Virus Diary Week 19

A strange conflict rages within us: get the pubs open proper because we are bored versus keep the pubs shut a bit longer because we’re not out of the woods yet.

Same with music. It’s awful watching helplessly as beloved venues across these isles admit they won’t open their doors again.

At the same time we’re not that confident social distance would be maintained in a gig environment nor that we’d want it. Huddling together, heaving, dancing, sweating, it’s all part of the communal experience of going to a concert. The good ones at any rate.

The problem is people, generally, and how they are not to be trusted to use good sense, in almost any situation. Throw drink into the mix and idiocy is guaranteed (speaking from experience).

So while we celebrate the new, long overdue, licensing laws that will mean bars can open to

2am with a one-hour drinking-up time, we’re doing so from the comfort of our living room.

It’s tough without live music though and when this is past we will surely rue the concerts we missed – and the ones we might still miss because we ease up too quickly.

We’ve taken solace in listening to and playing music, as per usual, and subtly foisting our ageing tastes on the youngsters.

So we were proud when the six-year-old noted how The Style Council sounded like just The Jam as we blared out Shout It From The Top – an old man’s classic – in the car.

It sparked something of a Paul Weller love-in to the point where we accidentally – somehow – bought a guitar just like his on ebay. Thank heavens they wouldn’t deliver it from America and the order was cancelled before our better half found out.

The Walls Come Tumbling Down, indeed...

DEAR ME Paul Weller’s guitar