Husky racing gains a fan

When people appearing in court get sentenced to home detention, I’ve always wondered how much of a punishment/deterrent it is. After all, if you are confined to your house for a defined period you can sit at home and watch TV, catch up on a few books and potter around the garden. It just seems like an early form of full retirement.

Well, I – like many of you, I suspect – am about to find out just what it’s like to be ‘‘grounded’’. Admittedly, I won’t have the inconvenience of an electronic ankle bracelet, which means I can go for a drive in the countryside without a posse of police cars in pursuit, but under the new Covid-19 guidelines I have, as an over 70-year-old, just been advised to stay home and keep all contact with the wider world to a minimum.

I would be looking forward to it more if sport hadn’t suddenly disappeared from our TV screens. At the moment my sports fix consists of playing Football Manager on the computer (I’ve achieved two promotions already, so clearly I’ve missed my vocation) and developing a passing interest in husky racing, which has suddenly filled the vacant sports slot on TV One news.

Fortunately, there’s a new series just started on Netflix called The English Game, which is about the origins of organised football in England. So now I’m following the fortunes of Darwen and Old Etonians rather than Derby County and Oldham.

In the absence of wall-to-wall British football filling part of my weekly routine I thought perhaps I should try to hone my literary talents. So, to that end, please bear with me as I try my hand at some poetry:

I’m sitting at the window, staring out and wondering when

I’ll be allowed out there again, as I’m three score years and ten.

They tell me there’s a virus that could be a threat to health

It could catch me unawares; such is its deadly stealth.

I’ve mainly got to stay indoors and keep people at arm’s length

I’ve got to wash my hands quite frequently, that’s never been my strength.

But now I scrub quite often, my palms are now quite sore

Then I have to do it all again, just because I touched the door.

I know I can’t go shopping, which is probably just as well

With people panic-buying, it’s another form of hell.

They’re scrabbling to buy pasta, bog rolls and flour too

It seems a strange concoction to tackle this new ‘flu.

They say that trying sewing can be calming for the soul

I tried it once on darning socks but never filled the hole.

I could take up yoga and lie upon a mat Somehow I don’t think that’d work, I’d only look a prat.

I’d like to travel far and wide, to see some countries new

But they’ve gone and closed the airports because there’s been a few

Foreign tourists, who think that they’re above the rules

And that their defiance is quite cool.

I want to watch some football but they’ve gone and pulled the plug

On almost every match around in case someone gets the bug.

Cricket and rugby, yes, they’ve all gone too

So I’m stuck with husky racing until Alaska also gets the flu.

My local cafe, just downstairs, closed its doors for the last time yesterday. They won’t be reopening after the lockdown.