Day 15

I think I’ve reached peak advice. No matter how friendly or well-intentioned, I have a feeling that just one more snippet of advice about how to deal with bore-oh no-virus might just send me over the edge [where do you think you are now? – Ed]. I mean, nobody likes advice at the best of times, especially those who actually need it, and these are by no means the best of times, although they do have their moments. Wear a mask/don’t wear a mask; work from home/don’t work from home; self-isolate for 14 days/self-isolate for 7 days (or 6 if you are a member of the British Government making up the advice about the 7 days thing; you know who you are, Matt Hancock): what’s a poor girl to do?

Or take coughing, for instance. How the hell am I meant to ascertain whether or not the 2.34 mins (approx) cough between lighting up the first feg of the day and putting it out in the pristine, cut-glass ashtray with a heady mixture of satisfaction and self-loathing is a new cough? Bent over double, with the violent paroxysm racking my rattling respiratory system and, usually, blocking my ears due to the violence of the interior pressure required to dislodge some of the admirable deposits of mucus in my lungs, am I somehow meant to distance my analytical self from what is in many instances the only exercise I will get all day to listen to the timbre and tone of the sounds coming out of my mouth, mentally compare and contrast this morning’s symphony with all the other morning symphonies I have composed and then make an informed judgement about the originality or otherwise of said cacophony? Come off it lads! It requires all of my attention for me to survive my morning cough; if I undertook another task at the same time, I might forget to breathe in during the brief lulls in the explosive fits and then where would we be? In an ambulance and down the hospital taking up a priceless bed, that’s where. They just haven’t thought this one through properly.

And what, in the name of all that’s holy, is a dry cough? Sure if a cough were dry (no one expected a subjunctive so early in the morning, least of all me), it would not have any of those wee moisture particles in it they keep showing us in slow motion on the News, with a yard stick at the bottom of the screen displaying how far they travel in metres. And it is those very same minuscule – and undeniably liquid – particles that, apparently, transfer the virus from one person to another. Dry cough my Granny! Again, think your advice though before issuing it, lads. On that point [again, what point? – Ed], we are fairly seeing the working out of Brexit now, aren’t we? What with poor wee Remainers having to keep two metres away from even their fellow Remainers despite the fact that they have, supposedly, left the European Union. What is wrong with a good, old, imperial, British two yards? Or even six of your best British feet? Johnny Foreigner coming over here with his fancy measuring systems that add up to 100 and imposing them on poor old Blighty. We used to have an Empire, you know?

In other news (is there actually any other news or have all the wars and famines and celebrity divorces been put on pause during the Kerfuffle?), you will see from the pic below that this blog has now achieved something that even Status Quo never managed to pull off: we have broken America. And Russia too, apparently, but that is probably just one jealous KGB man keeping an eye on me because I used a very original simile involving a cat and an IRA man down there a bit. So, well done readers. ‘First we take Manhattan …’ as Mister Cohen’s blueprint for world domination advises. Remember, keep telling your mate(s) about the blog and soon we will be official enough to issue advice of our own. Such as, never draw to an inside straight, and don’t count your money before it hatches.

[If you’re reading this, ex-Marketing Manager of the blog, well … work it out for yourself. That’s the second marketing manager I have gone through in 14 days; you just can’t get the staff these days, even though everyone is on the dole. And welcome on board, Rhona, as Marketing Manager Mark III: please try to remember, though, that this is not primarily a blog about cats, or you will be out the revolving door with the other two.]