Down the rabbit hole...

Ok, so that seems completely mad right? What I mean, in my own quaint albeit crazy way is. I've had this pain in my arm for a few months but for the last month I have not had the pain because I have not taken the action that causes the pain to become evident. That is... if I rub my arm from elbow to wrist with a degree of firmness such as when drying oneself with a towel, then I get a sharp pain from a point in my forearm that passes almost as quickly as it appears. Almost as though a needle has been stabbed into me and withdrawn. I did wonder whether there was a splinter or some similar body in the skin and that when I rubbed in that downward direction it was causing the splinter to push in and cause the sharp pain. But I looked and could find nothing, I even went so far as to shave the affected area so I could have a close look at the skin and found nothing! Mysterious I thought! So why Schrodinger's arm? Well, because after having this issue continually for a couple ...

Good to see that Donald Trump has some good old common sense and has kindly decided to stop referring to Covid-19 as the Chinese Virus. Although he retains the right to do so if he so wishes. That goodwill gesture came after some people in China called some people in Washington and asked nicely if the President might refrain from such terminology. That was followed by a call between Xi and Trump. A call that was, of course great. Having said that. As we know that neither of these men are really great sentimentalists but they are both kinda keen on nationalism and waving big sticks at each other so I suspect the call was more along the lines of 'you need to stop, right now, or we'll take actions that will hurt your economy and with it your reelection'! Like maybe a freeze on buying any more grain products or pork for instance. Who really knows, except we know that Trump loves goading people and feels he is the master of everything he views so to simply stop calling the vi...

One of those unintended consequences from the current crisis will be future taxation. I have a sense that some people, maybe most people, think that the stimulus packages being unveiled and in action around the world are being given out by governments thankful to a good a loyal workforce with a pat on the back and a kind word in the ear. Wouldn't that be nice. More likely, and call me a sceptic if you wish, is that, once the crisis is over and the country has regained 80% of it's pre-crisis level, the people that have been helped out will begin to see the bill arrive at the table, just like a date that went wrong and the would be partner has stormed out without paying. How this money will be expected to be paid back is another question. Possibly through increases in general taxation levels or in increases in tax on what might consider luxury items such as wine and tobacco. The usual suspects. Or, and it is not exactly rocket science to suggest, but another round of aust...

I feel this very strange sense of surrealism, not the Magritte type of surrealism, the 'this doesn't feel real to me' type surrealism. I guess it's because I don't work full time any more and I keep pretty much to myself and I stopped partying like it's 1984 back in 1984... ok so I carried on for a couple more decades but I did stop eventually. I guess it's not helped by the bizarre inputs I keep picking up. Like Trump saying he wants the epidemic over within the next twelve weeks, or to have the churches full at Easter, at the same time as the governor of New York is stating there is a storm coming and he's lacking critical supplies. Then we have a national shutdown in the UK but no resources to actually enforce it. And rather a lot of people ignoring the restrictions anyway. Plus the  restrictions seem to be getting ever more vague every time a minister, without the merest hint of irony, clarifies them. For instance, there is the instruction that ...

First day of a complete lockdown in the UK. It's always fun when such things happen, which is never, to see the other effects. Like being advised not to go to the supermarket unless you can absolutely help it and instead use the online home delivery services, except of course getting a delivery slot any time in the next month is currently impossible and one of the main four supermarkets website is currently crashed due to excessively high traffic volumes. Even the click and collect slots are all full. So, trip to the supermarket and spinning the chamber of the covid-19 gun for a game of Russian roulette! In the US the esteemed president has made comments indicating he would like the restrictions lifted in a couple of weeks or sooner so the US can get back to work and start making money again. It's all well and good making such statements so long as he is willing to accept the consequences, which would be a considerable number of dead. Not simply because of the virus itself ...

One of the questions that bothers me an awful lot, and it is odd that in the grand scheme of things it really is not important at all, is, why does Donald look like some kind of orange panda? In fact he would look more at home in the forests of Borneo (are there still any forests in Borneo or have they now all been converted into coffee tables for westerners who then place conservation magazines atop of them???) or maybe the Andes with the other spectacled bears. Certainly he would be more use if he was just sitting in a tree eating some fruit and defecating onto the forest floor than standing in front of a microphone and talking what can only be described as utter bollocks the consequence of which he seems blissfully ignorant of. But then blissfully ignorant is pretty much his stock in trade. He is rather good at blissful ignorance and one can only hope that in as short a time as possible he is returned to being a tv star on free to air tv helping other total dicks become even big...

One of the strange things (wait, have I used that as a starting point previously? Hmmm, well, then this is simply today's strange thing... and I guess in these times of strange things that's probably acceptable!) about this pandemic and the lock-down that most of us are either in or will soon be in is the odd sensations. Sensations about things that you feel you want to do and should be doing but can't because you either cannot go and get what you need or there simply is not what you need available. But that you feel frustrated that you cannot get on and do this pressing thing, whatever it might be, because everything has changed! Thing is, the thing that you wanted to do could have been done at any point in the preceding nn years but was not and yet now you have all this free time it suddenly seems important probably because you cannot do it rather than you really want to do it. It's a bit like being physically constrained (except for those that do ot like being p...