Rest of the planet they're shutting schools, pubs and businesses. In good old blighty we're still sending our kids off to school, playing our hockey matches, heading to work. We're a little bit jittery cos the football has been temporarily shutdown - but this could just be a giant Everton conspiracy to wind up the Liverpool fans. That's where my money is at.
Still - Declan has his birthday party. 9 kids bouncing around a giant trampoline park. They literally hand out plaster casts at the front door here but miraculously none of the kids we are responsible for get injured...there.
We ferry them all home and they go berserk. One of the lads hands Sarah his tooth and this is early doors - not even 9 o'clock. I take the night watch and make it to about 1.30 before finally losing the will to live and running out of beer and wine! (Responsible parenting at its best!). I start the kids off with the new version of the Lion King (so dull) but quickly lose the room and regroup with Godzilla. I read them the riot act and head to bed.
I wake at 4.30 in the morning to the sound of 9 crazed 11 year olds "creeping" into the kitchen for midnight rations.
I bounce down the stairs, vaguely awake and prepare my best "angry dad" voice.
"What the feck is going on here guys! No Way!"
"We've not had any sleep. No sleep at all!" they all tell me. Eyes wide and buzzing like Jack Nicholson when he sticks his head through that door with his axe.
I can believe this. I stare at the pillow I genuinely find stuck in the lights in the conservatory. It is carnage. I leave the pillow hanging sadly from the lights.
I go back to bed. Wake up at 8 and make them all a massive round of bacon butties. As they are leaving, one of the lads pipes up.
"I had a nose-bleed in the night. Do you wanna see it. It's on my phone."
So Sarah and I review the evidence which clearly shows 9 kids battering seven bells out of each other with pillows, pool cues and any other weapon that came to hand. It's like watching an amateur WWE match. Brutal but strangely compelling.
Bye kids. We wave them off one by one. Not quite realising that social distancing is only a day away. Followed by the bombshell on Thursday that school was shutting. Basically forever.
"Don't worry kids. It'll only be for a week I reckon." I say with the wisdom of a total incompetent moron.
Boris goes and blows it out the water and takes us all by surprise. No exams. No more school. Just like that?! Suddenly, the world gets a little smaller and a lot more serious. Holy crap.
Never mind the run on the bog roll. I can easily go native. There's plenty of space to dig a hole in the garden and start using up all those dock leaves. But I am distinctly worried that my marmite supply might be hit hard by this pandemic. Although - I could possibly combine the two and find a corner in the market?
I buy an emergency 250g of the black yeasty stuff and rest easy. I can survive this head-on now.
I wander round Debenhams on my way home. Curiosity, nostalgia and a strange and terrifying mission getting the best of me as they dismantle all the perfume stalls and pack everything away. Note to everyone - I don't make a habit of loitering around perfume counters in Debenhams. But I have been sent on possibly the most important mission of this entire pandemic. My mission is to buy blonde highlights. Never has one man been so out of place in such a task. Stupidly, I ask a man to help me. He is scared. I see it in his eyes. Eventually I realise I am in the wrong shop. I have to facetime Sarah to navigate this dangerous hair path. I buy three packets of hair dye and highlights in a variety of colours.
It feels quite spooky in Debenhams. Like a twisted version of Home Alone or Elf in the department store. It is possible that pandemics feel more joyful at Christmas?
I am the only one in there. It is Sunday and Armageddon approaches. I am so disorientated that I actually walk down the up escalators and nearly kill myself in the act. I carry alcohol gel with me and use it liberally.
Then on Monday, it all changes.
"I'm 2000 in the queue," says the missus. This is after all, Day 1, of the Bojo Lockdown. We were already ahead of the curve by an hour with Caitlin falling sick with a fever. But - even 1 hour feels a long time when you can't go outside.
"What queue?" I ask. I can't see any great queue's forming down our eerily silent street. Except for the bloke who just rocked up in a clapped out red motor carrying a laminated sign. (Turns out he's closing our playground down on orders of the government).
"The queue to get an online delivery next week!" Sarah seems pretty determined to ensure a supply of bread, milk and red wine for my cornflakes.
We have a chat. I tell her we have enough noodles with curry powder to feed a small battalion for an entire Winter campaign during the Napoleonic war. (This is where my Brexit stash from the garage is really coming into its own. It's now been relabelled as a Corona-stash).
By the time we umm and ahhh, the decision is taken out of our hands.
"Damn," she says. We missed our slot in the queue. We're now 21,000 in the queue.
Hmmm. This thing is turning serious. But I am not as yet overly worried. We live by a canal. I have seen people fishing in this canal. Mainly there's these kids who fish for metal. But there are also real fishermen. The kind that wear commando khaki and have a giant tub of wriggling maggots and a twenty foot pole (no pun intended). I can easily turn my hand to fishing? And I can easily divert part of the canal and set up some sort of water wheel to make fresh bread (anyone know how you make bread?).
The metal fishers are better though. They've dragged out about 3 bikes along our stretch and further down towards the Cheshire Cat Pub they lobbed in their giant magnet on a rope and dredged up a grenade. A bloody grenade! I secretly think they love dredging up old second world war weaponry. But it must be really pissing off the local bomb squad. This happens every few months.
Day 5 of lockdown and Caitlin's fever. Last night was a real doozy. Caitlin's fever was 39 plus and her hacking cough took a nasty turn. She kept doing these really scary chokes - as if she had a chicken bone caught in her throat. Holy crap - I don't think I slept at all with worry. I picked her up and plonked her in our bed and mainly checked her temperature and felt totally useless. Luckily she had Pikachu with her. I have never met anyone with such a Pokemon obsession. Did you know that Pokémon stands for Pocket Monsters? Ahhhh - so many wonderful life-enriching pointless facts about those fun-loving guys.
I'll keep you posted on how Caitlin is going, but I know there are many many people out there in the same boat. We just need to be sensible and keep positive. The NHS are doing an ace job.
In the meantime, I have a serious fear that by the end of this my BMI will have hit treble figures (is that humanly possible?). I will literally be a giant fatberg held together loosely by cheese, marmite, beans, gama ray beer, shiraz and possibly the dog. The longer this thing goes on - the more likely it will head South by June.
If this happens, I am prepared to cook Daisy. Her usefulness teeters on her ability to provide a day pass through these months in terms of outdoor dog walking. If not, she's a gonner. I nearly took her to the local kebab house last week when she ate the bloody candles off Fintan's birthday cake. I wouldn't mind but she puked them out a minute later. Bright pink and white vom all over my dining room. What a twat that dog is. Honestly. Total twat.
Bet she tastes good in a bun though!
This is Caitlin's Thank You to all the hard working Key Workers out there - now on our front door! Thanks everyone!!!
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