Libertad

Hello, gorgeous people. Hope the past week has treated you well. We are keeping on keeping on here at Alara Towers. First of all, it’s getting lighter in the evening, hurrah and huzzah! Can’t tell you how spirit-lifting it is to see that glimmer of pale blue in the sky at 5pm. Secondly, the wretched lockdown is coming down. No, don’t choke on your drink 🙂 If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I said last year that the deadline was the 31st of December, and that by the end of January it would be pretty much over. When the government started the year by announcing Tier 4000 or whichever tier we’re in now, yes, I was subjected to a lot of not-so-gentle mockery.

Well, I’m still absolutely certain that the lockdown is ending. How certain am I? I put my money where my mouth is and booked a holiday in New York in the spring. Plus, I’m considering booking a weekend trip to Italy in March as well – that’s the thought I woke up with today. When I hear them holding forth about keeping restrictions till June, October, 2028, or whatever ridiculous date they’ve plucked out of the air that day, I meet it with a hearty guffaw and think: busted flush. So, be of good cheer, you wonderful people. We are at the ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing‘ stage of the proceedings.

I’ve stopped discussing the whole Covid shenanigans because it’s so boring now, it makes my teeth hurt. As for the vaccine, different strokes for different folks. It’s called ‘informed consent’ – let everyone assess their own risk and make their own decision. We all have fully functioning brains – we can apply that cognition. The vaccine is a hard pass for me – firstly, I believe that I had the wretched virus in December 2019 in common with a lot of other people, way before anyone mentioned the word coronavirus. And jolly awful it was too, but I survived. That means that I should be awash and brimming with T-Cell immunity, and that was certainly tested when I worked in a pharmacy everyday during the first lockdown without so much as a sniff of social distancing or PPE (a paper mask, lol) until June. Secondly, I’m not a big fan of experimental vaccines with unknown side-effects and no longterm testing. If I were extremely vulnerable, my perspective would of course be different, but thank God, I’m not. So, taking part in what is essentially the largest clinical trial in history is not high on my resolutions list for 2021. But good luck and fair winds to all who feel they need whatever protection the vaccine can offer them.

Further to being a contrarian this week, I’m still busily freaking out everyone I know by insisting that Trump and not Biden will be president. It’s very amusing watching people going a lovely shade of eau-de-nil at the prospect, or hearing the pure horror in their voices. Endless wholesome fun, and a game that the whole family can play 🙂 Don’t hate the messenger, I just speak as I find. Either way, I’m so confident that America will not be in flames that I’ve booked a holiday there. Make of that what you will.

Well, that was my week. I’m still painting, very badly. To show how long it’s been since I put brush to canvas, I freaked out when I realised I had run out of all green paint and my art supply shop is of course closed. It literally took me a couple of minutes to remember that I generally make up my own shades anyway, and I sheepishly mixed some blue and yellow paint. Molto embarrassing, as Michelangelo didn’t say ………. I leave you with our traditional joke of the week.

“I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper – dicing with death.”

Boom, boom. It’s a Tim Vine special. Have a lovely weekend.