Long Phone Calls, Friendship, Podcasts, Disingenuous Tory Ministers & Daily Briefing Bingo

My main take away from lockdown this week is that phone calls nowadays are of much longer duration than they ever used to be. And this is coming from someone who is an expert in ending phone calls as soon as I have had enough. My favoured technique is just to say ‘OK then’ and put down the phone. Believe me, it works.

I once had a boyfriend who chivalrously decided to finish with me over the phone. ‘OK then,’ I replied at the news and hung up. He phoned me back: he was furious.

‘I can’t believe you did that to me,’ he spat the words down the phone.

‘What do you mean?’ I replied. ‘You finished with me.’

‘Yes, but we could at least discuss it.’

‘Well, do you want to finish with me or not?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, then,’ I replied whereupon I hung up the phone.

He rang back, even angrier. As this scenario was in danger of carrying on ad infinitum, I had but one choice left to me: I finished with him.

However, even an expert such as myself finds it no longer possible to keep phone conversations short and sweet. Chatting to a friend – even a male one – for over an hour is the new normal. As is speaking to people you haven’t spoken to in years. The upshot from all these phone calls is that once lockdown is over we should meet up in person. It will be interesting to see if we ever do make time for the people in our lives in the post-lockdown future, or we simply go back to resorting to the virtual friendships via social media, text and email that a lot of us had before this pandemic took over the way we live our lives.

Zoom calls tend to last even longer meaning schedules can go out of the window completely. Jen Brister and I planned to record our latest podcast on Wednesday but that soon went by the by when Jen ended up on a long Zoom call with mates. No doubt our 12 avid podcast listeners will be gutted at the news.

The flea in our podcast ointment is that we are currently reviewing the latest season of Outlander for our podcasts. Admittedly, it’s rather niche. What makes it even more niche is that people listen in who don’t even watch Outlander. A phenomenon that neither Jen nor myself have ever got to grips with. Given that Outlander is in its 5^th season and Jen is no great fan of the show, it is surely a testament to Jen’s innate qualities as a friend that she’s still watching the series. If you want the lowdown on the love/hate relationship our podcasts have with the series, you can do no better than listen to our first podcast about the show. No knowledge of the show is required. Even the uninitiated will understand Jen’s rantings on the subject.

In other news, and in what might well be termed an extreme fit of optimism, I managed to hook myself a gig in December. Whether clubs will be up and running by then, who knows, but it made a nice change from gigs being pulled on me. Never has my diary looked so bleak.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to take the literary world by storm, I’ve started another short story, a pastiche of a detective story. It’s my fifth new short story so far and I’m enjoying writing it if nothing else. The grand plan is to write several more and then publish another collection of short stories alongside The Void. If nothing else, it at least gives me the impression that I am keeping my creative juices running.

I’ve also started going for long walks having committed the grave error of weighing myself. It turns out that I’ve gained several pounds already. Given there is no end date to lockdown in sight and that my will power when it comes to snacking during the day is non-existent, I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I’m doing something about it. After all, you know you’re unfit when you pull a muscle every time you put on your shoes.

Healthwise, my wound seems to have healed and I’ve got another stye. This is now my 5^th stye in about 8 weeks. I’m not sure why I’m become such a stye magnet of late but I bloody wish it would stop.

I’m still going through my music collection in a bid to block out the constant flow of bad news from news programmes and social media. Along the way I’ve found some treasures and some duds. Talking of the latter, I played my first Top of the Pops album, harking back from the 1970s. Back then (Yes, I know I’m only 38), I would go to Woolworth’s on a weekly basis to buy these albums. At the time, I felt very adult doing this, and not once did I ever cotton on that the real singers were not singing the songs. Listening back now, it’s hard to believe I failed to notice. It is surely sharp observational skills such as these which come in so useful when working as a comedian…………….

Sadly, real news still manages to filter into my consciousness, where it seems I am living in some bad dystopian movie, awaiting the arrival of Will Smith to save us. (If only). Thus, in a twist that even the most imaginative scriptwriter could never have conjured up, the President of the United States suggests injecting yourself with disinfectant as a possible cure* against the Corona virus. (*Editor’s note: it isn’t a cure and, for goodness sake, don’t do it!). Here in the UK, we have a cornucopia of Tory MPs trying to avoid reality and responsibility by talking about testing capacity rather than the actual number of people tested in the dogged belief that the British people are so stupid we’ll be unable to tell the difference. (To be fair, we did vote them in so they may have a point). However, to understand how disingenuous this sophistry is, let’s imagine the following scenario.

Journalist to Keir Starmer: How many MPs does the Labour party currently have in parliament?

Keir Starmer:                     We have a capacity for 650 MPs.

That’s technically correct. There is a capacity of 650 labour MPS but, of course, the actual answer is 202.

Spot the difference!

Alas, it seems no matter how incompetent, negligent or dishonest our government is, the British public stoically watch on and allow them to get away with it all, aided and abetted by a media which for the most part seems complicit. Given the UK’s penchant for comparing everything to World War II, I’d say when it comes to some of the UK’s journalists their role model seems sadly to be more Lord Haw Haw than Ed Murrow.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to get through the agony of watching the daily briefings by inventing a game called Daily Briefing Bingo. It’s a very simple game to play. You just have a drink any time one of the options above pop up and enjoy slowly getting pissed. Warning: if you start believing what the ministers are saying: STOP. You’ve obviously had far too much to drink.

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