Locked Down

Well, shit. I've been a bad writey typey person. I used to post this stuff fairly regularly once. Usually about stupid things I did in public settings while drinking. Well now everything is different.

Now there is no public. How's lockdown going?

You better believe the drinking's still there. Ooh boy is the drinking continuing. Do you ever think to yourself "maybe I should lay off the rum?", but then realise you can't go outside, you've been wearing a dressing gown for a week, and the only variety left in your life is in the number of ice cubes in your glass?

Most times three, if you're wondering. Sometimes I like to change it up though, and instead have a whole bunch of shitty broken up pieces of ice that largely melt as they touch the glass. Then I find myself choking on surprise ice fragments and questioning every life choice I've made as I consider the imminence of my death.

One week. I've been furloughed for a week, thank you for asking.

Up until this unplanned extension of my personal freedoms, there was a month and a bit of working from home. My main personal revelation in that time was just how little my life had changed.

I was still hooked up to a screen from 10:00 to 18:00. Still shotgunning entire packs of biscuits with regularity. Still feeling a slight knot in my chest every time I was confronted with a task outside my comfort zone, until I remembered to breathe like a normal fucking human and just get it done.

I did take more tea breaks. Even those were just me giving a look across the room to Miriam, met with a smile and, yes, sometimes cheering, before I fucked off to the kitchen to make her a cup. I don't touch the stuff. No hot brown for Deebs. My body is a temple. One of those neglected ones that, when it finally does collapse entirely. a team of archaeologists would enter and say:

"What a fucking awful temple. No tea or coffee anywhere inside it though. Was that wall built entirely of potato? Were all the walls?"

I eat potato like I'm living in the emergent shadow of a blight. If I stop, I'm fearful there will be no more. I can never stop.

After both finishing our working days within the same room, we'd cook, eat, and watch a film, play a game, and/or read a book. Maybe there would be wine. Maybe Miriam would propose watching Lord of the Rings for the gazbillionth time and I'd have to stand my ground again.

I fucking hate Lord of the Rings.

There, I said it. It's been weighing on me, the idea that maybe one person doesn't know my opinion on a given subject. I just....it's shite. I wish I could just cast it into some firey pit. I wish there was a firey pit I could walk to. I wish I could walk anywhere. Just to get away from Lord of the Rings.

Fight me. I'll yank your little hobbit cape from your shoulders and drown you in a lake.

Not yet, obviously. Can we do this over Zoom? Can I drown you over Zoom because I disagree with your taste in film, and literature? Should we set up a time? When works best for you? You don't trust Zoom? Alright, how about Houseparty? No, I haven't used it either. We could just do a WhatsApp video call, maybe? No, we don't actually need video either I suppose. Does save in having to cultivate that illusion of normalcy by getting even semi-dressed. Does anybody use Skype anymore?

I got side-tracked. Where was I? Potato chat?

Fuck, well then furlough came a-callin'. It wasn't unexpected. The arts is a fragile industry at the best of time, but the arse has kind of fallen out of it a bit now. And all it took was a more or less complete global shutdown, and total change of human life as we know it.

That doesn't make it sound like the fragility of the support networks within the arts was to blame actually.

Either way, I commend the existence of this furlough scheme. And the temporary safety net it has provided to so many. I'm glad my company has fought as it has for the employees within, and their clients without.

So, how has furlough changed this little life of mine? Nobody asked. Yet, if you're reading maybe you want to know. Or....how fucking bored are you? How many ice cubes for you? Are your single rums turning into triples too?

In short, nothing much has changed. I've just replaced Zoom meetings with the return of an addiction to Football Manager that put a crippling stranglehold on a large amount of my teen years. Without Football Manager, I might have spent some time studying. Without Football Manager I might have developed a better personality. Without Football Manager I might have achieved something. Anything.

Without Football Manager I wouldn't have spent the last 7 days staying up til 5am calling a bunch of virtually overpaid virtual athletes doing virtually nothing to justify their virtual wages that they are a virtually useless pack of cunts.

It's fine. Everything's fine. I'm good. How are you?

Rings! That's the other thing! Not Lords of, no. I was supposed to be getting married at some point. Probably. I should write about how that came about. I will. Not got anything else better to do since I can't trust Leyton Orient to get their shit together against Forest Green anyway.

Still, we had a wedding planned. We were going to get married on July 17th....checks to see if he's right about that....yep, 17th. Small family deal, reception kinda party thing the day after. This virus has torpedoed the b'jesus out of that plan.

Our families have never met. Miriam's family have been learning the names of mine. No, seeing them written down will only confuse you further. I can't explain why putting an "m" and a "h" together makes that sound. It's just how it is. It's language. It's confusing, and different and great.

I was already making plans for how to deal with my dad. If he attempts to make a speech, and I'm too far away to tackle him, I need someone else to take him down. Go for the knee! SWEEP THE LEG!

It is beyond certainty that he is going to call Miriam by my ex-girlfriend's name. He really seems to think that's hilarious. It's not a slight on Miriam, it's a slight on me. He knows how much it bothers me and....well, that's how we show we care in Ireland, isn't it? If you're not laughing as you make someone's life that much harder, then what's the point in having them in your life?

He will call her Norwegian. He will call her family Norwegian. They're not Norwegian dad. They're from a weird little island in the middle of Scottish nowhere, and they may burn me if you provoke them.

We've been putting a playlist together. Most, if not all, songs I have added to the playlist exist solely to act as a pointed jab at various people in attendance. I am a petty man. I am willing to put my future wife's happiness at stake in order to have that moment of standing in the middle of a confused dance floor as the theme tune to Round the Twist plays and I REMEMBER EVERYTHING YOU DID, YOU SON OF A BITCH AND I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A LOVELY TIME!

There's some good tunes on there. Still working to get a bit of Horslips in. She'll come around.

There is several hundred pounds worth of wedding related paraphernalia sitting in the wardrobe. I have a suit. It's exactly as flared, striped and green as you think it is. Or not. I've got a wedding hat. Of course I do. It really ties the whole thing together, man. We have wedding rings. They're sitting, boxed up, on the mantle piece taunting us. Even now I hear them call to me.

After all why not? Why shouldn't I wear it?

Fuck it, might as well go live in a cave with this precious, rocking a tattered loin cloth, withered hairline and cutting a pathetic figure as I already mostly do.

How's lockdown going? It's going fine. It's the same as it ever was.

On Friday, I'm watching Geostorm for the sixth (?) time. GEOSTORM! If you've not seen Geostorm, and want to watch a story about an alcoholic's efforts to understand a time in which world leaders have come together in an attempt to stem the threat of an invisible force of nature, only to find themselves undermined by the utter stupidity of American political wrangling....just....just give it a miss maybe.

At least there will be communal fun times over....Zoom? Houseparty? WhatsApp? Google Hangouts are still a thing?

Three cubes of ice. Gerard Butler garbled some science at a scientician- drink!