It’s Mardi Gras, pancake day, Shrove Tuesday, whatever you want to call it. The day when you gorge on everything nice you have left in the house and think about your sins. This is important because tomorrow you atone for those sins and eat nothing nice for 40 days. It probably shouldn’t be a shock that this period of fasting comes at a lean time for veg growers; even the purple sprouting is looking a bit sorry for itself.
In the spirit of the day I am considering my sins and I’ve decided that it could be sinful that someone of my age gets so much pleasure out of constantly mocking authority. Maybe I should have grown out of it by now?
I was going to write about a phrase that had stuck in my head from a radio interview with Kevan Collins, Education Recovery Minister, that I’d heard the other day. It was a good interview and he seems like a very nice and sensible man, despite the fact that his parents couldn’t spell Kevin. He said, “We shouldn’t under estimate the resilience of children.”
He’s right, isn’t he? It’s not children that are going to struggle to bounce back from this, it’s us old folks. Those of us who have used up our resilience. After the last few years, despite considering myself a very resilient person, I honestly feel like a rubber ball that’s been used too much. There’s only a tiny bit of bounce left. I have no desire to make exciting music videos that no one will watch because I just can’t be bothered. I don’t want to adapt. I liked things as they were.
Luckily, unlike the Long Suffering Husband, I haven’t worn out my sense of humour by using it too much. Quite often, we can be watching a comedian and he will look at me, stoney faced and say, “Do you find this funny?” Sometimes I can see the humour in it but it doesn’t resonate, however, usually I have to tell him that I do. He looks at me, with a disappointed expression that suggests I should have grown up by now.
When my son was about 8 he collected bouncy balls. He bought them with his pocket money from the toy shop in town and had every colour combination you could think of. They were all roughly the same size, because he had a preference for the 10p balls. Although they all got less bouncy with age, we were both fascinated to notice that some had more bounce than others. Some bounced higher on the kitchen floor, others were better outside and the odd few seemed to prefer his bedroom carpet. People are like that. We all have different things that make us bounce.
Thinking about these rubber balls I’ve decided not to bother atoning for my sins this year. I think I need to keep all the bounce I’ve got. I will not be giving up chocolate or crisps and I will keep laughing at authority figures.
If you didn’t watch last night’s Boris then you really need to see this clip that I recorded off the telly and tell me that it’s wrong to laugh at authority figures.
Watching Boris trying to say to tocilizumab, ending up with something that sounded like Toxic Lizzie Mad , while Chris Whitty rolled his eyes and the reporter tried not to laugh was just what I needed to help my bounce recover. I just hope that Darren Dutton does something funny with it on Twitter. Check him out if you haven’t already.
https://twitter.com/darren_dutton/status/1332760909085876226?s=21
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