WE’VE all seen The Shawshank Redemption so we will all remember the plight of gentle old Brooks, the librarian who couldn’t cope with life on the outside and hanged himself.
I wonder if it will be like that for us, when we are finally allowed out.
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Like most people, I’ve been well behaved these past four weeks.
I haven’t made unnecessary journeys, I’ve kept my distance when delivery drivers have come to the door and I’ve spent my evenings watching so many box sets that I’m now down to re-runs of Cash In The Attic.
Every morning I drive into the village for papers and milk. My local town is only three miles away but I’ve forgotten what it looks like.
London? That’s just somewhere on the news.
And here’s the funny thing. I’m getting used to it. More than that. I’m starting to enjoy it.
I haven’t had a shave for a week. I’m wearing a shirt that makes me look like Winnie The Pooh.
I’m living on a diet of what’s growing in my vegetable garden, which at this time of year is nothing, and McVitie’s dark chocolate biscuits. I may have a beer shortly, even though it’s only midday.
This is the lifestyle I dreamed about when I was a teenager.
Ordinarily I go to a lot of parties, but I’m starting to realise that getting dressed up and driving a razor round my face and sorting a taxi is an enormous amount of effort.
And for what? So I can spend a few hours talking to people I don’t know or like.
I also used to love going to the pub, but now I’m thinking, “Why drink standing up when I can stay at home and drink sitting down?”
CARPET-BOMBING
And think how much better life is when we don’t have to buy clothes.
No need to get undressed in an overheated cubicle so you can try on a pair of trousers that do nothing but remind you you’re getting fat.
And no need to spend 20 minutes at the till while the shop assistant insists you hand over your e-mail address so her bosses can spend the next hundred years carpet-bombing your computer with offers on things you don’t need.
That’s what this lockdown has taught me most of all. I don’t really need very much. Wifi. Electricity. Biscuits. And that’s about it.
It was my 60th birthday last weekend and all year I’d been planning a party to celebrate.
In the end though, I spent a day in the sunshine with my children and I could not have been happier.
I’m actually scared, then, of what will happen when normal service is resumed.
Because I’ll be expected to pick up where I left off. And I’m not sure I want that. I may end up chiselling “Clarky was here” into a beam and doing a Shawshank.
I just hope nobody else is feeling this way. Because someone has to keep the biscuits and the box sets coming.
And for that to happen, the world needs a thriving economy.
And for that, we all need to come out of this lockdown like Exocet missiles, determined like never before to earn as much money as possible.
And then spend it like there’s no tomorrow.
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Loving the Stone age
SHARON Stone says she’s had body issues through her entire life.
She also claims she could only get into acting by posing nude in Playboy and that she blames herself for being single.
Couple of things on that, if I may.
I once sat on the next table to Sharon in a restaurant and she has the best laugh you’ve ever heard.
Plus, I maintain that her performance in the movie Casino is up there as one of the best I’ve ever seen, from anyone ever.
Oh, and one more thing.
Putting a picture of Sharon in the paper is guaranteed to light up the lives of millions. So that’s what I’ve done this morning.
Now, hopefully, she can cheer up.
California's onto something
CALIFORNIAN environmentalists have finally realised that to stop big fires in the state’s forests, they need to start small ones.
They need to do what the indigenous people did, create empty spaces to stop the fires from spreading.
I wonder if the Australians will admit that’s what they must do too.
Or whether they’ll continue to run around blaming global warming.
Donald is right – for once
DONALD Trump continues to be a narcissistic, orange- faced fool.
Night after night he comes across as a boastful liar who’s quick to blame others for his own mistakes and dismiss facts as fake news.
Which is annoying, because when, occasionally, he says something sensible, no one’s listening.
He was foolish to stop funding the World Health Organisation. It needs cash at the moment.
But he was quite right to say that under its current leadership it is China-centric.
The boss – and I knew I’d have to write his name down one day – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – was effectively given his job by the Chinese and he does seem to be doing everything in his power to thank them for it.
A poor second to Jeff
IT’S been announced that a former fighter pilot called Harvey Smyth is to become Britain’s first ever “space commander”.
That is one cool job title.
While everyone else in government is busy sourcing face masks and organising emergency payments for struggling fish and chip shops in Harpenden, Harvey will be organising our satellite defence strategy and inventing lasers that can shoot down incoming nukes.
It all sounds very exciting until you discover that over the next ten years he has a budget of £7billion.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos spends that much on his Blue Origin space programme every seven years.
This means that up there, in the vast ocean of nothingness, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be not quite as powerful as an American businessman.
Just hand it to Liverpool
THERE is a lot of debate about how the current Premier League should be finished off.
I think we should just say that it ended the day the lockdown started and hand the title to Liverpool.
They’ll be happy because they won it, and the rest of us can be happy too, as we will spend the rest of time singing songs in the stands about how they didn’t.
To the tune made famous by Ronan Keating. “You win it best . . . when you don’t win it at all.”
Get yer oats, you wimp
A MAN wrote to Dear Deidre this week saying that his wife loves her horse more than she loves him.
Deidre, sensible as always, said that the poor woman could be going through the menopause.
My reply would have been different. I’d have said: Try behaving like the horse. Crap in your bed every morning and make no effort to clean it up. Kick a child in the head for no reason.
Insist that she washes your private parts very gently every day with warm soapy water and refuse to go anywhere unless you’re in a lorry kitted out to the highest level of luxury.
Oh, and even if she’s feeling under the weather, demand that you are ridden twice a day.
Enthusiastically, while wearing leather bondage gear.
That, chummy, is what horsewomen want from their partners. Not some soppy ha’porth offering to do the washing up and writing to agony aunts.
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