'A whole new set of normal'

The weirdest thing about the past 10 days is just how quickly weird has become the new normal.
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When Boris Johnson went on television last Monday night and told everyone to only go outside for food, health reasons or work; to stay two metres away from other people at all times and not meet up with your friends or family; he was basically describing the life of every married man in Britain.

Same goes for teenage boys, too. The only change to the average 16-year-old lad’s daily routine is now dad’s working from home, Pornhub buffers way more during the daytime than it ever did pre-lockdown.

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They sent me home with my works computer last Tuesday, which looked so huge and alien when it first arrived that I know how the chimps in 2001: A Space Odyssey felt when that giant, shrieking monolith landed out of nowhere.

Those of us lucky enough to still be in work will probably nod along sagely to this next bit. The first day doing your office job from home was plain old strange. The merciless Mickey-taking replaced by curt instructions in Google Hangouts.

The first rule of home working is sarcasm doesn’t work when it’s written down.

The second day was a bit less odd and by day three, writing headlines that you could read in a newspaper from the Spar store at the bottom of the road that you had written at your kitchen table felt, well, pretty normal.

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Our daughters are making the best of it. What with every university in the country now operating the most expensive streaming service in the world (lectures beamed direct to your laptop for ONLY £9,250 a year), they’ve got even more time on their hands than they had before.

So they both got jobs at the same supermarket and come home with tales of how most of the customers are patient and understanding, but some just won’t be told that, no,

you aren’t allowed to buy 15 packets of fags in one go anymore.

I’ve just worked that out. That’s £150 worth of fags. I can think of cheaper ways to get cancer.

Stay well, everybody.

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