Stay alert? Eh? Givowwer Boris!
WEEK eight of the lockdown, or whatever it is we call the rather ambiguous state of smoke and mirrors that Boris conjured up for us.
I genuinely think that the online spoof by Matt Lucas that went viral “erm go out, ahm don’t go out” actually made more sense than the real speech.
I’m still struggling with what the Friar Tuck he meant with his new message ‘stay alert’? Eh? Givowwer! Now your old mantra of ‘stay in the Hoose,’ Boris; well, even the thickest amongst our region of largely capable, talented and resilient people got that one.
The small minority who didn’t bother heeding it were essentially the same selfish anti-social scrotes who don’t give a s@%* about society’s rules at the best of times.
The clan of web-fingered bottom feeders or arrogant posh yahoos who decide to meet in the woods and party in the middle of a pandemic, to then contemptuously flaunt it on social media, seriously stirs that part of me that wishes for Alcatraz or Devil’s Island to be given a re-launch.
Stay in the hoose! – it’s not a complex concept or state of being to get your heed around. If you are on the settee, munching nachos in your jarmies, whilst watching Netflix, you are probably obeying government guidelines.
The fact that Nicola Sturgeon over the border (hilariously over-dubbed by top Scottish comedienne and fine human being Jayney Godley) has rejected the new slogan by declaring that even she doesn’t know what it means, speaks volumes.
So, following Bojo’s ‘advice,’ that would be no clearer if spoken in Klingon, how do you remain ‘alert’?
Perhaps it is about adopting a more earnest, serious facial expression? Yet how could I do this effectively wearing a mask? Maybe I might find guidance in some of the movies and TV I’ve been bingeing on during lockdown. I could adopt one eyebrow raised like Roger Moore in the final frames of a seventies Bond movie, coupled with scanning the scene with narrowed, hawk-like eyes like Clint Eastwood in the shoot-out scene in A few Dollars More?
‘Are you alreet Mick?’ me neighbour might enquire concernedly, as I venture out with my new ‘stay alert’ expression peeping over me sock – now recycled as a facial covering ‘is ya hernia giving you gyp again pal?’ he might continue after I’ve over – done it on the Clint squint a tad too much. Maybe I need to physically induce a state of alertness with an exponential step-up of energy drink consumption and tightened elastic bands placed strategically on various body appendages? (Ouch!). To be fair though, this would certainly increase my levels of personal danger. This is nowt to do with the pandemic, but more the chance of physical harm from my longsuffering missus who has to deal with my ‘normal’ states of being a heed-the-ball and jumpy jack around the house every day. God knows what a state of caffeine and elastic-induced hyperactivity might drive her to!
It gets weirder when one of Boris’ ministers, pressed by an interviewer about the ambiguity of the ‘stay alert’ message, backtracked by reassuring that of course ‘stay alert ‘could indeed be construed as a clear instruction to also ‘stay home.’
Hadaway and $%#@! I was even more confused. How ambiguous could the term ‘stay alert’ be? I remember my first weeks in the army coinciding with a raised state of alert to ‘bikini amber’ due to specific intelligence about imminent terror attacks.
Not once did I see one of the troops now fully armed and manning the newly erected roadblocks around the barracks enquire of the duty officer ‘more alert is it then sir? Right oh! – that’ll be me off back to me pad then.’
So whilst I wish all governments nothing but the best of luck in these troubled times, I still reserve the right to radge if they talk cobblers or advise us to ingest bleach. Stay safe people.