Sign of the times!
JUST as we teeter ever closer to the sweet sound of a pub door finally creaking open after THREE WHOLE SODDING MONTHS of lockdown, they have to throw a spanner in the works.
Come July 4, we are told, we will at last be able to purchase a condensation-cloaked pint of much-missed wife beater and a packet of dry roasted, please, luv.
But – and my fingertips throb with both earnest rage and glum sorrow as I write this – we’ll have to SIGN for it, first.
Our government – a conservative government, no less – is proposing that those of us old enough to vote these supercilious twats in or out, old enough to get shot on behalf of our fellow man, old enough to look after children, old enough to drive tanks, fly planes, bungee jump and visit whorehouses the world over, are to be ordered to submit our vital statistics before our first sip of a chilled Birra Moretti.
They will insist that anyone seeking blessed refuge inside a glass should, first, hand over their name, address, mobile number and email address.
It’s ostensibly so that, should your drinking hole of choice suffer a bout of coronavirus, they can track down everyone else who was in there to see if they’ve got it, too.
This is really not a joke.
And it reminds me of something bloody awful.
Back in black and white times, when
PS. When asked to fill in that form, write “Mr M Mouse, 1 Donald Duck Street, Disneyland”.
Labour were in charge of stuff – kids, you might have to look this up in between videos of your friends “doing an elephant” on TikTok – us more libertarian types used to refer to them as the nanny state.
They would constantly wag their fingers and f aux- conscientiously draw their eyebrows together while sternly telling us what was good or bad for our wellbeing.
It’s what the left does, basically. They know best, you see, because they’ve got an ’ology in
David Beckham, or The Beatles, or media studies. Or, even worse, teaching.
Then, the moment we weren’t looking, they’d be off variously having affairs, snorting coke, ordering illegal wars, bankrupting the NHS with PFI deals and rogering, quite literally, the shit out of rent boys under the guise of being a washing machine salesman. Seriously. It was a bit like being at school, really, except the staff were not always coming up with ingenious ideas about why they should: a) Not have to ever go to work while... b) Demanding a ludicrous pay rise for doing nothing nonetheless.
For God’s sake, let’s just get the bloody pubs open.
After all, without The Winchester, where on earth do we all gather until it all blows over?