Between a Rock and a Hard Place

They have announced the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics by a year. Tokyo 2020 is now going to be held in 2021 but still called Tokyo2020. This represents the kind of of confusion that we are all feeling. I know that everyone is blaming the Corona virus pandemic but I think it might be my fault. Until yesterday they were still going ahead and then I wrote a blog suggesting alternative games that we are all in training for. The IOC must have got wind of it and decided it would be best to cancel.

It is a shame because I had been training for ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place.’

Being socially distant is my preferred way of living. When they closed social spaces like pubs and restaurants people inevitably flocked to my places. All of a sudden canal banks and sea walls thronged with people. Those people suddenly wanted to talk. Frankly, it was a nightmare. The message of staying away from people hadn’t been given clearly enough and people thought spreading the illness was less likely if you were outside, so they rushed to the seaside and queued to climb Snowdon. Bob273 on Twitter got really cross and so the government made the announcement that scared most people.

We were caught between a rock and a hard place. My son was due to return from University on Friday because his holiday job in a supermarket were desperate for him to come back. My daughter, due to start a new job in Essex in three weeks was sitting in an empty flat in Leicestershire waiting to have the last bits of furniture that she had sold collected and her landlord visit to inspect and collect the keys. What should we do? There was no one to ask. The message was clear: No travel; stay in your own home; only go out once a day for exercise (the dog crossed his legs and farted). Bob273 on Twitter was furious at parents who had asked, “No travel? I want my children.”
He told them in no uncertain terms that they should stay where they were; that if they didn’t they would have personally killed millions of innocent people and that they should be shot by the army who should get put onto the street in tanks. We decided against the hard place and went for the rock. Keeping our family unit together and sane was the most important thing. Luckily, since then journalists have asked the questions for us and fact checked them. It turns out that Bob273 on Twitter was wrong.

As a claustrophobic, the suggestion of one walk a day is very difficult for me and I’m also not totally in control of when I leave the house. It’s only been one day but I’m exhausted and snappy from trying to negotiate this rock. Also, my house is full of people which is a pretty hard place.

At the weekend I was walking a canal path in Leicestershire before the message of keeping a distance and staying at home had been made really clear. It was 8am on a Sunday morning; a time when you rarely see anyone in a place like that but the path was heaving. I was not enjoying it. Eventually, I got far enough away from civilisation to start to feel calm and after a while thought I should head back. There were a family of four on the path ahead of me: a proper middle class Market Harborough family in Joules wellies and striped T-shirts, with blond tousle-haired kids holding a nature trail worksheet. I moved to the edge of the path by the water and they moved onto the bank. We should have been able to keep walking and just about keep far enough apart but they stopped and huddled together on the bank. I looked up, smiled and the mother pushed her children into the hedge.
“Gio! Angus! We’ve talked about this! Keep away! You don’t know who has the virus!”
I laughed at the time, thinking that those children are going to need a lot of therapy when this is all over. Now, I understand that they felt they were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Yesterday, I let the Long Suffering Husband come with me to walk the dog.  We walked to the sea wall and I suggested turning right, which normally takes you to a place with no people but the path was full, so we turned left.  Every time we saw someone come towards us we leaped up onto the bank.
"Are they the rock or the hard place?" he asked me. 

We managed the whole walk without being any nearer that 2 meters to any strangers.  Training was going really well.  It's a shame that the IOC have decided to cancel because I think we would have been medalists.