the corner of your browser window now and the one thought that is running through your head is “I didn’t know that this man was such a bloody pervert!” and imagine me creeping up to people’s houses to peer into their window with a lecherous and leering look on my grinning face.

You are 100% wrong.

Allow me to explain and hopefully put your mind at rest. As I walk along the street in the darkness of a cold, winter morning, I find my gaze drifting towards houses and seeing no lights in most of them because people are in bed. Sometimes, however, I see the odd bedroom light on. On other occasions, people are up and about and downstairs lights are on.

In almost all cases, the people concerned value their privacy and keep their blinds, shutters or curtains closed.

Sadly, there are those people – let’s call them exhibitionists – who want to let everybody outside know exactly what they are doing. These people open their curtains, blinds or whatever, switch on their lights and then, for reasons I have yet to fathom, do whatever they need to do in full view of anybody who happened to be walking outside their house.

I am very paranoid about allowing people to stare into my house when it is dark outside. My curtains and shutters are closed as soon as the sun sinks behind the horizon and they remain so until I am fully dressed and sun has popped up again. 

The last thing I want to see is a person – any person – gazing into my house as I go about my business. 

Now I can imagine another thought going through your head dear reader – “What on Earth are you doing in your house that you don’t want people to see?”

The answer is “Nothing – of course!” What do you think I am? I am just a normal geezer and I am nothing like this bloke or any of the people he spies on:

Call me weird if you like but I like my privacy.

And this is why, when I see these people opening themselves to the world for all to see at 6am on a dark winter morning, I think they are peculiar.

Why would you do that? 

And I can now guess that thinking – “Well, Peeping Tom, you don’t HAVE to look.”

And you would be right (except for calling me Peeping Tom). I don’t have to look but I find my eyes subconsciously drawn to any light source at that time of the morning. I’m not even aware that I am doing it until see somebody eating his breakfast staring back at me. 

In my head, I am miles away on a voyage through my imagination thinking about budding novels about vampires, aliens and space wars. The last thing I want to see is an old bloke eating his cornflakes in his pyjamas.

When this happens, I have a deep urge to march up to his window and scream “Shut your bloody curtains, man! Nobody wants see you chomping on your toast in your jim-jams you bloody weirdo!”

Of course, I don’t do that and you will be pleased to know that I avert my eyes from these exhibitionists as quickly as possible.

They can ruin my walk. I am brought crashing back to reality, away from the space opera in my head and as I continue, I have to start again and expunge the image of the old so and so from my brain, lest it remain there and ruin my creativity.

Thankfully, it is now March and as I take my walks, my eyes can be drawn towards the rising sun and the wonderful dawns that appear instead of electric lights showing people getting dressed. 

They are much more wonderful as you can see here from a photo taken late last week.

When I am World President, exhibitionism will become a crime and anybody caught revealing the insides of their homes at 6am on a British Winter morning will be confined to their houses throughout summer with their blinds, shutters and curtains nailed shut. 

Apart from that I shall be a benevolent leader – I just don’t like exhibitionists.

Goodbye 2020 - and Good Riddance

 

Welcome to a very cold South Manchester and a slightly later than normal summary of what happened in 2020 in the life of the Plastic Mancunian.

I have a set of questions I usually use to summarise the year, but I thought that this year I would use the questions supplied by Sunday Stealing instead (though there is some overlap). 

All I can say at the start is that I want to kick 2020 into the annals of history as a truly terrible year. We all know why but it does need to be said.

Without further ado – let’s dive in.

1. First things first, did you have a good year?

I had a terrible year. It was fine until the beginning of March, which is the time when I usually start getting over the boring winter period and look forward to a bright, warm and wholesome spring, summer and autumn. Instead of euphoria and optimism, we were subjected to a pandemic that is still going on. All plans that I had disintegrated and were cast to the four winds. 

Here in the UK, as with other parts of the world, we have been confined to our houses, unable to travel, unable to go to the office to work and unable to socialize with friends and see family. 

Of course, it is worse for those who have been victims of the virus and I feel for all of those people taken prematurely from us in 2020.

To add insult to injury, the UK has finally cut ties with the EU. We have a terrible trade deal but a deal nonetheless – it could have been so much worse. The architects of this travesty should be ashamed of themselves and all of them need to prepare themselves for a trip into deep space when I become World President – because that is where they are going to end up, special passengers on the spaceships I intend to build for them. 

The one gold nugget in the sack of turds that was 2020 is that the USA finally got rid of the Orange Goblin. Good riddance.

2. What was your favourite article of clothing this year?

This would be a weird question any year because I am not a dedicated follower of fashion. In 2020, though, it is totally irrelevant because the only items of clothing that I have bought are two pairs of jeans, neither of which I have worn yet. 

3. What song sums up this year for you?

I have lots of depressing songs that can sum up 2020 for me but instead of that, I am going to show you an uplifting song from 2020 that makes me feel more positive for 2021. This is a song by the symphonic metal band Nightwish. It is called “Music”, something that has helped me cope with the tedium of being locked down.

4. What was your favourite movie of the year?

I haven’t been to the cinema this year because of lockdown. However, I have seen a couple of films released in the early part of 2020 that made it onto Sky Cinema. Probably the best of those is “The Invisible Man”:

It was a creepy thriller and I enjoyed it.

5. Did an actor/actress catch your attention for the first time this year?

Not really. 

6. Favourite new TV show?

We binge watched Stranger Things, a really weird but highly enjoyable show.

7. Did you make any big permanent changes this year?

Not at all, unless you count not going out, not going on holiday, working from home and being bored out of my brain.

8. What was one nice thing you did for yourself?

I grew a beard for the first time in my life. Does that count? I am fed up of it now so it is coming off tomorrow in fact. Hopefully that will signal good things ahead.

9. Did you develop a new obsession?

Due to boredom and the inability to go anywhere, I bought more CDs this year than I have done for a long time. Nothing else leaps to mind to be honest.

10. Did you move?

No – but my son and his girlfriend did, just before the lockdown hit. They lived with us and had been trying to move out for a while and just managed to move into a rented house a fortnight before we were locked down. And thank goodness they did because otherwise we would have all been working from home for months and on top of each other. 

Now they have saved up enough money for a deposit on a house and got the keys in December. The house needs some work and they will be hopefully moving into their first proper owned home in March, at which time I hope this pandemic is beginning to fade.

11. Did you get a pet?

Yes, we acquired two black kittens called Ziggy and Star. We were going to take in their sister too but she was ill and needed more time to get over her illness. The three kittens were abandoned in an alley and left to die so for the first month or so they were quite ill. Ziggy and Star recovered and now the third one has too. However, the owner of the cat charity fell in love with her and asked if we minded whether he kept her. In the end we decided to leave her with him and his other cats. We know she will be well looked after. 

It’s great having kittens again and they have made the end of a terrible year enjoyable. Here they are:

Star performing her famous balancing act

Ziggy helping me to write software

12. Do you regret not doing anything?

Yes – I regret not going on holiday to the Canary Islands in January. Mrs PM’s dad asked if we wanted to go for a week but I had run out of holiday and so I couldn’t go. Mrs PM went and had some winter sun in a dark month. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have taken unpaid leave to go.

13. Do you regret doing something?

Not really – there hasn’t been much to do.

14. Did anyone/thing make you so mad it stayed with you for days?

Boris Johnson and his government. His handling of the pandemic has been so bad that a totally incompetent village idiot could have done better. And to top it all, now that we have split from the EU, he is trying to sell it as an opportunity when everyone who isn’t a frothing-at-the-mouth Brexiter knows that we will be worse off. 

Words fail me.

15. Did you lose anyone close to you?

We lost Poppy, our cat of 18 years. She had mouth cancer – and it was a very upsetting time for us and for a while we were a cat-less house. Ziggy and Star have helped to make the loss easier to deal with.

Here is Poppy:

16. Who was important to you this year but wasn’t important last year?

Nobody leaps to mind.

17. Who wasn’t as important to you this year as they were last year?

Again, nobody leaps to mind.

18. What was the best moment of the year for you?

I would say that it was the Delain concert I was lucky enough to get to in February before the shit hit the fan.

19, What was the worst?

Everything from March onwards.

20. What have you learned about yourself this year that you didn’t know in the years prior?

I have learned that I can grow a beard and that I can adapt to circumstances. I may have moaned about 2020 and the pandemic but by setting up a routine I can cope with it all. I have also learned that I need to escape quite often; I have missed holidays and just being able to go somewhere on a whim. I also realise that I have missed my mates – all of them.

21. What do you wish for others for the coming year?

A swift end to this pandemic so that all of us can get back to normality.

22. What do you wish for yourself?

I need a positive year and I need to get out there, so I really hope that this happens. By this time next year, I want to be a lot happier and also be a better person, which I can and will achieve in 2021.

Coronavirus Part 2

We are now in day 20 of the Lockdown on Easter Sunday so it seems fitting to answer a few more questions from Sunday Stealing about the reason that we are in this situation – the Coronavirus.

Shall we dive in?

1 – What is something you are doing due to the pandemic that you normally don’t do? After the pandemic will you continue to so this?

Being a mild sufferer from OCD and a rampant hypochondriac I have been very carefully avoiding anything that could pass on the virus – like door handles, other people etc. Being in lockdown is a massive help to be fair although in the UK we can take daily exercise outside once a day. My exercise of choice is my usual one – a good walk. However, even that has been fraught with danger to Captain Hypochondria and Captain OCD. So I have been avoiding the periods of time when I think most people will be out and about.

My daily routine on a work day involves getting up at the crack of dawn (around 6am) and immediately going for a walk (about half an hour). I don’t even get into the shower first, effectively just cleaning my teeth and going straight outside – having got dressed of course (I wouldn’t inflict my undressed self on anybody).

My hair is, of course, an uncontrolled mess having not been beaten into submission by a shower so I walk our streets and the local park with a grim and stern look on my face (I am not the happiest person in the morning) in the hope that anybody else who might see me will avoid this weird looking angry alien with crazy hair. A win-win for all concerned.

The Plastic Mancunian on his Daily Walk

When I get home, Captain OCD urges me to wash my hands. I have done this so many times since the Coronavirus appeared that my hands look like they are made of leather. I have even resorted to using Mrs PM’s moisturiser to soften them.

Here’s a picture of my hands:

I will almost certainly start my day with a walk after this pandemic is over because it is the best part of the day to do so. I will also wash my hands more too – Captain OCD is winning that war.

2 - What made you happy, sad, or frustrated today? List, all big and/or small, as there may be some of one or all of these feelings!

I was saddened by the fact that we are three weeks into the lockdown and I see it lasting at least another three weeks.

I was frustrated by some irresponsible joggers once more struggling to understand the concept of social distancing during my walk.

I was happy to be home after an hour’s walk today to enjoy a little comedy on the TV while eating a well-deserved full English breakfast.

I am also quite content right now, writing this nonsense, drinking a large cup of tea and listening to this:

3- What is one of the first things you will do when the pandemic is over?

My eldest son and his girlfriend moved out a couple of days before the lockdown and we haven’t had the chance to see their new house. So I will almost certainly go to visit them – and then I will go to the pub to have a couple of beers with mates. Then I will look at booking a holiday somewhere.

4 – Are you an essential employee or do you know someone who is? Is this affecting you in some way?

I am not an essential employee but I do know three nurses who must be suffering at the moment. I feel for them every time I see news reports about what is happening at hospitals up and down the country.

5 – What are you doing to destress during this stressful time?

I’m not really that stressed to be honest with you. The greatest enemy at the moment is boredom. Obviously I have Mrs PM for company which keeps me occupied most of the time but I am also relying on the introvert within me to help relieve the ennui of being stuck at home. There is plenty of stuff to do, if I think about it, such as reading, writing, playing games, watching TV, trying to be creative, exploring the internet to find new music and revisit older music, as well as the more mundane things like cleaning, cooking, ironing etc.

6 – Have you tried any new recipes during this time? Please share your recipe if you want to.

No – I hate cooking. When it is my turn to do this, I rely on my basic recipes rather than trying not to poison Mrs PM and myself. However, Mrs PM has been trying out a couple of new things from her collection of recipe books, the best one recently being a Mediterranean chicken and chorizo dish which was very tasty.

7 – Have you always lived where you do now? If not, how did you wind up in the place you currently live?

No. I was born in Walsall, an industrial town in the West Midlands, about 11 miles north of Birmingham and lived there for 18 years until I went to university in Liverpool. I lived there for three years popping back to Walsall during the summer before moving to Manchester where I have lived ever since. This is why my blog alias is The Plastic Mancunian because I am not a true Mancunian even though I have lived here for 36 years.

8- Where is the last place you visited on-line?

I would say You Tube in order to embed “Long Live Rock and Roll” by Rainbow into this blog post.

9- What is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to you?

Lots of people have said nice things all through my life so it is difficult to select a single one and elevate that to the position of “nicest thing”. I will tell you one funny thing though which was nice in a weird way.

I was in a pub in Liverpool with some mates about 15 years ago when a woman came up to me and grabbed my hand. She was a little inebriated and asked me if I was married. I told her I was in a deep and loving relationship and a look of sadness crossed her face. “That’s such a shame,” she slurred. “I would marry you tomorrow if I could. You are so gorgeous!”

I was shocked and my mates supported me by laughing their heads off. She turned to them and said “I’m serious!” before storming off.

My mates still mention it to this day saying "she must have had her beer goggles on when she said that!"

She may have been a little drunk but I thought it was a really sweet thing to say.

10 – Tell me about the last photo on your camera (phone or real camera or both!)

I took a couple of photos on my walk yesterday – the last one being this one of the River Mersey:

Coronavirus

Things are very serious with Coronavirus now so it seems fitting to answer a set of questions about the subject from Sunday Stealing.

Let’s dive straight in shall we?

1. Has the COVID-19 affected your work environment?

Yes. On Friday 13th March, we had a briefing that told us that we can work from home if we choose. I chose to do so starting the following Monday. The company then decided on the following Wednesday that everybody except those who look after the IT infrastructure and deal with 24 hour support must also work from home. The company have two adjacent offices and one of them, the one I work in, has now been closed, the other one being closed to all but the absolutely essential staff I mentioned above.

Given that I work in IT and technology exists to accommodate home working, this is a no-brainer. I am bored at home, I have to admit, but we do have daily “stand up meetings” via software that ensures we can see each other face to face via our webcams, enabling each member of my team to get a glimpse of each other’s homes for fifteen minutes.

We also have an end of day chat which is less formal and geared more towards having a chat about general stuff, as we would over a coffee during office hours. This is being extended to the entire company at set times over the coming weeks so that we can pop in have a chat.

Sadly, Mrs PM’s company are insisting that she goes into the office, but she is a contractor and when the company is forced to send people home, we fear that she might be let go. This isn’t unexpected but for now she is driving to work every day and taking the usual precautions.

2. How are you feeling about the Coronavirus?

I am a hypochondriac with mild OCD so my anxiety levels are slightly elevated. I am trying to be pragmatic and following the advice to the letter, even though our wonderfully inept government have been dragging their feet until recently.

I have actually been washing my hands so much that they are drying out a little and I have had to use Mrs PM’s moisturiser to help a little.

Don’t tell anybody – that’s between you and I, dear reader.

What I do feel annoyed is that certain people think the virus will not get to them or that they are indestructible and if they do get it will survive as if it were just a bad cold.

Equally, I am annoyed at those who are panicking so much that they are hoarding and stockpiling at the expense of the most vulnerable people in our society. Worse, the people who really matter, like doctors, nurses, medical professionals and those who are helping to keep the country going, are struggling to get supplies because of the selfishness of idiots.

I heard yesterday that there is a shortage of freezers because people are buying extra ones to fill up with their ill-gotten gains from the supermarkets. I am quite angry about this.

3. Has anybody you know been tested / have you?

On the same day my company had the Coronavirus briefing, we discovered that a young lad was off with the symptoms. Three weeks earlier he had been to Italy on holiday. He returned on Sunday and was advised to self-isolate for 14 days. He did exactly that and then came back to work on Tuesday. He was ill the following Friday.

The problem is that we can’t be sure that he has the virus or not because the NHS is not testing people unless they are admitted to hospital. This means that the official number of cases doesn’t represent the true picture. The government have acknowledged this and given the official number plus the extrapolated number too – and that is much higher as you would imagine.

Stop Press: Mrs PM has an old friend from university who lives in Liverpool. The BHS helpline have just informed him that they think he has the virus. He won’t be tested until his symptoms become so bad that he ends up in hospital. Let’s hope that isn’t the case.

4. Do you have any friends stuck in any exotic locations?

No. Mrs PM’s dad was in Turkey until yesterday and had to be flown back to a different airport as flights were very limited to get back. He is back safe and sound now and is immediately self-isolating hopefully.

5. Have you changed any of your personal habits due to the pandemic?

Yes. I wash my hands a lot more and I haven’t been socialising with friends for a couple of weeks. I have been going out for walks to avoid cabin fever and observing the advice of keeping far away from other walkers. I fear that we will soon have to stop doing even that.

6. What is the craziest thing you've seen or heard about the outbreak?

Apart from nutters stockpiling things? People have largely been ignoring advice and still going to the pub and restaurants, although that too will now cease as the government has ordered all such establishments to close down.

A lot of people think they are invincible and are just not changing their ways. That to me is crazy.

I’ve also watched Donald Trump’s bullshit over the past few weeks, telling blatant lies to the American people and then getting experts telling the truth just a few seconds later. How can Americans believe the Orange Goblin any more?

Another thing I have seen and heard is that people have stopped drinking Corona Beer because in their minds it might actually be responsible for the outbreak.

That is almost as crazy as some of Trump’s bullshit.

7. Do you think our politicians are doing enough to curb the crisis?

My view on Trump in the US is above. In the case of the UK the answer is also no.

I have read a few reports over the past couple of weeks about the spread of the virus in mathematical and statistical terms and, since that was my main background at university, I understand what they mean. Western governments have not been following the advice until it is too late and the UK government is only now realising the seriousness of the situation. The actions in Italy, Spain and France have hopefully given Boris “The Clown” Johnson the kick up the arse that he needed.

Over the past week we have ramped up our response, closing pubs, restaurants etc, closing schools and tightening restrictions. I welcome this but we are, in my opinion (based on some of the reports I read) about two weeks too late. The good news is that sporting bodies, theatres etc. acted before this, so that we went some way to actually changing our behaviour before the government made it official.

Let’s hope things improve and we aren’t too late. News from Italy and Spain suggest to me that perhaps we have acted too late.

8. Have you stockpiled anything because of the crisis?

No. I have been angered by the behaviour of certain irresponsible individuals despite warnings from everybody. My son and his girlfriend said that they saw two people fighting over a box of eggs in the local supermarket last week.

As far as we’re concerned, Mrs PM and I have been doing the regular weekly shop as normal. We have enough toilet roll for a while, as well as other bits and pieces. My hope is that people will start to behave properly over the next week or two.

The bottom line is that the country has enough food, cleaning products etc. for everybody so hoarding them is doing nothing more than depriving the needy and the most important people we need to help us through all of this.

9. What do you think you will miss the most if you are subject to a lock in?

Probably going for a walk. I have been calling on the introvert within me to help me cope with working alone from home. Thankfully, I am quite happy in my own company and of course Mrs PM is here too. I will miss going to pubs and restaurants with friends but I can cope with that. I have enough to occupy my mind, I think.

Oh – and since the football season has been suspended I miss watching it on a Sunday afternoon. Also, the travel restrictions will almost certainly mean that our planned trip to Italy in early June and Spain in late June are cancelled. I have accepted that. We can travel when all this is over.

10. What is the weirdest rumour you've heard about the virus?

I think it probably has something to do with why people are stockpiling toilet roll. This is a respiratory illness and does not cause you to spend more time on the toilet.

Now I do know for a fact that some people eat toilet paper. Stick with me on this. I have lived with people in the past who I suspect of this weird diet. I go to the toilet in the morning and there is a full roll available for use. When I next go, about two hours later, I notice that there is one single lonely sheet dangling sadly from the cardboard. Only one person has been to the toilet during that time, my flatmate. I can only conclude that he had a breakfast of loo roll on toast.

How else would he have used so much? On second thoughts, don’t answer that.

11. Do you have a favourite meme about the virus?

This one:

12. Has the virus made you grateful for anything?

I think we are discovering that people can generally be wonderful (if you ignore selfish hoarders). We are seeing good deeds more and more as most people try to pull together during these tough times. I’m grateful for that, I applaud it and I hope that it changes people in the future.

13. Have any of your plans been upset by the outbreak?

Yes. I’ve had a couple of concerts cancelled and I guess that June will see another one cancelled plus two holidays. I would rather the outbreak be over though; we can go to gigs and holidays and socialise when all of this is over.

14. Are you planning do to anything different because of the COVID-19 outbreak?

Working from home, obviously and taking the time to sort out my life a little. There will be ample time for self-reflection over this period – and I mean positive self-reflection rather than trying to dwell on how bad it is.

Oh – and Mrs PM is having a spring clean starting next week so that will give us the opportunity to declutter (within reason).

15. What do you hope to see in six months time?

I hope that it is all over by then and that we can return to something like a normal life.

I am being quite realistic though and there is a chance that we will still be restricted (albeit not as much as now).

Once we have a vaccine, things will improve, although rumour has it that this won’t be for another 12 to 18 months. In six months time, we will at least know much more about the virus, how it is transmitted, how to mitigate its affects, how to mitigate the spread and, hopefully, have a massive long list of lessons learned, should there ever be another similar virus in future.

 16. Has the Coronavirus upset your mental health in any way?

As I said above, I am slightly more anxious as I succumb to several personal nemeses. They are:

Captain Paranoia – the person who tells me that nothing will improve and the future is bleak. No matter how careful I am I will catch the virus eventually.

Captain OCD – the person who tells me that I can catch the virus via my own computer because somebody else might have typed on my keyboard three weeks ago. He is also turning my hands into leather gloves thanks to all the washing.

Captain Hypochondria – the person who tells me that if wake up feeling a little tired, then I have COVID-19. If I have a slight headache, I have COVID-19. If I sneeze I have COVID-19. If I look at a person in the street I will catch COVID-19.

The good news is that I am a sensible and fairly clever chap, so I largely ignore these arseholes. They have been with me all my life and I am still here.

The three of them can just bugger off - and so can Coronavirus!

Contagion

My name is Dave and I am a hypochondriac.

For that reason, and that reason alone, the end of the world scenario that terrifies me most is the threat that we as a race could all be wiped out by a supervirus.

Imagine, if you will, a TV news announcement that describes a potential nasty bug that is spreading from person to person in numerous countries with no hope of recovery. From that point on, I would be totally and utterly convinced that the virus was in my system even if it hadn’t reached the shores of the United Kingdom yet.

In the past, I have been slightly perturbed when newscasters have mentioned benign bugs that are nasty but not lethal, even when they are confined to the deepest parts of Africa, say.

A few years ago there had been an outbreak of the deadly respiratory disease called Sars and it had surfaced in Hong Kong. Thankfully, the authorities had it under control eventually and it was then that my project manager asked me to go on a business trip to the city.  I read that the authorities at the airport were screening people as they came and left using thermal cameras in an attempt to detect elevated temperatures in travellers. I wrestled with my inner hypochondriac who told me in no uncertain terms that I was going to catch the disease even though it was under control. Normally I would have been over the moon to visit my favourite city outside the United Kingdom – but not this time.

Deep down I knew that I would be safe but that didn’t stop the hypochondriac inside whispering to me constantly through the flight: “You will catch Sars – that’s if you don’t have it already.”

The temperature in Hong Kong in the summer is quite a lot higher than the UK and you feel it the moment that you leave the aircraft. Such was my paranoia that I thought the thermal cameras would identify an elevated temperature in me as I walked towards immigration.

Of course, I was being utterly stupid and I passed through without a problem. My trip lasted three weeks, during which time I became an expert in the symptoms of Sars. Every time I felt slightly below par I was convinced that I had succumbed to the disease – even a few weeks after my return to Manchester.

I know that I am an idiot for allowing myself to accede to such moronic paranoia but I can’t help it. I wish I could.

Thus, if I were to ever catch a news report telling me that a deadly disease was spreading across the world, wiping out everybody who came into contact with it, I would probably worry myself to death months before the infection claimed me.

I would be an expert and would probably use all of my money to travel to the remotest part of the world, avoiding all contact with civilisation on my way, so that I could sit there in splendid isolation away from any human beings who might pass on the deadly virus to me.

That’s how irrational my inner hypochondriac is.

The perfectionist in me wanted to do some research into the possibility of humanity being wiped out by such a virus so I have had to silence the hypochondriac.

And thank goodness for that because I have discovered that it is highly unlikely that a pandemic could cause the extinction of the human race. Over the centuries, there have been several nasty little blighters that have tried their level best to take us all out – things like The Black Death, Ebola, various flavours of flu, Sars and HIV.

The good news is that there are steps in place to contain such outbreaks and the organisations and institutions that are responsible for this are damned good at what they do.

Yet, as I watch programs like “The Walking Dead” where a virus has wiped out all but the hardiest of humanity and turned them into flesh eating Zombies, I can’t help but think that maybe such a thing could happen. In fact, in the show, every human being actually has the disease anyway so that when you eventually die, you come back to life as a cannibalistic corpse whose sole  raison d'être is to munch on the living.

How nice is that?

My deepest fear is that there is a malignant virus living dormant in every human being ust waiting to be activated and murder us in the most horrible way possible. If I shove this thought aside for a moment (very difficult now it is in my head) the truth is that humanity would find a way were such a supervirus to suddenly appear – even if it were man made. Some form of humanity would survive and find a way perhaps living in a remote part of the world, like the top of a mountain range, the deepest part of the Australian Outback or an African desert. It wouldn’t be pleasant but we might survive.

And if you do live in such an inhospitable yet safe part of the world, get ready to meet me. I’ll be there the moment the first cases of the outbreak are reported.