Boiling?

What makes my blood boil?

Let me offer you a list:

Parking on pavements forcing me into the road.

Rude people.

Adverts.

Reality TV with people grabbing fifteen minutes of fame.

Radio three’s insistence of playing American composers.

Handel’s cheesy word painting.

Social media screamers.

Politicians and political bias.

Give me another hour and I could pack my pages with targeted vitriol.

Those Manchester United fans who have never been to Old Trafford.

People answering questions with “so” as an opener.

Oh, don’t get me started.

Now we are in lockdown, the level of annoyance has increased. I look out of my window and see the subtle changes in the way people are interacting.

A constant stream of cars waits outside the main door before one of the residents pops out. A bag usually emerges from the car. It’s shopping. Then the car drives off. The carers still come and go. People may walk two meters apart and individuals take a turn around the garden. We’re on the flight path to Gatwick Airport but you wouldn’t know it.

Currently, the news is referring to the improvement of air quality. Now that makes me boil. Why should this piece of seemingly good news get my gander up? Well, I hate to be sneered at with the bleeding obvious.

Comparing pollution by means of fancy graphics may be impressive but it’s still patronising.

We see members of various green organisations suggesting that this is the way ahead; working from home and not using the car so often. Again, bleeding obvious.

When the virus is diminishing and restrictions are lifted, what will happen? Everybody will get into their cars and drive. They will drive to the coast, a national park, a theme park, shopping centres, restaurants, shows, concerts, tourist attractions and council tips. There will be traffic jams at a level never seen before.

It will be a celebration of freedom. Enough to make anyone concerned with the beauty and fragility of our earth bury their head in their hands and wail like a demented donkey. (No offence to the sumpter breeds by the way.)

Airlines and holiday destinations will be booked solid as the sky once more fills with queuing air traffic. Plastic water bottle use will resume its task of filling oceans and strangling wildlife. Car chaos will resume outside the school gates. Beaches and beauty spots will become clogged with visitors’ rubbish and the whole battle for the planet will start all over again.

Three weeks into the “new” school term it will be impossible to imagine what it was like during the lockdown.

Throughout social media and other opinion platforms, I’ve noticed a rise in references to our new police state.

Is it a secret policy to move towards that truly draconian form of law and order? (Possibly. Bills are being passed to give police and government extra powers. Will those new laws be rescinded?)

Isn’t that a bit like the more suspicious or paranoid claiming that Alexa listens in to our conversations? Mine’s called simply “computer” (because that’s what they did in Star Trek) and occasionally she will respond to a trigger word. It’s amusing. But is she actively listening?

Is there some thin-faced humour bypassed growling little man in an armpit stained white shirt (yet to discover deodorant) sitting on a wooden chair in a darkened room listening to every word in every household?

Probably, but I have nothing to hide. My dodgy days are over. I have laid myself prone to the full force of taxation. Does that give me the right to sit here and pontificate? Answers on a postcard, please.

But I am actually boiling about the police state idea. Dictatorship by stealth. Creepy isn’t it?

After the PM’s announcement about contracting the virus himself, he declared his own social isolation etc. Oh, what a model citizen he is. Nothing about how he was careless enough to get it in the first place. The news has been deliberately vague about the circumstances. 

Another thing:

The praise and recognition directed towards NHS staff, followed by other key workers, including the carers who come to me each day, is big and clever. But these are the services constantly targeted by government cuts carried out in the name of austerity. Austerity caused by greedy dickhead bankers and paid for by us ordinary folk.

And for those who go on about immigrants; possibly the main motivating force behind Brexit, please understand the multi-ethnic mix of the NHS and the nationality of many van drivers feeding your online shopping fix.

Funnily enough, I’ve not heard or read too much about queuing for food being a flashback to the days of rationing. Isn’t modern-day queuing done in a four-wheeled tin box or on the phone to a helpline? 

Thank you for reading.