Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Another crazy week in the wacky world of Covid-19. The Ministry of Misery decided that way too many people were having fun and yanked the air bridge to France, ordering 500,000 people home by 4am on Saturday if they don’t want to quarantine. 4am, you ask? Why 4am? Hell, why not? When you’re making it all up as you go along, you may as well have some fun. I like it; next time it’ll be 3.15pm and 30 seconds. Cue hysterical stories about 160,000 people and their planes, trains and automobiles sagas. First of all, 160,000 journeys from France in 2 days? I should coco. That figure is completely made up; I’ve just been on holiday. I know how few and far between the flights and trains and ferries are. Secondly, the headlines are wrong, even allowing for the fictional numbers. They should really say ‘340,000 people tell the government to do one, maintaining that “we gotta fight for our right, to partaaaay!”‘

If the government is so keen to get the economy running, they could start by removing the gazillion banners in London and probably in other cities which still say ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’, and replace them them with neon banners saying ‘Go to Work! Save your livelihood!’ In other news, the churches are finally open. Yaaay, or not. You have to book an appointment to go and worship, you’ve got to wear a mask, leave your details for ‘test and trace’ and my particular favourite, no singing. Well, who could pass that up? Obvs, I went to sleep and woke up in China. You are allowed to speak the hymns to one another 🙂 What’s the big deal? Imagine yourself at a Led Zep concert, all of you sitting 3 spaces apart, masks on, with the band speaking ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to you. Or my favourite, I imagine being at a Prince concert with all of us saying ‘Let’s go crazy’ to each other:

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here to tell you
There’s something else
The after world

A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night

So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one, Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

‘Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the after world
In this life
You’re on your own

And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy, punch a higher floor

It’s even funnier if you say the words in a cut-glass accent. Ridunkulous. Here’s the lunatic genius himself in action so you can see what I mean. Love that whole 80s vibe plus he’s wearing more make-up than she is. I can do without the guy flashing the devil horns but Prince sure can play the geeetarr :

So, will I be going to church anytime soon with my government approval clutched in my little hand? Hell, no. What with the pope deciding that he’s no longer the Vicar of Christ, and the CofE doffing its cap and saying “Yes, bawse. Anything you say, bawse” to the government, I guess it’s just me and my God, nearer to thee and all. I’m currently reading Ezekiel, and no, it’s not a laugh riot but the theme in the Bible is: The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, or Daniel or Jonah etc etc. I can’t remember the last time I heard any vicar/bishop/whatever say the word of the Lord came to him or her. The word of the Lord came to Justin, and He said, get thee a tape measure and measure out distances of 2 metres apart. Sanitise thine hands, and on no account let there be any praise worship in my house, lest I strike thee with a deadly virus that has a 99.7% survival rate, a plague so deadly that you can only know you have it when you take a coronavirus test, a.k.a a common-cold test. Because I’ve noticed that we are no longer taking Covid-19 tests but Coronavirus tests. Yep, you’ll test positive if you’ve had the common cold. Talk about through the looking glass. Yet Jesus shall build His church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

If you’re of a mind to go on holiday, go to sunny Firenze. They’ll never pull the air bridge to Italy: that’s where all their posh pals go so you’re safe. Go to Florence, stay at The Hotel Laurus al Duomo which is great although I can’t make up my mind as to whether my room was haunted or not, but that’s a story for another day. While you’re there, go to Il Granaio which is just off the Piazza della Repubblica where I had excellent Carpaccio Bresaola con arugula e grana padano and Filetto di manzo lardellato alle erbe mediterrane with a vat of spinach. That beef was so tender, I could actually cut it with a spoon. The owners are amazing, Silvia immediately went online to order a facial oil as soon as she found out what I did which was very flattering 🙂 , and her hubby helped me pick my wine after a little wine-tasting session, not to mention the free glass of barrel-aged grappa after dinner. I’m sending Sylvia the facial oil as a gift. AlaraApothecary: we will supply oil for grappa 🙂

I coud talk about the new safe sex guidelines regarding wearing a mask which made me laugh like a drain (I thought people paid good money for that sort of thing already….) but maybe not. (‘Oh Bob! Bob!! I love you. Hang on, your mask has slipped. HEY! You’re not Bob!’ ‘Angela, is that you, babes?’), or the new guidelines for CPR that tell you to put a towel over the face of your resus patient (my advice, don’t go into cardiac arrest anytime soon) Instead I leave you with this excellent video that I took in the Piazza della Repubblica, showing real people having a real life and an actually funny mime artist. Apropos nothing, I have found that the walk from the Duomo to P.de.Repubblica is always entertaining; during this short visit alone, there was the selfie-stick seller who always yelled out “Hey, Beyonce” every time he saw me, to our mutual amusement. In the end I started dodging behind the Baptistry if the area was crowded. Then there was the Romeo who asked me to have a little drink with him. When I told him I was married, he said, “No problem, it doesn’t bother me” which I admit made me laugh. You gotta admire his chutzpah. If I wasn’t afraid that I’d end up chained to a wall in an underground laundry washing out ‘single-use’ face masks, I would have been tempted, he was so funny. Then there was Samuel from Senegal who gave me a leather bracelet and refused to take payment for it although I made him swap it for an el-cheapo coloured-thread one. La dolce vita.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mxq4sNuzn32PNcw12vWb_MRPtTUx-erH/view?usp=sharing