Rituals questioned

THE lockdown gave us all a chance to do a bit of navel gazing as we think about stuff we normally wouldn’t consider.

Being at home a lot more has allowed me to observe and consider the little patterns and rituals that all households share.

Essentially, at home and at work, we do things long after the reason for doing them has gone. There is a tale that a guard at the Tower of London was placed at a certain spot because a certain monarch loved a particular flower and wanted it protecting. As time passed both the flower and the royal perished – but a soldier remained on guard at the spot, even though the original reason for doing do was lost in the mists of time.

It was just the way things were done. We all have experienced this at work – “ney body is allowed to use the door between the back office and the workshop, go the long way round”.

This might sound like a commandment from the health and safety gestapo but the real reason for the rule was that back in 1978 a miserable Gaffa called Les (Les Miserables, eh?) liked to eat his bait and check his gee-gees in peace. The fact that he retired before most of the current staff were born has not diminished the power of his rule.

After all, who would challenge tradition that’s been in place for over 42 years? Miserable Les would be chuckling into his Vesta boil-in-thebag curry if he knew the aggro he was still causing.

Families too have ancient customs burned into their DNA that no longer bear relation to reality. It happens at home. An enquiry from mam as to “who’s seen the yellow basket?” will mean that she’s after the receptacle to put the washing in. Anybody outside the immediate four walls would struggle with these instructions because the “yellow basket” in question ended up on a bonfire in 1989. The fact that every subsequent washing basket, whatever the colour, has been called by this name is not seen as weird by the family members. It is, was and always will be “the yellow basket”.

Family nicknames are similarly applied long after logic and common sense have ridden into the sunset. Every clan meeting (remember those!) such as a wedding will have a wizened gnome introduced as “big Jackie” while his lumbering son, who resembles an X-Men mutant on steroids, is known to all as little baby Kieran. Maybe this all explains why at

56 I’m known as

“young Michael2 at family do’s, while my son of the same name is only pushing 15!

I wonder which lockdown peculiarities will survive into the future decades? Imagine the conversations at Christmas 2050 – “Why does gran still wipe down the shopping when our drone delivery comes?” “Howay man! It’s only been touched by droids since it left the lunar w a re h o u s e s. Anyway, that horrible lady next door filmed her with her retinal implants and mentally uploaded it onto spacebook. Everyone is laughing at her, I had to switch off my telepathy app just to block them out!”

“That’s nowt, grandad still wore that manky mask when he took the cyber-portal into Toon last week. He’d gone to watch the a holographic team of the 1995/96 Entertainers play the 1955 FA cup side. I told him there’s no possibility of germs when you pass instantaneously through a schism in the timespace continuum, but he just muttered “b*******s” and said the politicians have been full of it since Boris refused to resign after the Brexit Wars with the French, when the Scottish Border ended up just north of Morpeth.

“That’s nowt, I’ve still got ney idea what either of them are on about when they ask us to pass the yellow basket!”

Take care lovely people.