The world has gone to hell. I
wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of 2020 just rumbled into the air suddenly
and then tipped down a great shit-chute into the nether regions of Hades. With
a side-serving of syphilitic sauerkraut to top the whole experience off, the
work of the Universe is done. In other words…
It’s time to shoot my mother.
This is going to hurt her a
lot more than it will hurt me. I know this, as…shooting myself is painless.
After I shoot myself, I shoot the door. Things aren’t looking good for the
door. I made it through the experience relatively easily, but the door takes it
badly.
Perhaps, when shooting yourself, you should
aim at the door first and test things out. That makes a lot of sense, now. Ah,
well. Too late for all that. My mother sits up in bed and sees what’s coming
next. She recoils in horror as I pull the trigger.
The reading tells me she’s slightly warmer
than I am, and we’re both far warmer than the door is. I consider sending the
door off to the door hospital. But what wood would that achieve?
Life is hard, being a door. I
guess that’s the point. Soft doors aren’t going to keep the weather out.
The business of taking a
temperature is no longer about slamming a column of mercury into your mouth. Or
elsewhere. A daily carer jokes about this choice of orifices as she spots the
pistol-grip thermometer. It’s the same piece of equipment that’s been dished
out in her line of work, even down to the colour.
I tested the gun by pointing it at my head
and pulling the trigger. Beep. This
beep is important. It lets me know that a reading was recorded, and I can flip
the gun around to see the numbers on a tiny screen.
My
temperature is reasonable, given the prevailing conditions.
There’s a data log that indicates the
reading connected to the pull of a trigger. Good for testing several people at
once. I go a step further, and shoot the door, between readings on humans. The
door is LO. In medical terms, this is
a bad sign.
As far as doors go, though, you don’t want a
high reading on the scale. This will tell you what you’ve already suspected –
that your door is on fire. The readout tells me that the door is LO and not LOW.
Lo! I have come down from the mountain with the
temperature news on this stone tablet. Or small electronic display, at any
rate. And woe! (Or perhaps that should be WO.) The reading on the door sayeth
unto Moses, LO. And Moses did ponder this message from a high power. Or
possibly from a low-power battery. We’re not supplying electricity to a car
here, after all.
Then the
wisdom of the ages came unto Moses in a flash, more of a beep, really, and he let it be known amongst the faithful that the
temperature was that of a door – which was less than that of an oxen and more
than that of the mountains in winter.
It’s time to shoot myself.
There’s a beep. It’s time to shoot the door. There’s another beep and a message
about the quality of the reading. It’s time to shoot my mother. I point the gun
at her head and she winces, as if that would protect her from an actual bullet.
Perhaps she has this secret power, to furrow
her brow into a wrinkle that will act as a mighty clamp on any incoming
bullets. This isn’t important. I’m using the temperature gun. The beep goes off
and the reading is within a hair of my own temperature.
Sometimes she’s a shade warmer. Well, she’s
in bed when I tackle this part of daily routine. I’d expect the covers to
provide a bit of warmth. Occasionally I’m a bit warmer. We aren’t in the zone
marked DANGER. Instead, we are
comfortable in our own skins at the usual rate.
That’s in C and not F. For non-scientific
non-purposes, it’s important to list the exact musical notation under
discussion at this point.
Surely I’d know if I were feverish. Would I?
Maybe I’d be so scrambled that I wouldn’t take it in until the gun talks to me.
Look at that, a talking gun. If I am
hallucinating, I’m most likely running a fever.
She squints and scrunches up her face and I
shoot her. Why?
Why do I shoot her? To gain an indication,
each morning, as to whether or not she’s come down with a fever. Back-up
plan…see if she’s suddenly shivering, with a reading in the other direction.
In the morning I hold my breath and count to
ten. No wracking cough – I’m almost certainly in the clear. I can’t ask a
dementia sufferer to do that breathing test for me. She wouldn’t hold her
breath long enough.
The temperature test requires your presence,
not your concentration on some activity. I shoot myself, the door, and my
mother. We all come out of it fairly well. The door can still swing, thought it
won’t jump.
I can jump, but see no reason to. The
counting to ten is my test. And the temperature gun confirms the situation. How
asymptomatic would I be? No way of knowing. I fire the gun and wait for a beep.
What are the sources of danger? Contact with
human beings. Or contact with hard surfaces touched by human beings. Delivery
people wear masks. I deal with the outer packaging and then wash my hands
anyway.
Daily carers come in, masked, gowned,
gloved, and, I suppose, shot. If a carer tells me the same gun is in use within
the system, yes, I guess everyone in the room has been shot recently. And the
door. Mustn’t forget the door.
I could bring the Wild West to life by
shooting all the delivery drivers. Most of them are at a (social) distance,
driftin’ along with the tumblin’ tumbleweeds. Or…passing through the garden.
When it’s sunny, I shoot the garden with a special flamethrower that sprays
weedkiller. I always pretend it is a flamethrower. A few of the taller plants
are cannibalistic and mobile at night.
There isn’t much to be done
about the virus. Just…avoid it. Limit human contact. Wash hands. Pray to the
Aztec gods. I think that last one is suspect, but I can’t rule that out until
I’ve shot the Aztec gods with my temperature gun.
In other news, it’s been
three-and-a-half months since I blogged about the collapse of the online
grocery shopping system. And now, finally, the regular customers have been told
we’ll get priority access to delivery slots.
I stress that we had priority delivery
slots thanks to the government hooking up with the supermarkets to arrange
something. But this new move should allow regulars to get what they paid for –
access to deliveries.
In other words, if we face the same problems
online as happened with the first wave when a second wave strikes, carers won’t
be automatically bumped off the system by EVERYONE AND THEIR CATS when EVERYONE
AND THEIR CATS all decide it’s a good idea to have the same idea about suddenly
shopping online as if no one else and no one else’s cats had that idea at all.
Pauses for breath after unduly long
sentence.
Johnny-come-lately learned in the meantime.
Items ordered online must come from the supermarket shelves. No good comes of
hoarding toilet roll. Everyone ordering online and getting nothing forces
everyone to complain, in turn leading to the supermarket shutting down its
phone lines.
All you did was receive very little or
nothing in your online order, and you bumped us out of the system as well.
Thanks a fucking bunch. With a second wave, we shouldn’t see that level of
misbehaviour again. Our new-found priority slots for regular customers should
see us through.
What else am I going to do? Shoot Johnny-come-lately?
I spoke to a friend about behaviour in the streets. She’s actually been out on
the streets. We’re still shielding. She described activity that took me back to
March and April…
Being wary, walking along. Crossing the
street to avoid people. Didn’t matter if the risk was minimal – you couldn’t
control a sneeze at exactly the wrong moment, passing someone else. Why take
the risk of being beaten up for that?
A few people are still acting that way.
Crossing the street. Glaring accusingly at people for sharing the same town.
The outrage. And that set me to thinking about shooting everyone as I walk past
them…whenever I walk past them, again. It’s almost time to shoot everyone’s
mothers.
You had one job, Coronavirus. One job. Make
everyone froth green at the mouth within a day of catching the disease. You’d
be your own track-and-trace app, then. And we wouldn’t love you for it – you’re
a shitty wee virus, after all.
What do I do if I shoot myself and discover
that I’m a little over the temperature speed-limit? I shoot the door,
obviously. How else am I to know whether or not it is on fire?
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