Hooray hooray the Fifth of May, outdoor bonking starts today. Actually it’s supposed to be the First of May, but such is the nature of this infernal lockdown that I’ve been asleep for the last five days. Today is definitely not suitable for uncovered coupling. It’s chilly and very windy and more conducive to sheepskin rugs in front of a roaring log fire. The fact that we have neither shouldn’t be a deterrent.
How things change in these uncertain times. SD has taken on a whole new meaning. In my military days SD stood for Service Dress; Full SD meant get on your ceremonial uniform, look smart, salute often and keep saying “sir”. (As a vaguely interesting aside which has just come back to me, the Regiments of Footguards, like the Grenadiers and Coldstream Guards, always just say “Sir”, when they mean “yes Sir”. It’s delivered in a clipped and positive manner. It’s an indication of compliance to an order. They have all sorts of strange regimental customs and traditions that helped us to run a vast empire and win wars.) I digress. Of course SD now stands for Social Distancing, which strikes me as being something of a misnomer: rather like “social media”. What could be more Anti-social than, as you approach your old mate of twenty years who you haven’t seen for months, taking a huge sidestep to ensure that the statutory seventy eight inch separation is maintained? Shaking hands becomes impossible, even if safely gloved. Intimate conversation is equally inappropriate (how common that word has become; it didn’t exist when I was young) as we shout across the ether at each other. I’m even contemplating carrying a loudhailer to communicate with my more hard of hearing friends.
I’ve been doing a bit of research these past few days for a Remembrance Concert script that I’m partly responsible for. We’re focussing on D Day through to VE Day and it’s absolutely mind-boggling the hardships and deprivation that so many people suffered for so long, not to mention the size of the Operations and the planning and preparation that went into it. As I heard a survivor discussing on the radio this morning, what we are going through now is a mere drop in the oggin compared to what our forebears went through. This individual had been a youngster in a gruesome “death camp” in Czechoslovakia. They heard the news of Germany’s capitulation on a secret radio that some of the Russian prisoners had somehow kept hidden and managed to make work. They listened to Churchill’s famous victory speech and realised that there were still six hours to go before the official surrender at midnight. Whilst elated, they were also fearful that the bitter and twisted Nazi guards would unleash their hatred of the Jews and kill all of them before they could be rescued. The Russian Army that liberated them passed quickly through, fearful of catching nasty diseases from the bug-ridden shells of humanity that they found. Fortunately, unlike in other camps where generous saviours had overfed and thereby killed the emaciated survivors, in this camp they were given very little food initially, which allowed their stomachs to grow back to normal without exploding.
I confess, hearing that, allied with all my reading, I realised things aren’t actually so bad after all. That nice roast chicken I cooked last night will make a delicious salad lunch.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 