Me Myself and Isolation: day 5

 Day 5. “Undirt wah cat sank,” as they say in France.

The toddler is eating jelly and watching one of the many sleep-deprivation-conceived shows for kids. Honestly, young kids shows should mostly be categorised under “psychedelia.”

Baby Jake has LSD induced dreams interpreted by his older brother.

The other end of kids shows are more educational rather than make something like the way their brains work. The better ones can also be enjoyed by parents. There are a lot that cannot be. Peppa Pig is a better one. Every now and again, they’ll slip in a hint of something more adult or a reference to classic movies only us older parents would even get. They know a lot of parents are also stuck in the room when it’s playing.

See 3 mins in for some top refs.

But best of all is Hey Duggee. Hey Duggee sometimes seems like it’s aimed more at adults than kids. But kids still love it. I know people without kids who watch it. It is jam packed with references, parodies and well-crafted humour. It’s also one of the most inclusive kids shows ever.

News here is the usual confusion and buffoonery. The government has had to step back a bit on it’s attempts to reopen the country by banning gatherings of over 6 people in the face of an increase in cases. It’s also going back on an agreement it pushed very hard for and admitted that might mean breaking a little bit of the law. The latter is about Brexit. The easiest test for something being about Brexit is asking, “does this sound like something a 3rd world dictatorship would do?” Cos if yes, it’s most likely a Brexit thing.

For any non-Brits, Brexit is best explained as being like deciding to leaving a (lets say) golf club because you were persuaded that it would save money on fees only to realise you can’t then use the course now without paying each time which will be much more expensive in the long run. Plus, a little bit of you also wanted to leave because you had somehow thought if you left, the Muslim family at the end of the street would somehow move away if you did. There are no good analogies because it’s a complicated web of misinformation, ineptitude, duplicity and complacency. 

We’re still quarantined, but work is keeping us occupied. As is a toddler who is half soprano, so thus the loudest screams on anything remotely her size.

As you’ve been good, I’ll leave you with one of the greatest moments of children’s television in recent years: Hey Duggee – Stick Song. A treat for all those 90s kids who now have kids of their own.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 3

 Day, the 3. Already I’m reverting to old English (or ye olde Englishe as it’s known).

Back in the day, customs officials were keen to know did you have any illegal drugs or banned fruit. Now they want to know where you’ve been in the last 14 days. Which countries, in particular. If a country you have visited is not on the exemption list then you have to self-isolate. “Not on the exemption list” is effectively a double negative and, so, confusing. Much less confusing to say, “it’s on the inemption list.”

The UK government has a website, GOV.UK. And it certainly can govuk itself. 

Fair enough, a country like the UK, which loves itself some bureaucracy, is going to have a lot of forms and documents, but just a little thought could make things easier to navigate. It’s basically just a directory but organised how a civil servant would think. Something most people would describe as labyrinthine, a civil servant would call an in tray.

So even things I found yesterday, I can’t find today. There is a place to log in, but it’s not prominent on every page, you have to dig down and find the right page. The writing style is as dry and verbosely factual as you would expect.

Anyway, on one of these pages is a form to let the good people at Edge Case, Side Liners or Border Force (or whatever the customs people are calling themselves this year) know where you’ve been.

Sweden is on the inemption list. Countries come and go from the exemption list the same way that lockdown rules are relaxed and tightened. It’s the ebb and flow a country / world at sea.

Apparently, they do follow up on this. From some people I’ve heard that there was no checking. Emma is in some Swedish groups and people there have gotten automatic phone calls asking if they are at home. You answer “yes” and they’re happy, supposedly. Maybe they listen to the noise behind you. If it’s a lot of chatter and thumping bass, you might not be at home OR you are breaking the bo contact rules. If it’s the last 30 minutes of Netflix, you’re probably at home. They also do come visit, Emma heard. Some people have had several checks. So it seems that the checks are random or maybe based on some other factor such as age or how foreign your surname is. There’s no data on this.

MILK (Internet slang) - Man I'd Like to Know.

A hundred years ago, there was a similar pandemic, known popularly as The Spanish Flu. How much harder things were then. No internet. No YouTube. No Netflix. No way of remotely arranging food to be delivered unless you were wealthy enough to have a telephone or expendable servants. And even a few years ago, there were no affordable services delivering food or groceries unless you were house-ridden through age or sickness.

But now, it’s very easy to order groceries to be delivered. The biggest problem is that, in these times, the better ones will not have a delivery slot for quite a few days. Am*zon can deliver pretty quickly, but who likes giving money to an actual Bond villain. Of course, it means these delivery drivers are basically visiting all of the people deemed more likely to be sick and are now the potential spreaders. But, they seem to know this, and keep their distance. Leaving the boxes for you to empty at your door and only approaching to get the next one to you.

Self-isolation sounds like it’s a great excuse to not work. “I can’t work from home today, I’m self-isolating.” But, alas it actually means you have less things pulling you away from work. So, Monday morning is Monday morning. At home. Where it has been for months. And where it was for nearly two years before that (for me). 

There was the usual meeting in the people-panelled zoom room. And then getting back into doing whatever it is I do, after half a week of good old fashioned rest. I’m lucky in that what I can do can be done from home. I haven’t been laid off or been left without clients. Also, as an introvert, lockdowning and self-isolating are not as hard on me as they are others. I do count myself lucky. 

The toddler, however is an extrovert. She’s gregarious and so 2 weeks without daycare or other contact with fellow wee’uns is going to be the toughest part of this. But if Jesus can suffer 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness with Satan, we can suffer 14 days and 14 nights in our living room with a toddler. Not that I comparing myself to Jesus. 

Ugh, day 3 and I’m already comparing myself to the messiah.

Serial Killer (2016)

With the sad demise of George Michael it has become clear that 2016 is a serial killer. More specifically a serial killer of the type that really only appears in movies. In films, serial killers always have some elaborate system for picking victims and circumstances which eventually the detective, who has spent the first three quarters of the mostly being flummoxed and dealing with a number of personal problems, gains an insight into.

The flash of inspiration came when it was clear it was too much of a coincidence that George Michael, who is indelibly linked to the song “Last Christmas,” died on Christmas day. From then on, it’s a matter of looking at the other key musical celebrity deaths of 2016 and finding a pattern.

David Bowie, who died on a Sunday, did write a song called “Sunday,” and as he seems to have been the first victim, it does make him the “Absolute Beginner.” These might seem tenuous, but this is the clincher: He wrote a song called “Underground” and the 10th of January (the day he died) was also the same date the London Underground first opened in 1863. Let that sink in.

Prince who penned the much-loved, haunting ballad ‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ died in April. Fans soon picked up on what seemed to be irony or coincidence or prescience but we now suspect was premeditation on the part of a rogue, sociopathic, killer year.

Leonard Cohen wrote a song called “The Old Revolution” and died on November 7 which is a Revolution Day in several former soviet countries.

Pete Burns, who perished on the 23rd of October, was most famous for the song “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record).” October 23rd is also the same day that Richard Nixon agreed to TURN over audio RECORDings related to the Watergate scandal, an event Nixon had been SPINning since it started. Did the killer somehow reveal the hidden meaning behind this seemingly fluffy pop hit?

Rick Parfitt died the 24th of December. Although Status Quo did release “It’s Christmas Time,” more pertinently they released “You’ll Come ‘Round” and December 24th is the day that the final of the 13 Icelandic Yule Lad’s (Jólasveinar) comes round. A stretch? Not if you are a deranged serial killer.

People, we are the detective. It’s up to us to work out who is next. We have the clues; we just need to work out who is next and when. We have to stop “2016” before it kills again!

Less of a Bite

Two days ago, a very polite older gentleman and his lovely assistant performed a conjuring trick in my mouth. They made 2 of my teeth disappear. By the power of magic. Well perhaps not magic. More by the power of pulling, sawing, cracking, pulling, sawing, cracking, pulling, pulling and more pulling.

The magic comes, I guess, from how tiny the tools are. Little,  mini drills and super-small saws. Well they seem small when you look at them. When you only sense them when they are in your mouth, with your eyes tightly shut to keep out the thought of pain, they feel huge. They are then like an enormous road drill with hammer action and a massive chain saw. And that suction thing is like a giant pipe connected to an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner. You wonder how all that can fit in your mouth. Then I recall my mouth isn’t the smallest on record. I come from Dartford, birthplace of Mick Jagger, it might be genetic. A drunk friend once told me it looked like I had a flip-top head. I still to this day have not thanked her. Or fully forgiven her.

The two teeth I had removed were wisdom teeth. These are the useless teeth at the back that exist only to be pulled out once you hit 35. I don't know if they are named because like wisdom itself you don't really know if you have it until it is too late. Or maybe they are named after Norman Wisdom, a British actor who played bumbling, ineffective characters who caused nothing but pain to those all around him. But most likely is that “wis” is the sound a tiny circular saw looming large in your mouth and the “dom” is the sudden sound a tooth makes when it’s cracked in two after being sawed most of the way through. It’s a crisp, nut-cracking sound that echoes throughout the dome of your mouth.

I’m now on some pretty strong, hippo-strength painkillers, so mostly my mouth is numb. It’s a good time for me to go and pick a fight, I reckon. Still get beaten, but won’t feel much. That is until the painkillers wear off.

I’ve been spending the time watching old videos of magicians. Now I know how they work, I’m looking to see that moment when David Copperfield, somehow without us seeing, pulled and sawed and cracked and pulled and sawed and cracked and pulled and pulled and pulled until the Statue of Liberty was nothing but a gaping hole in the gums of New York.

The Beans of Wrath

People of the Netherlands a cancer is encroaching your country. I have enjoyed my ten years here without it, but the proverbial triffids are at our door. They are in our train stations; they are in our high streets; and they are bent on stealing your culture.

I'm a huge fan of coffee. My fandom resembles that of a fresh crack addict. I love my drug of choice and what it does for me. I am convinced I can kick it whenever I choose. As an addict, I do like the coffee Starbuck's sells. And I enjoy the look of their cakes, although they do inject them with more sugar than a healthy man should consider eating. And their décor within them is not unpleasant.

Artists' rendition of your future.

However, their business model is parasitic. The aim is not to compete with other establishments in a healthy competitive manner, but to strangle them by flooding as many Starbucks as they can into a particular area so that if you go into a random coffee house, the chances are it's a Starbucks. Then, once the competition has all died out, they close most of their stores and enjoy being the people's only option.[1][2]

It's a savage use of money to deny people free choice. It's Soviet-style coffee communism aggressively brought about by abuse of people liberal attitudes to the free-market.

Now, I can understand it not mattering in a country like the US (or even the UK) that doesn't have a café culture, but this country does. Most bars and cafes actually have good coffee. They have atmosphere. And they are usually run by individuals with character and often a connection to or compassion for the community they serve.

If you go to a Starbucks, you are contributing to the eradication of the café culture of the Netherlands. You are saying, "I don't want 'gezellig' places with charm and character. I don't want a choice of places to go and drink coffee." You are, in short, supporting the Stalinesque purge of your nation's cafés.

Anyway, rant over, enjoy your coffee.

---

[1] No Logo, Naomi Klein, 2000;
[2] The Simpsons episode 3G04: Simpson Tide, 1998.

Cats on Drugs

Today we had a few peaceful hours without mammals under foot. Basically our kids spend the better part of the day at a kittie rave. A full-on drug festival. An acid mouse party. It's the only thing that explains how they were dozy, red-eyed and barely able to walk when we collected them. And what's more, we paid for the drugs.

Tenzin took something that knocked her out completely, but Borneo, with his singular appetites and dodgy ticker, had to have a completely different cocktail of drugs. Main ingredient in the mix was Ketamine, known on the street as "mean green", "K", "Ket" and "Special K". It's a horse anaesthetic. Well, actually it's lots of things, but it's also a horse anaesthetic. And a recreational drug.

It was quite a party just to get their teeth cleaned. Maybe next time I get my teeth cleaned, I'm going to wink at the dentist and hope I get the same treatment. If not, I'm going to the vet.

Top 5 Cat drug songs
1. Pussy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Beatles
2. Sorted for E's and Catnip – Pulp
3. Smoke Two Joints – Bobcat Marley
4. Ebeneezer Puss – The Shamen
5. Sweet Leaf – Black Tabby

Feel free to add ones I've missed.

Confessions of an English Cold Remedy Eater

With the weather here going from cold and wet, to suddenly sunny at the end of October, it's no wonder that colds and flus abound. Bang on cue, my throat began to feel abrased and my head like it had digested something it didn't like. I knew sniffling and only feeling acceptable if languishing in bed were not too far behind. In the end the flu that hit me was over pretty quickly in all departments except the throat which continued to feel like it had a rather fat and rough toad stuck in if for several days.

The one thing this did bring to my attention is that you cannot get Lemsip here. The thing I do remember from the UK was that when I had a cold, there was a whole array of treatments on offer that did usually seem to help. There was a variety, too. Those that warned of "drowsiness" as a side effect, were great for last thing at night, and the "non-drowsy" ones actually seemed to keep you awake.

In the Netherlands there are two interchangable products that are not really any better than having a warm, lemon drink (which is a very good thing if you have a cold or flu, but if a warm, lemon drink was working, you wouldn't be in the chemist (like, pharmacist) trying to buy something with chemicals in the first place. Well, I wouldn't.) For some reason the UK products are banned here. That's right, in the land of the tolerant drug laws and legalised "coffeeshops" where you can buy soft drugs over the counter, Lemsip is a banned substance. Lemsip!

When the recent flu hit, I lamented this, but a friend of mine, whom I will call "My Dealer," had some that she had brought back from a trip to England.

Now one reason for this ban could be that the "non-drowsy" agent is in fact related to speed. Distantly related. Probably the same distant relationship that Mickey Mouse has with Speedy Gonzales. But this doesn't make too much sense, really. And means that it is easier to get ahold of actual Speed than it is to get hold of its helpful, distant cousin.

To answer this, I have decided to open up a "Coughingshop" where sick people can go and get illicit drugs such as Lemsip and Beechams. Now you'll know where to go if you're ever in the Netherlands and you want to score some Night Nurse.