The nights are drawing in and so are our liberties, freedoms, human rights. I feel like I’m living in a dictatorship, not a pandemic. All these RULES, I don’t understand, and can’t keep up with. The rule of 6? I think Doris must have spelt it wrong and meant the rule of sex, we must keep our sexual partners down to 5, or under, I’m assuming.
Earlier in the year, before the Coronavirus pandemic, I read a book called ‘Stop reading the news: a manifesto for a happier, healthier and wiser life.’ And it works. I recommend it. The author, Rolf Dobelli, writes that 90% of news doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened, will never happen, is bullshit etc. So, if I spend half an hour a day reading or watching the news, I’ve wasted 27 minutes of that day, absorbing shite. Dobelli asks the question, what do you remember about the news you have read over the last ten years? It’s likely only to be main events, like Grenfell, and smaller events that have an impact on our individual lives, like I won’t forget there was a stabbing two weekends ago, a few houses up, then the perpetrator stabbed someone on the bus, then was caught. Deaths by stabbings and suicides are increasing, (as are deaths from NHS services been shut down for so long) when people are oppressed and have been for a long time, of course, they attack themselves or others, our neighbour a victim and a man on the bus in this case. Kids are bored, frustrated, scared, they want us to know they are scared, paranoid. A brick landed in my small Peckham patio from the park. Luckily it didn’t hit me, or any of my gnomes. The perpetrator owned up, I commended him on his honesty. He’s a kid, a sad, troubled kid, bored shitless and bullied into chucking bricks.
My external news, usually comes via friends, our kids, clients and from Lewisham college where I work as an external supervisor. Because I write this blog, friends send me news that comes up in relation to Tesco. I like this, I prefer it from when I get stuff sent to me when a new MS ‘cure’ makes headlines. For decades I’ve been sent articles and case histories telling me the wonders of Beta interferon, statins, stem cell therapy, antidepressants, and so on. Bullshit, but people are trying to be kind.
Last night I was watching the final episode of ‘Des’ on ITV, I like stuff on serial killers, anyway, a Tesco clubcard advert came up. Ping ping ping, club card savings everywhere, it’s like an Easter Egg hunt, as I use club card, all my shopping is known. If the government wanted to find out whether I drunk more alcohol units than I should, they could ask Tesco. And now, I can’t have more than 6 in my house, it can’t be that I had a party every week. Clever, or am I as paranoid as the kids. I’ve worked with OCD hand washers, red raw skin. It hurts.
This week two nuggets of Tesco news. No. 1 Tesco are soon to be trying out drones for orders under £30, it will take half an hour from when you order, then a little bag will be delivered into your space outside, assuming you have a space outside, if I was still living in a tower block, I imagine they’d drop on the roof of the 20th floor? Where people go to commit suicide. The drone will have a camera on it, which for me, in the summer they would see me half-naked, and enjoy my gnomes, in the winter it will be less attractive and cold for me. But, oh how I would miss my delivery men, my weekly catch up with human beings who have different lives and interesting outlooks. No. 2 The other Tesco nugget came in from the Daily Mash, it was, of course, a satire, yet it disturbed me that there is a satire about this, suggesting that the middle/upper classes don’t know how to address people of difference, ie the Tesco Delivery Men, in any way, I guess they don’t, I guess they would prefer the drone so they don’t have to communicate with a man or woman who they perceive as different, and working their arse off for not much money etc.
I don’t want the rule of 6, I don’t want drones, and I don’t like club cards, I don’t like cards, just birthday cards, I don’t like drugs, vaccines, cures that aren’t, I just like glasses of wine. Social media and Facebook are aware that I’m not taking all the shit the mass media, the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the government are wanting me to absorb, but they need to triumph so they’re trying to poison me. The advert below came on my feed. If I ate something from the below I would throw it right back up, like a bulimic. Before the advert is a poem I wrote about bulimia. Facebook has given up sending me menopause and pension stuff, now they want to kill me off with what looks like hospital food (or as my friend Caroline said, the peas look like alien brain). Keep flossing your teeth folks. Oh, it just occurred to me, dental appointments are becoming such a rare thing, we’ll be pulling our own teeth out and will need sloppy food, that’s it! There’s always a reason.
Dental Floss is Absolutely Fantastic
Thanks to being bulimic for most of my teens
My gums became rotten and my teeth did not gleem
But when I realised what a terrible mess
I was in, and not looking my best
I stopped throwing up
And wen to the dentist doc
Who sorted me out
I flossed every day
Up, down and every way
Then the bleeding stopped
I could open up my chops
With a beatuful smile
And the teeth whitener lasts a while
Liz Bentley 