Grump

Gosh, I’m grumpy this morning. The rain, although welcome was too loud and I think I’m solar powered. Come on. Snap out of it. The pandemic is over. Cheer up. There must be something nice you can think about.

Nope. 

I tried. So instead I’m going to make a list of everything I’m grumpy about.

1. News: it’s breaking again and it’s all over my dining room table. When can news go back in the office? Rapes, stabbings and truck loads of illegal immigrants are filling my house. 

2. Borders: Seriously, if we can’t control our borders during a pandemic, so that a truck can be stopped on the M11 with 14 desperate people in the back, we really are useless.

3. Matt Hancock’s back slap: it really is one rule for them and another for us.

4. The arts: kept us all going during lockdown. Without Grayson Perry, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others less famous we would have been revolting much sooner but the government hasn’t even thought about how to get these industries working again. They’ve just decided to consult Cameron Macintosh, so that’ll help all the musicians and actors I know.

5. Macron’s visit: How come he doesn’t have to quarantine? Prince Charles will travel from Aberdeen and shake his hand to celebrate a speech by a leader who was hiding in another country during a war, eighty years ago. The business of celebrating things that don’t matter continues but you can’t see your 80year old dad blow out the candles on his birthday cake because the care home still has a no visitor policy because the virus hasn’t gone.

6. Tacky painted aeroplanes: £900,000 to paint a plane seems a lot to me. I have no more words about that except rude ones.

7. Catch up plans: schools can not be held responsible for what children did or didn’t do in lockdown.

8. Private schools: can open fully because they have space, resources and small class sizes. It’s all about protecting the most vulnerable. I can see that now.

9. Zoom/Hangout/Skype: It doesn’t matter which one I use, they all hurt my holey brain. The flicking between pictures, the sound that squeaks and whistles and doesn’t match up with the pictures. The pictures that freeze and flicker. It’s exhausting and even if someone does 25 push ups a day I don’t think that’s going to change. 

10. Hugging: All this talk of being able to hug again is making me twitchy. Do I have to?

That’s not everything but I’ve even bored myself now. I’m going to stand in the rain to see how much my courgettes (Water sponges) have grown.