This week down in the bunker we have been ruminating on the possibility that we are in some sort of ‘end of days’ scenario. Every time we put on our cathode ray 14” black and white TV there seems to be another news broadcast which looks like it’s been lifted more or less directly from a Hollywood disaster movie and we are constantly thankful that the door to the bunker is three inches thick and has innumerable locks. Lots of places are taking all sorts of precautions in this regard – Donny John had told the Europeans to do one (except the Brits presumably on the basis that someone told him we are no longer Europeans), The Italians have told everybody to not do one – i.e. stay in your homes until further notice. The Irish and many others have told school kids and other students to be neither seen nor heard and we UKers have been panic buying toilet roll.
Now this last one wouldn’t have been an issue for us at AUK Towers but the problem is that now all of our submissions are electronic we no longer have a ready supply of printed press releases which handily doubled as arse-wipers. We did think about stockpiling newspapers but we are not letting those rags anywhere near our collective backside. The steps that we are taking include: washing our hands thoroughly (or in the case of The Editor his feet which is what you do to deities apparently), keeping a comfortable one-metre distance from one another (not difficult since we are used to doing so – have you ever smelt a music journalist?) and coughing into the crook of our arms – although some of our number are pontificating that we are merely coughing into the arms of our crooks.
This is a serious business all right and we don’t mean to make light of it. It shouldn’t be forgotten that people are actually dying out there. Not as many as influenza which accounted for 6,600 people in 2019 or suicide which accounted for 6,500 or 110,000 who died from heart disease/heart attacks. All of those are thoroughly regrettable and we mention them only as a sort of comparator. What we did find amusing was that The Blues (this is a political slot after all and we hope we can be forgiven for introducing a bit of politics) suddenly found out how to shake the magic money tree this week and now there is a whole load of the folding stuff to help deal with the crisis, stimulate the economy, reduce people’s individual burdens and generally make life better (its early days but let’s see). The Reds must be wondering where they went wrong in promising to do that.
In the end we are wondering where the control, alt, delete buttons of life are. If we could just press those buggers and reset some shit we might all be a bit better off in all senses. Instead we have found ourselves listening to this tune like it was some sort of prophecy.
