In the words of Eric Idle from the gospel according to Monty Python ‘Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad, but always look on the bright side of life!’
None of us have ever experienced anything like this before but experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it. This is a time when we realise who our true friends are, those people who know you well but like you anyway. Blewbury has come up trumps in this time of adversity and talking of trumps, try telling Melania that social distancing is a bad thing.
Yes, even in Blewbury there are acute shortages caused by panic buying of avocados and goji berries and millennials shooting a line of bread flour but there are alternatives. Find something small and barely alive, put it on top of rice and strap it up with insulation tape – bingo, sushi! Or a cabbage from Savages, you know, that vegetable that’s as big and as wise as a man’s head. Going back to The Life of Brian – what did the Romans ever do for us, well they brought us tinned tomatoes, that’s what.
As well as bringing the community closer together, there have been other spin-offs, some good some bad. I no longer have to have as many meetings, where minutes are kept and hours are lost. Skipping the twentieth century we have embraced the twenty-first by having a Parish Council Zoom meeting which was ‘interesting’. But I have to say that I miss my twice weekly walk to the Blueberry with my mate Elphin for a couple of pints of Guinness, other makes of dark frothy beverages are available. This in spite of it now coming out of cans and brought to life with a vibrator. We would saunter along Watery Lane with his little legs trying to keep up in spite of doing four hundred Fitbit steps every hundred metres. He follows Ogden’s Law which states that the sooner you fall behind, the longer you have to catch up. But if I am inspired by anyone at this time to ‘always look on the bright side’ it is Elphin. In spite of a pretty ropey year before this mess he has still managed to come up with cartoons to amuse himself and others as he self isolates in Longridge, his house (see picture above).
So, no negativity. If we are all sensible, this will soon be a bad dream. Chris Lakeland
