Covid passport? Is my wartime identity card of any use?
All this talk about passports has Anton hankering for some foreign travel...as long as there’s no actual travelling involved
THIS suggestion that we must have a “Covid passport” before we can next have a drink indoors in a pub – I suppose that is a good plan. We’d have the comfort of knowing that fellow patrons were similarly virus-free.
But the idea of having to give name, rank and number before being allowed a pint of Old Maggot’s Armpit in the Elephant and Sundial somehow rankles.
My wartime identity card expired when I was 16, in 1960. At the moment, I don’t have any kind of passport. I went from suffering “runway fever”, when I couldn’t wait to get back on a plane, to avoiding foreign travel altogether.
It’s not that I don’t like distant shores. Covid-19 notwithstanding, there are loads of places that I’d like to revisit. It’s just actually getting there that puts me off.
If I could get from Mickleover to, say, Chicago without having to cross the physical space between the two, then I’d love to dine again at Shaw’s Crab House. But I think that is called teleportation and happens only in Star Trek films.
In the meantime, what I have found quite rewarding during lockdown is to fire up the telly to YouTube and take some of those virtual walks around familiar places.
A stroll down Beacon Hill on a rainy day in Massachusetts, a wander along the canal banks of sunny Bruges, or battling along Berlin’s bustling Kurfürstendamm – I’ve enjoyed them all from the comfort of my armchair. All you need is a little imagination and the appropriate local beer, and the beer is available on the internet.
To be honest, I am itching to get down to London to enjoy a drink with old pals Ian and Trevor, go up to Liverpool for a long-overdue lunch with Ken and catch up over a pint in Swansea with Dave.
Alas, all those joys will have to wait a little longer.
In the meantime, it’s the fashion these days to sign-off an email with the words “stay safe”.
I can’t stay safe even within the confines of my own home. I was on the top deck of a stepladder, putting something in the loft, when the ladder buckled. It went one way; I went the other. My fall was broken by a computer table.
Fortunately, I wasn’t broken at all, just a few bruises, but the computer table was damaged beyond repair. So was the loft door that I’d grabbed on the way down. Good neighbour Graham fetched a new door and fixed that, while I bought a new computer table on the internet. It came flat-packed and comprised only eight parts and a couple of dozen screws. The instructions were in dozens of different languages
– I think I spotted Pawnee – and six “easy-to-follow” diagrams.
Five years of enforced handicraft lessons at Bemrose School proved nothing. It took me two days to assemble the table, and, even then, I have a few screws left over.
The new stepladder I bought on the internet was a mistake. It was so heavy that it took three of us to get it into the house, and so long that we have nowhere big enough to store it.
The company took pity on me and said that they would collect it and refund my £130. But don’t you feel daft, asking?
Would all this have happened if it hadn’t been for lockdown? If I could go wherever I fancy, then I wouldn’t have been up a stepladder. I would have been taking the waters in Bakewell, or Bath even. Then again, some ill might have befallen me on my travels. Who knows?
It’s time for the second jab this week. I’m going to relax my arm properly this time. The nurse advised me to go “all floppy”, but I didn’t. I suppose she got tired of waiting. Fair enough, they’ve a lot to get through, and if old fogeys don’t listen …
■ Anton Rippon’s local books are available from www. northbridgepublishing.co.uk