We may not be completely unlocked but I certainly consider myself unblocked. I’ll let you think up your own constipation jokes. The large gap between my last entry and this is indicative of the extent to which lockdown has eased. I’m not working in them yet but I’m certainly visiting pubs. I’m celebrating milestones with family and friends at their houses and in their gardens. I’ve joined a gym for the first time in my life and torture myself there on an almost daily basis. I’ve become busy and as a result lockdown blog ideas have been in short supply.
I’m making plenty of concessions, of course. I’m doing a lot of ‘household-counting’. A good look at the guidelines doesn’t always help me with that to be honest. I have friends who wield a good and solid interpretation of them but I’ve failed to glean anything that concrete. The fault is with me, I’m sure. I can’t help but find contradictions throughout the ‘rules’ and I’ll freely admit that’s led to a little fudging on my part at times. Whilst the pandemic doesn’t quite loom over me anymore a sense of social guilt does. I’m doing my best I tell myself.
So no, we’re far from back to normal. For example, I have a collection of smelly masks in the back pocket of most of my jeans. I’m not allowed to shower at the gym which is a bit of a pain. Instead I slither home leaving a sweaty trail behind me like a grossly unfit slug. Theatres remain closed. I had a rather depressing encounter with a director friend of mine recently (the encounter itself was delightful, actually. How clumsy of me!) who suggested 2022 was when she was planning to get things going again. Lord, how depressing.
This will be my final entry as I have light weights to barely lift and pubs to feel guilty in but I don’t want to finish things in a minor key. On a personal level I’m feeling happy and well and Polly and Fergal are also perkier. My play is so close to being finished I’m going to be approaching friends at the end of the week to attend a reading for me so I can hear it and begin the re-drafting process. I’m a lucky boy who isn’t going to starve anytime soon and has a lovely roof over his head. In the main the people I meet out and about walking Fergal or riding the bus aren’t terrified or overly blasé. Generally, I get the impression people are using common sense and doing their best. I refuse to be seduced into thinking the populace are selfish idiots. The minute one considers oneself better or cleverer than everyone else is the minute one stops being part of society and I feel the pandemic has shown us all how important our society is. I feel fairly good and I hope you, dear reader, do too. If you don’t then I’m on the end of a phone if you’d like to talk. I don’t kid myself that anyone who doesn’t already know me reads this!
Many thanks to The Librarian for hosting my ramblings.
xx
