Reason #2 - the meaning of friendship

Reason #1 - our new overlords

A brief explanation for a new form of self-indulgence

There are endless reasons to feel vexed at present. I was feeling pretty low before the realities of COVID-19 forced me to hang up my Oyster card. Since being stuck at home alone I have felt my sense of equilibrium come under huge strain. So serious was my discombobulation that I briefly considered going for a run.  

Of course, being unable to leave the house for a while is nothing compared to the challenges and hardships that many are facing. But I don't feel any better for adding guilt to my list of negative emotions.

When depression and anxiety hit me hard I find it difficult to read more than a few pages and my ability to tolerate music starts to decline too. When I was unwell last year, the loss of pleasure in song and prose terrified me. I felt was if I was losing myself entirely. In a way, the current situation is easier to bear because of its external cause The relentless chorus of ‘self-care’ advocates make behaviour that I would normally consider self-indulgent seem positively restrained. I am up to three face packs per day and I've opened a digital pub to guarantee myself sympathetic conversation at the press of a button.

Despite the gloom there are yet some reasons to rejoice and I am determined to remember them. Every time I feel misery creeping up on me like Mephistopheles with a new temptation, I am going to write about something joyful instead of succumbing. Because I am egotistical enough to seek an audience, I have decided to share my thoughts here, in the hope that it will cheer up any of you desperate enough to have strayed in my direction, in search of a reason to smile. If you are here in search of something wholesome, serious or improving then I strongly advise you to try elsewhere. This blog, like its author, is likely to become frivolous and foolish. I may occasionally attempt to dampen down the levity with something useful or wise but I shouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you.

If you come across any examples of charming, diverting or hilarious reasons to feel cheerful then do please share them and I may add them to the list.

Animals staging coups

This first one is a bit of a mixed bag I am afraid. I must admit that I am somewhat ambivalent with regard to the animals. Yes of course the mountain goats laying waste to Llandudno are hilarious (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/02/llandudno-goes-from-ghost-town-to-goats-town), as is the herd of deer that has established itself in Romford (https://www.timeout.com/london/news/an-entire-herd-of-deer-has-taken-over-an-empty-corner-of-east-london-040320). The wild boar that are making the most of the situation in Northern Italy and apparently Paris, are to be applauded for livening up the urban scene. But the current monkey war raging on the streets of Thailand is definitely one boozy pitch meeting away from leading to a new Planet of the Apes film and surely we are suffering enough as it is.

Goats lay waste to Wales, albeit in a pretty casual manner.

These remote and often charming images are all well and good, but I fear it is making many of us complacent to the threats on our own doorstep or, in my case, my own balcony. Some of you may have heard me speak of Reginald. In the nearly five years since I took up occupation of my flat in beautiful Greenwich, he is the only neighbour with whom I have had any trouble. At first he seemed charming, if eccentric; popping by as I took breakfast on the balcony and generally livening the place up a bit.  But it quickly became apparent that Reginald had designs on the place and was prepared to go to considerable lengths in his bid for adverse possession of my balcony. My squatter, as you may have gathered, is a squirrel. Oh how charming I imagine the moronic amongst you will declare. No, you addle-minded fools, this is not charming, this is war.

I should have been on my guard really. Since childhood my beloved elder sister has been warning me to steer clear of squirrels. She would remind me at frequent intervals that we should hate the bastards, with their long tails and their stupid twitchy noses. For some reason she always mimed the brandishment of a pistol when making a pronouncement on this point.  Clearly though, I was neglectful of the lessons of my youth. Reginald lured me into a false sense of security and then, just as I was least expecting it, he blindsided me with a shock offensive and an unexpected ally. That’s right, he was in league with the pigeons.

True I never actually saw them together, but as I fought that brutal war of attrition to keep the flying rodents off my nice clean balcony, I could sense that the master-plan was more furry, than feathered in origin. Weeks it took. Weeks of hanging up metal discs and gluing plastic spikes in spots where I was at risk of inadvertently impaling myself.

I succeeded, in the end. Surrounded by spikes and jangly metal discs, it felt, for a while, a tad Pyrrhic. But I cared not. I was the victor and to me went the alfresco spoils. Or so I thought. Three days ago, as I over-seasoned yet another meal on my stove top, I felt a presence. I turned and there he was, standing on the threshold between my open balcony door and the kitchen, wearing an expression of practically Wodehousian joviality on his furry little mug. Reginald. Emboldened by the lack of people in the square below and the arrival of Spring, it is clear that he means to come for me once more.

So I wish you all joy in your goats, and your deer, and your boars. I will write again soon but first I need to order a 3D printer and join the queue at Waitrose for some rock salt.

This is not Reginald but he does have Reginald's unbearably smug and privileged manner, so it's probably a cousin or something.