LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS: LOCKDOWN DAY 352(+, DEPENDING ON LOCATION IN UK)
Read the following in sarcasm drenched tones: Beginning Friday, we Scots may associate outdoors ONLY (socially distanced and ffs absolutely NO TOUCHING!!!) with total of four other people from two other households. Outdoors, including in private gardens.
OH MY GOSH, BECKY, I like totally cannot contain my excitement!!
meh
'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!' King Lear, Act1 Scene4
The adults in the room (meaning the UK as the only adults in private rooms were socially distanced members of the same household) sat with jaws to the floor for two hours Monday night as the man-child formerly known as Prince Harry and the harpie he married and then inflicted on the UK did their absolute level best to besmirch the Royal Family and the UK as uncaring ('I just didn't want to be alive anymore but when I asked for help I was told it wouldn't look good for the institution.') and racist (Harry and his harpie neglected to coordinate their stories, he says the racism about the colour of any children displayed by a member of the Royal Family came before the wedding, she says Harry told her it happened during her pregnancy with wee Archie and was presented to her as why the wee man wouldn't be a prince at birth).
I wasn't going to watch the Oprah 'Let's get the Queen!' show broadcast here in the UK on Monday evening from 9pm to just before 11pm but after every newsfeed was saturated with the most shockingly lurid tales, I wanted to be sure for myself if all that horror had really happened or if it was just clever trailer editing to make people tune in and reel with the shock.
Buckingham Palace issued a statement yesterday (9 March 2021 around 5ish), a statement the news presenters and 'journalists' presented as being rather too long in coming (despite it being issued less than 24 hours after the shocking interview hit our airwaves) and all I can say at this point is it is a far more compassionate statement than I would have come up with had my grandson and his horror of a wife gone public to label me racist and uncaring.
I've not looked at the news this morning (it is just after 8amGMT as I type this) so I've no clue if the couple have doubled down on their appalling pack of lies. In all frankness, I don't believe a word of it except her claims of becoming suicidal, that one I do believe.
After all, she's a bullying diva drama queen actress and those bints are genuinely suicidal if they break a nail. I wish I could say I was kidding but I've known a few of them and they really do mean it when they say 'I don't/didn't want to be alive any more it was so terrible (insert minor life annoyance/perceived unkindness to them)'. They are so into themselves they really are convinced the only solution is to offer to kill themselves...unless some hero rescues them from the utter despair.
She needed mental health help but couldn't get it? From the Palace that really did learn the lesson of ignoring Diana's mental health 30 years ago, oh please - the truth is probably more along the lines of Harry's harpie not asking her GP or obstetrician to refer her. Of course HR wasn't going to help, they're there for the paid staff, not the principals - the principals are expected to...ask their medic for assistance.
We've all been told over and again Harry couldn't have made it without mental health counselling - is she really expecting us to believe he didn't have a single suggestion for her to help her get help?? Oh puhleeze!
Right, so some clod in the Royal Family phrased a perfectly natural question badly about what the children might look like and made poor MeMeMeMe want to not be alive any longer. And she's made a major meal of it and that's the extent of it - this stupid woman has deliberately blown something out of proportion and it can never be pulled back, never be answered to the satisfaction of the perpetual profession victim element of the population. Last night across comments feeds the accusation she's deliberately started a race war flew thick and faster than the mods could delete them.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth...
On my personal homefront, we're 'getting there'. I have taken the bull by the horns and sorted three rather big (to me) problems organising this little house.
Problem One: the bathroom window. It faces the front of the house and while we are blessed to live at the bottom of a 'goat track' (meaning very little foot traffic beyond the postie and the Amazon couriers), and despite the distortion ripples on the window glass - light and shapes show through. So we put up a blind and were surprised when the wood slats didn't give us quite the amount of privacy we'd hoped for. I put curtains over the blinds...nope, that didn't help and the curtains have to come off weekly for washing or the bathroom humidity causes the curtains to go mouldy (no. extractor. venting. fan. dammit. so the upper window has to be open during bathing to vent at least some of the steam).
SOLUTION: I put mirror tiles across the lower section of the window formerly covered by blinds and curtains. OH HEY! My husband can shave in a 44x20in mirror! I can brush my teeth and apply the very occasional bit of mascara and lipstick. No more squinting into a 5x5in round mirror set precariously on the window ledge. And no more lack of privacy - can't see out, can't see in - WINNING!!
Problem Two: OH MY EFFING GOD do not ask me to cook and bake in a 1980s styled kitchen I wouldn't have chosen in the 1980s much less the 21st century! The other day I switched away from SkyNews (I keep it on during the day, on mute, to watch the scrolling ticker for news the world has just ended) owing to the unpleasant appearance of The Little Dictator (aka the Scottish First Minister I can't wait to vote against come May elections). Went to The Drama Channel where a 1986 episode of Last of the Summer Wine was running - and what did I see in Glenda and Barry's kitchen? MY KITCHEN CUPBOARDS!
SOLUTION: Actually, I have been working on this since we bought this house - the kitchen is a shockingly bad hodgepodge of a faux granite worktop in black-grey-cream-rust flecks, the walls are covered in a nicotine-cream colour cushion vinyl wallpaper 'decorated' with scattered latte cups. The appliances are in the wrong places - who puts a cooker at the other end from the window when cheaping out and fitting an extractor fan that only moves the venting from the hobs to the bloody floor instead of properly venting it to the outdoors, WHO????!!!!
The legacy tiles are nicotine-cream with every four or five tiles a red poppies inside a blue and gold rope frame looking thing 'accent tile'. And the cupboards are an unpaintable textured light beige with a light pine 'trim' at the top.
Horrible. Depressing.
I researched and 'costed' fixing that kitchen. Oh dear. Now you know why I buy that one lottery ticket every week. Hey! Can't win if you don't play!
I have examined it from every angle. Yesterday I solved it. 2 big pots of mould resistant white matte kitchen paint, 4M of wide white high gloss vinyl, an applicator kit, and enough replacement handles and pulls (black) to turn my hodgepodge. The ancient cushion wallpaper came away easily and the freshly painted white walls somehow make that 8x8ft kitchen look bigger. The vinyl wrap actually looks pretty damn good - no bubbles or twists and bonus, it wipes clean with a damp cloth. The cup handles on the lower cabinets and the pulls on the upper tie in perfectly with the faux granite worktop and black gingham cafe tier curtains. Finally, my kitchen looks proper - no eyeball twisting hodgepodge in there. I love it. It's a timeless undateable looking room now and if I ever win the lottery I'm going to have the kitchen done over in the same scheme but with proper wood cabinets and the appliances finally in the right places for efficiency. And by gum, I want a 'greenhouse' window!
Problem Three: Storage space.
SOLUTION: CULL! I packed away dishes, glassware, utensils, clothes, craft supplies. Boxed and stacked in the shed according to 'bin-keep-give away'.
Lockdown. It's been good for some things, anyroad!
