Lockdown to crockdown as the brakes come off
Kylie’s still red hot after five decades at the top
Goddess Kylie Minogue has become the first female to have No1 albums in the UK charts over five consecutive decades. And she could still join a Club 18-30 holiday without being challenged on her age.
Clever thing that she is, Kylie admits she couldn’t have handled her rise to fame if it had happened during the social media age.
Which is an admission today’s young stars should remember as they struggle to endure 24-7 trolling and feel pressured to share their every thought, gym workout or tattoo.
No wonder they burn out so quickly.
Yippee… my son’s football training finally returned after a long, boring and inactive year for the lad.
Boo… he promptly fell while dribbling the ball and had to be carried off the pitch in agony.
Yippee… the waiting room of the A&E department at our local hospital was surprisingly free of blood-soaked drunks. Or any kind of drunks for that matter. For the first time in my life, an emergency department was a place of calm sobriety.
Boo… it still took a good three hours from triage to discharge ’cause there were so many stone- cold- sober bumps, falls, breaks, cuts and sprains or, in my boy’s case, fractured knees (yes, as sore as it sounds).
This is one effect of the easing of lockdown own restrictions, the doctor or told us. People are e throwing themselves back into activities they haven’t done for ages and ending up crocked as a result.
“We were quite quiet while everyone e was stuck indoors,” s,” he said. “Now folk are getting out and aboutt again and it’s non-stop here.” e.”
With the lusty enthusiasmhusiasm of freshly released prisoners, we’re embracing every opportunity to run or cycle or hike or play competitive sports, forgetting that we may not have been very good at that kind of thing before Covid.
Even those who were previously accomplished at such pursuits are short of recent experience and should really proceed with caution. But it’s just too exciting to be careful.
My son was a great wee footballer, training twice a week and playing competitively at weekends, but after a year stuck in the house, restricted to playing Fifa on the Xbox, he was more used to moving the ball with a console controller than with his own feet.
The guy in the next hospital cubicle had taken a header over the handlebars of his bike. He’d spent so long doing one of those Peloton online workouts (on an exercise bike in his sitting room) that he’d completely forgotten how to use brakes on a real hill.
If we’ve learned anything from the Covid crisis, it’s that every reason for celebration is quickly followed by a downer. Up one minute, down the next.
Yippee… lockdown tactics appear to work and the number of cases fall.
Boo… a new more infectious, more deadly variant appears and cases soar again. Yippee… we’re got a vaccine.
Boo… a massive hoo-ha about rare blood clots gives anti-vaxxers unwarranted airtime.
Which makes all the more alarming scenes of carefree abandon played out in English beer gardens and outdoor dining areas last week. But jumping madly into old bbehaviours was never going to end well. Yippee… we can go out for a nice glassg of wine and a bletheblether with pals.
Boo…Bo we wake up feelfeeling like our brains havhave exploded and wewe’ve lost our shoes/ hanhandbag/face mask/ sansanitiser/dignity.
DDouble boo… we’ll have to go for a Covid test aas the two-metre rule wentwe out the window after the second cocktail and we dondon’t even recognise anyone in our ggroup selfies. Nicol a SturgeonSturgeon’s unex pected announcement of an early lifting of the travel ban and an increase in the number of people who can meet up outdoors is welcome and terrifying at the same time.
“The change to existing plans because of improved data does not allow us to throw caution to the wind,” she warned.
It might be an idea to lower ourselves tentatively back into the lives we had BC (Before Covid), enjoy the freedoms slowly, till we learn again how to live them large.
As I discovered last week, it’s all too easy to take a header over the handlebars if you’ve forgotten how to apply brakes.
Yippee… Scotland’s schools finally all return to full-time teaching as of tomorrow.
Boo… my son still won’t be among his pals in the classroom. He’s stuck with homeschooling till his knee has healed a bit more.
There’s still a long road ahead for all of us, isn’t there? And there will be many bumps and falls. Travel easy.