Well it’s about 3pm and I’m looking forward to seeing whether or not Mr Hancock meets his testing target of 100,000 by today. If he does I’ll stand at the front door wearing lipstick and applaud him loudly tonight. I bet he’s not even presenting the daily briefing. Anyway I’ve had more than enough to say on the subject of politicians recently so I thought I’d talk about something else. Voiceovers.
I’ve been browsing around Facebook and other social media and been pleasantly surprised by the number of postings from folks who are generally very supportive of what people are doing in the current pandemic. I don’t just mean praise for NHS front line and care workers, support staff, supermarket people, refuse workers, lorry drivers and all the many folks who are keeping essential things going for us all. I’m also talking about the large number of postings in praise of what our Government is doing in the face of this dreadful virus. Wow.
Well how long have we been cooped up now? It feels like around 6 weeks since the Gov’t imposed a non-essential travel ban and asked us to stay indoors except for critical needs, and if outside to stay apart from others by 2m and to wash hands thoroughly and regularly. And we’ve sadly lost over 20,000 people in that time. There are some signs that we’ve passed a peak in cases of the coronavirus but we’re looking at several more weeks of this aren’t we, if we’re honest?
Well I watched the daily cv-19 briefing at 5pm and noted that the Government are talking confidently about achieving the Health Secretary’s target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of the month. Hurrah! Except it’s not exactly in terms of actual tests, instead they are now tweaking it to say that they’ll have the capacity to test that number. Ahh. So they’ll have 100,000 cotton buds in stock to take swabs but nowhere near enough nurses and the other medically-trained people to take the tests and process them. It’s not quite the same thing is it?
It’s an interesting word isn’t it? Nostalgia, the sense of looking back fondly. Then we have the word reminiscence, from an entirely different root, which means virtually the same thing. And very few other languages have words at all to compare with these unless they rob from English. We have an infinitely wonderful language that draws from Latin, Greek, Arabic, German/Dutch, Scandinavian, ancient sub-continental, modern American and so on. Anyway the point is I had a feeling of wistfulness (another lovely synonym) today when I listened to Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott on Radio 2 talking abut the Tracks of her Years. She recalled happily (I’ll stop doing similar phrases now) a song which her mum loved and played a lot – And I Love You So – sung originally by Don McLean. It is a haunting little tune for sure
I’m in awe of the people who are leading the fight against covid-19 in our hospitals and care centres. They aren’t receiving the PPE and testing they need from our bloody Gov’t but they keep working to keep us alive and too many of them are paying the ultimate sacrifice. Never will they be taken for granted again I hope. And let’s not forget our other key workers like postmen, refuse collectors, delivery and transport drivers, retail store workers, teachers and many more who are battling on, keeping essential life still available to us
Well I thought it might be time for a change in subject matter and whilst I don’t want to alienate my many (ahem) female readers, I thought it was about time to talk sport.
Well I might have drawn a blank with my fruitless trip to Ikea (justifiably I’ve come to appreciate) but I’m proud to tell you that I’ve extracted a fulsome apology and handsome recompense from another mighty brand who’d fail to deliver me an adequate product/service. Oh yes.
Pasta Paulie 