Lockdown 3.0 - when I learn I am officially both "Fat and Stupid", make some poor "hair" decisions and Pika-Chutato is Born!

 "Hey guys...I have some exciting news!" I say over dinner.  

I have cooked us some full meat mince and some pretend mince (Quorn) to see if they spot the difference and wedged them into taco's with fresh guacamole, a home-made salsa and some tabasco on the side.

"Or do you?" says Caitlin. 

"In actual fact - for once - I do!" I say whole heartedly. "For I have received a call from the Doctors and..."

"You're going to die?" says Caitlin.

"No,"

"You're stupid?" she says.

"No - your Dad is going to get his covid jab on Monday!" I feel quite emotional.  You see the little chart on the tv and Bojo Gummidge or his minion Matt Hand-cock-n'balls-it-up telling us the jab will save us.  But you don't believe it will ever amount to anything other than a pretty little line on an excel chart in Downing street.  But no!  It's actually happening to me - now!  So this is good news.

"But dad," - says Fintan. "I thought they were only doing band 6 now and the over 70s?"

"Yeah - you are younger than mum. So why are you getting it before her?" says Declan, weighing in.

This is a great point and one I like to make very often - at least each Sunday before dinner when Frank Sinatra sings "You make me feel so young...because you are so old and dumb..." (Note - this is only because "Young" scans so well with "dumb" - Sarah is not dumb, except for the bit where she married me!).

"Well apparently kids.  I am in group 6 - I asked if it was a mistake but apparently it is not."

We google the list of reasons for being in group 6 and read them out:

"Have you ever had an organ transplant dad?" they ask.

"Nope - just the brain...nothing important..."

"A neurological condition? Arthritis? Lupus? Dementia..."

"a BMI above 40?...mentally ill....chest complaint?"

"Hmmmm...." I say and we calculate that I would need to weigh about 30 stone to hit that sort of BMI.

"So dad...we think it's cos you are fat and stupid...that's why you are getting it..." and Caitlin and the boys burst into hysterics.

I call a friend who is in the NHS and she explains there is a fancy algorithm identifying fat stupid middle aged dads through-out the country for just this occasion.  But I should take it, as cleverer people than me (basically two years olds plus) have spent alot of time on it.  I agree.

I have the jab and feel mildly euphoric afterwards in the Church car park.  I am being jabbed in St.Colomba's church hall where our children have had leaving parties for the end of their time at St Werburgh's and Christmas parties and disco's.  Opposite is the church where I've sat numb-bummed and singing along to nativities and celebrations.  It feels totally surreal seeing a masked up army of volunteers leading us through our Jab process.  We head in one door and come out via the fire exit - reborn and jabbed up.

Later I feel like total shit.  About 12 hours later in the dead of night, I am shaking and feverish and my head is banging.  I wake up the next day feeling like I drank twenty tequila slammers and lost a bar fight with Tyson Fury.  This is like the worst case of man flu ever.  I moan a bit and take a tonne of pain killers.  Luckily no-one really lets me operate a plane or a JCB, so I can ride it out behind my PC.  

I am better after 36 hours but milk it for as long as humanly possible.  My manly moans gain no traction with anyone in the family.  I am gutted. 

Earlier in the lockdown - the darkness is really starting to piss me off.  Lockdown with sunshine is one thing.  Lockdown in the freezing bloody cold and total darkness most of the time is a total pain in the arse.  I don't think Caitlin felt actual sunshine on her skin for about a month.  We all have a serious case of sun and fun deficiency! This is what it must be like to get stranded in pack ice on a ship on an Arctic voyage.  With no hope of rescue. Forever. Combined with homeschooling and 5 of us on the internet trying to make work calls, log in to live maths lessons, biology lessons etc - it has its challenges.  And when Captain Tom died - well that was just double shit. 

The family pass like ships in the night.  We leave our various dens once in a while for tea, coke, Jaffa cakes, pickled gherkins and beetroots (I recently had what can only be confused with pregnancy pangs for these food items during lockdown) to return once more to our workplace.  Tied to the bloody laptops.

Caitlin can at least jump up and down on the couch during her school day and employs this as a useful learning technique. 

The highlights are:

1. The night it snowed and we all went lockdown crazy, ran outside, kids in PJs and coats and had a massive snowball fight.  Obviously a socially distanced snowball fight involving no one at all except ourselves who live in a street like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter.  We were basically cloaked from all the usual muggles who never noticed the massive snowball fight outside. Guvner.  I believe a police force somewhere in the midlands actually tweeted a warning for throwing snowballs.  Snowballs! The only snowball that should be banned are the ones containing advocaat and gin.

2. Midway through February, my hair reaches "Peak Big" and goes beyond all hair tolerance limits that have been set for my thatch.  It is at this point that Sarah calms her nerves with a large glass of red and begins to attack the Einstein thatch.  I quickly become impatient and take over and totally ignore whatever Sarah is telling me.  I head to the mirror and begin to use the clippers myself.  

"Jesus - are you sure about this setting?" I ask as big lumps of my hair shred off onto the bathroom floor. 

"Did you not listen at all Tom! I remove the guard - it's on the default setting - one!" she shouts over to me. 

"Oh crap," I say, realising that I have done a Shaun the Sheep on one section of my head.  It does look somewhat bald. 

"Why didn't you tell me?!" I shout from the bathroom.  Shout communication is a highly recommended form of family communication. 

"I did you idiot!" she says. 

"Ooops....well - no-ones gonna see me so what does it matter?" I conclude and continue with the clipper settings moved up a notch.  It's quite difficult clippering in a mirror.  I struggle a fair bit and decide to leave a "fuller" aspect to my upper head area (these are very technical hairdressy terms - I will explain down the pub in real life at some point).  So now I have lost my 1980s Bon Jovi Mega Mullet and gained a bouffant blob.  Niiiiice.

3. My worst Covid habit:  I begin to wake the kids up each morning for their remote school lessons by calling their mobile phones.  Actual shouting does not work on kids.  They are immune to the voice pitch of all parents. However, they can be fooled by using an app or mobile technology.  Haaa - who's the fool now?!?! I still try an old school "Ahhh Zawinga" Lion King intro once in a while as I fling open the curtains...but my heart's just not in it!

4. We did go to the shops and pick up some sunflower seeds in March - so my main highlight has been watering the random seeds with Caitlin and wondering what the hell will grow in the summer.  I'll keep you posted - Life is pretty crazy in lockdown.  

5.  I also buy some Calor gas and feel like a proper dad when the guy hands me the actual keys to the Calor Gas Lock-up.  For a brief minute I take on board the unique responsibility placed in my hands.  Take out a new Calor gas bottle and add my own old one (by the way - there is a total shortage of gas bottles right now).  Then re-padlock the locker and return the key to the shop. If this was a zombie apocalypse would I have been so civil? Would he have been so trusting?  I try to explain this hypothetical conundrum to Caitlin but she is more interested in the pack of fruit pastilles I got her. 

6. We painted a potato to look like Pikacchu for World Book Day.  Is this a low or a high point or have we just embraced this new Covid reality?  Either way - Pikapotato hasn't spread any arms yet or rotted at all.  He's still chilling happily on the table tennis table waiting for a game I think...

Tee-Pee outdoor booze-up, Boba Fett Christmas Day Wasssupppp and the Dangers of "Covid Foot"

 Wow.  On a scale of 1 to a million  - 2020 sucked a full million.  Luckily I am sure we can rely on 2021 to kick Covid's butt and bring us back into the light.  I mean - how bad could it get?  Literally - if Aliens landed on the Whitehouse Lawn it wouldn't surprise me. Or anyone these days. 

As I write this - Trump has been impeached once more for being a complete tool.  Not sure his end game?  Total Civil War?  Zombie Armageddon?  Again - it wouldn't be overly odd if he peeled back his mottled orange skin to reveal some sort of giant semi-sentient turd beneath. This might explain alot. 

In the meantime - we have a man with the looks and intelligence of Wurzel Gummidge on a bad day in charge of the worst pandemic crisis since the Spanish Flu.  He probably means well - but you get the impression that Eton only gave him the life skills to slap other naked men on the bum with a well-aimed towel-flick after a game of rugger, to sire random kids with whichever poor cow of a woman seems to be in sniffing distance of him at the key moment when he is feeling randy and to scare small murmerations of starlings and a few ageing crows out of a recently planted arable field.  

So - on the basis that we are totally screwed  What good has happened recently? Here's my photo summary of the last few months:

1.  Boba Fett called me up on Christmas Day really pissed and we had a good chat.

2. We chased a dodgy Santa down the road in the back of a white van and danced to Last Christmas on his Santa Sound System without being legitimately Whammed - cos it was still November.  It was ace.  Cheered us all up. 

3. We had a mega table tennis Christmas disco-athon.

4. I hung out with a JCB but couldn't work out how to hotwire it. 

5. I met my workmates in a giant beer Tee-Pee (not to be confused with a giant She-Pee).  It had a massive fire in the middle but no one was dressed as Hiawatha.

6. We ate 12 donuts and met a glowing painted dog at the zoo

7. We hung out with John Lennon at the cavern - and were the only crowd there.

8. We didn't die.

Well - we paid a Christmas visit to the zoo and hung out with the lemurs.  They really are quite cool to see up close in their actual enclosure as you walk about amongst them.  We got to see the Chester Zoo lanterns at dusk.  Which, when you can't get a ticket, counts as a stroke of genius.  Pick a dull wintry day at the zoo, loiter in the bar drinking hot chocolate and then slowly wander past the glowing animals and attractions as you leave.  Certainly fooled Caitlin - who was absolutely delighted with it. 

As per the entire nation - apart from all the ones who totally ignored the government advice and are probably dead by now - we didn't see our loved ones.  Instead, even though it tore at our hearts, we had multiple zoom and Facetimes with relatives cocooned against Covid in their homes.  So much for Boris and his "Jolly" Christmas.  What a total incompetent buffoon. Complete Moomin.  We did get to see some friends at a socially accepted bucks fizz sipping distance, which was cool.

It is the first year that we were unable to eat all the cheese, pate and chocolates we had stocked up.  I think I went into auto-pilot and continued to buy as if Christmas was going ahead as normal. Despite actual reality.  For a start, I had bought a 14 person Turkey.  Which was ambitious when it only had to feed 2 adults and 3 kids. 

This may explain why I currently feel and look like a cave bear just prior to entering a particularly harsh hibernation during the last Ice age.  I've literally stocked up with enough reserves to keep me in a state of Torpor for at least 9 months judging by my pre-hibernation weight.  My hair is now well into full cave-man look.  I have once more lost sight of my ears and no longer worry about looking like a tramp because everyone else I meet looks exactly the same.  Scientists have recently revealed that primitive man may actually have survived deadly winters by adopting exactly the same method as me.  So I am only following my natural captain caveman instincts! 

Before  Christmas, the canal trust came along and pointed at trees and looked very wise and then prepped the land adjoining our garden with about a tonne of gravel.  In preparation for re-laying the cycle path along the canal.  This has made for some comedy moments of a morning.  It is not often that you trundle downstairs to work (approximately 17 steps from bed to study).  Stagger 9 steps into the kitchen to boil the kettle and stare up to see two random blokes in hi-vis and hard hats driving JCBs and massive ten tonne travel trucks past your kitchen window.  Daisy is literally having a sh*t fit barking herself into some sort of crazed excitement every time a JCB goes by.  It's bad enough when she sees a squirrel or God-forbid - a magpie.  This is even worse.  

When they leave - we inspect the set-up.  There is a canal boat with its very own crane and a mini-JCB in it.  There are two other JCB diggers and a portacabin.  I am so excited.  This is surely my chance to recreate that scene in the Jizlopi video, hotwire one of these yellow bad boys and steam down the street with the kids as I sing "I'm Tom and I'm 45 - my Dad's Bruce Lee - and I've just stolen a JCB!"  But it all looks very complicated to drive these things...so I settle for a JCB selfie instead (look - you must remember - we had just been in a November lockdown so you had to take your entertainment where you get it). 

Early in December - we find ourselves donning masks and heading for Liverpool so the kids can have their Piano Grading.  Of all the places we wanted to visit - Covid Scouse central in the middle of a pandemic was probably not one of them.  I love the city, but not when it is totally plague ridden!  But - I'd be blowed if we'd miss out  - we'd already paid for the exam in advance. 

So it was slightly surreal as we wandered past droves of newly released Christmas shoppers queuing (I kid you not) to get into Primark.  If only all those kids in Bangladesh working for one pence per day knew how their efforts were not in vain! Christmas be damned! 

We somehow found the Quaker Meeting house but I was pretty disappointed not to meet the bloke from the Quaker Oats box at the front door.  To pile on the pain - the building was modern and very fancy.  I had been hoping for a couple of puritans sitting on an upright turnip and quoting bits of bible.  Instead, I listened to the kids play some beautiful pieces on a grand piano whilst I read up all about the Quakers in Liverpool.  Bloody hell - they had a tough time - generally getting arrested or beaten up and totally killed for ages.  

After that - we pegged it over to Formby so Fintan could play his Badgers Hockey match for Chester.  We had intended to check out the red squirrels nearby but it was so damned cold - we mainly decided to freeze to death by the pitchside instead (well -me and Declan did whilst Caitlin and Sarah fell asleep in the nice cosy car!). 

Which leads us to today. January - apparently this is the day we're all most likely to top ourselves.  The Monday of doom.  All I know is that I am genuinely worried that Caitlin has forgotten what the outside looks like in lockdown 3.0.  And I am beyond sick of homeschooling and work combined.  I hated long division the first time - let alone the second!

I also know that as I lay beneath my computer desk today - waving the printer plug up through the gap - I nearly became a member of the castrati. 

"Sarah - can you grab the black plug - the black plug when you see it!" I tell her.  My head up against the top of the desk from below. 

"Have you got it?" I ask and wave my arm above my head and above the desk...grabbing not the desk - but in my youthful yet total innocence, my wife's buttocks.  

Instead of a kind hearted reciprocation or a loving "Ahhh Tom - you are so misguided but wonderful...," - she "accidentally" stood on my nuts.  I wonder if this is a new symptom of Sarah's post-covid recovery.  "Covid Foot".   If so - this is a very worrying development for me and all married men.  We are vulnerable...extremely. It must be! Definitely...maybe.