“My Plague Journal” (The saga conts...)
By RICHARD LITTLETHOUGHT
DAY III
Keep 2 metres apart, they say! Protect your community, they intone! Readers, even before this virus, I wouldn’t touch my neighbours with a bargepole! (As Chief Petty Canal Officer for my local Barging Society down at the Thurrock estuary, it’s a severe breach of regulations to touch people with club property! Though helpful/dramatic pointing is permitted. E.g. ‘That way to Southend’ or ‘It was him, Constable!’ * points with bargepole at wizard/outsider *.)
Pshaw! And now county by county, suburban conurbation by suburban conurbation, citizens don gloves, facemasks and hazmat suits to boot! Readers, I don’t know about you, but I came into this world stark naked and intend to leave it in a similar fashion! Public neurosis has reached breaking point; we’ve started viewing our own bodies with suspicion! For example, Vanessa tells me that I now must literally wash my p*nis! It’s like the last days of Rome, readers! End-times.
Jas listen to these new government directives that I’ve half-remembered from something I once imagined: i) ‘Do not sunbathe without shin pads!’ ii) ‘Do not touch loved ones after adjusting the crotch of your jeans.’ iii) ‘Do NOT wash your face with turds.’ This last one really smarts for me, readers. FOR HOW ELSE MAY WE WASSAIL? Come Christmastide, there’s no finer treat for a Littlethought than turning his cheeks black with the warm faeces of a startled colt, before stumbling out into the Basildon vales and singing a song about the corpse of a maiden aunt!
We, the plebiscite, are being coerced by sallow-faced apparatchiks from off of the academies! These scientists are unsavoury. I once saw Richard Dawkins at a petrol station in Chippenham, and his hands were chillingly smooth! I passed him as he was filling up his Mazda. I muttered beneath my breath: ‘You haven’t done a day’s graft in your life, Dawkins! ...What’re you filling your car up with, mate? Hand cream? Your hand-skin is a disgrace! You massive –’
‘Sorry, can I help you?’ he said.
‘Nothing, mate! Loved The Selfish Gene!’ Cowed by his boyish hands, I gave him a nervous thumbs up, took my jerrycan, unmoored my barge and floated away very slowly. It was the most excruciating ten minutes of eye contact that I’ve every experienced upon the River Avon (apart from that regrettable episode with “the starey beaver”).
Well, I for one shall not be ordered by the warrants or decrees of scientific elites from the University of MADNESS (not to be confused with the former poly, University of MADNESS Brookes)!!! Civic life is comatose! Weddings have been held on Zoom! Morris Men are dancing on LinkedIn! Marmosets are on Skype!
Anyway, The Mail made me write one of those lists of things to do during lockdown, a list I chose to write whilst drunk:
DISGUSTING I HATE MYSELF
.
And so, to hammock!