Lighthouse Keeper: My Job from Hell
Archie Hume of A Hume Country Clothing on his personal lockdown revelations and post-COVID plans.
It’s top of the list of things I’ve learned during lockdown. Lighthouse keeper is my job from hell. If I found myself in my job from hell I would resort to fashioning ‘friends’ from upturned broomsticks, mopheads and tea towels. I would rush onto wave swept rocks – at great personal peril – to talk to the seals and the gulls. Basically, any creatures of the sea or sky would do – even a jellyfish.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m great company. Convivial, charming – an all-round, nice bloke. If I could choose someone to play me in a film, it would be Ewan McGregor. Everyone likes Ewan McGregor…he’d look good in tweed. Although, he’s from Perth and, as we know, I’m from Kelso. But we won’t hold that against him.
Anyway, I’m careering off track. That’s been happening a lot since lockdown. My wife, Karen would tell you my gnat-like concentration span pre-dates Covid. She would say it falls in and out like a fatigued Wi-Fi connection, frayed after endless Zoom abuse.
Speaking of Zoom, it didn’t last long in our house. It was no substitute for the real thing. If I wanted a tablet’s eye/no-holds barred view of my friends’ nasal hair during social encounters, then I would lie on the floor of the pub when we meet instead of sitting on the bar stool next to them. Face-to-face. Face-to-face. Elbow-to-elbow. Remember that?
I do remember it. Painfully and acutely, which is why being a lighthouse keeper is my job from hell. The closest I have come to seeing my mates during lockdown has been occasional sightings in queues as I whizz around in the wee blue van on behalf of the Kelso Resilience Group to do my drug run. Dispensing medicine to those shielding is my 2020 social fix and within the company I currently keep, at 57, I am still young enough to be referred to as ‘son.’ So, it has its ups.
As for those mates I spy propping up their trolleys in the supermarket queues. I just lift a wee prescription bag off the seat next to me, wave it out the window and holler that I’ll be round later with their Viagra. They seem as pleased to see me as I am to see them.
When it is all over. A thought that renders me vaguely hysterical with glee. I know exactly what I’ll do. Yes, we’ll open the shops. We’re on top of all that. And we’ll get the economy up and running again. And the kids back in school. And the cars and planes back bellowing out pollution. But me, personally…my own little thing that I’m looking forward to is this: each week the Resilience Group pays each volunteer £65, to cover time/expenses, that sort of thing. And each week every volunteer at the Kelso group has donated their £65 to the food bank on the understanding that on our last week as KRG volunteers, we will fling the final week’s cash into a great big kitty and head for the pub.
Oh, yes! Unaided we will kick start the local economy. I will break my lockdown dry spell and together, we will drink the local boozer back to health, wealth and happiness. We will toast the NHS as the greatest gift a country can give to its citizens and we will vow to carry this thought through in our actions for as long as we live.