Digging Deep
when things get bad it takes everything you’ve got
keep on keeping on
It’s now the 332 day of lockdown, and this morning it took a lot of determination just to get out of bed and get moving. I could say that I wasn’t feeling so good, but that wouldn’t be true, today it’s all in my mind. If you haven’t suffered the agony of strict self-isolation for almost a year, then you don’t know how I was feeling at 04:00 this morning. Kind of lethargic and depressed, with a touch of meaningless thrown in.
As a matter of fact, lockdown is completely meaningless. All this destruction of the very fabric of modern society is doing is to make politicians and health officials feel better about the myriad of public inquiries they are going to face when all this is eventually over.
So, how do I get through this mess?
- set small goals for each day
- if that’s too difficult set small goals for the next hour
- keep as fit and healthy as possible
- eat regular, high quality meals
- stay away from booze, drugs, candy….
- read something challenging every day
What I really want to do is get out of the garret and go somewhere warm and sunny ~ but taking a vacation is illegal here. I want to see my friends, but that’s also illegal here. In fact having any pleasure at all is just about illegal here.
So, I will look of the bright side, and do the best I can.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
every door is locked
Random Jottings ~ Vacations
English told to lock away their passports for a year
~
forget California
no holidays for Brits for a year
~
buy a sunlamp and some bags of sand
it’s the nearest you’re going to get to a vacation
~
United Kingdom cut off from the rest of the world
~
no sunshine holiday romances please, we’re British
~
we English travel not to escape everyday life, but to escape Covid
~
doctors say that having fun increases your risk of dying from COVID-19
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
no man needs a vacation so much as the man who has been in lockdown for 308 days
It’s a Mad, Mad World
it’s a crazy world out there ~ be a rational anarchist
how long before we see these scenes again?
Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse along comes the penultimate act of the presidential election in the United States. Depending on who you want to believe the ‘occupation of the capitol’ was either a peaceful protest gone wrong, or a violent insurrection presaging another American Civil War. Patriots or Anarchists?
The best thing I’ve heard is that President Trump has been banned from twitter. The truth of it is that nobody with even half a brain should ever use twitter in any way, shape, or form. Twitter is merely the modern equivalent of the washroom wall.
Here in Blighty our parliament has approved the latest tranche in our never-ending lockdown ~ to last until the end of March. Today, England is now in lockdown day 290.
The compulsory wearing of face masks, lockdowns, and now mass vaccinations ~ any student of history who has even so much as glanced at the literature on the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 knows that nothing governments and the medical professions do is going to make much difference to the numbers infected, and the people who sadly get very sick and die. However, here in England the over-zealous police are gleefully throwing their not inconsiderable weight around as though they alone know how to control the coronavirus. Woe betide you if you leave home without a very good reason, or you get caught without a face-nappy, try to drive to McDonald’s, or have a visitor in your home.
It’s always the way that if you grant someone in uniform a little authority they will tend to abuse it. Give someone in uniform an inch and they will try to recreate George Orwell’s 1984.
The insane saga surrounding the mass vaccination programme here goes grimly on. It seems that each consignment of vaccination doses has to be approved by some bureaucratic nonsense called the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency, and that approval process takes three bloody weeks per batch. Those first in line for the jab are the over 70s, but there are only 7 mass vaccination centres around England. How many over 70s do you know who still drive? Madness.
Some say that Boris Johnson is doing a marvelous Job. And that our Health Service is the best in the world. All I know is that I’ve stopped believing most of what I see and hear in the news.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Marmaduke doesn’t want to get arrested
No End In Sight
England will be closed down for months to come
some would say that’s being flown the wrong way up
Despite flashes of official optimism following the first vaccinations against the coronavirus, it would seem that there is no end in sight to the manifold miseries of lockdown, self-isolation, and national shutdown. Scotland faces a national shutdown from midnight tonight, and there is no doubt that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will very soon follow suit for England. He is making a televised statement at 8 p.m. this evening, and Parliament is being recalled on Wednesday this week, presumably to ratify whatever draconian new measures are announced.
Even harsher coronavirus measures than before will mean that UK borders will be closed, international travel stopped, all stores except food stores and pharmacies will be shut, all schools closed, any and all household mixing will be banned, and people will only be allowed to leave their homes for one of a specified list of essential reasons, such as food shopping.
Despite these draconian emergency measures the numbers infected with COVID-19 will keep on rising, and more and more people will die. There is nothing politicians, health officials, or medical science can do about it. The coronavirus will mutate faster than vaccines can be developed to prevent each new strain. Once a virus is loose in the general population there is no way short of Divine Intervention of controlling it. And, who’s to say that God didn’t inflict this on the world?
The virus will eventually burn itself out, as all pandemics do. But, this could take months or even years. Until then we will all just have to suffer.
Good luck to us all.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
best to bar your door and fort-up ’til spring
December 31st
last day of the year and I’m in trouble
the garret has turned into my private dungeon
In fact the whole of England is in trouble. Everything is shut except for food stores and pharmacies. Nobody can meet anyone, except for 1 chosen person from your support bubble, in an outside public place. Only 3 pubs in the whole of England are open, and they are all on the Isles of Scilly, where nobody can go anyway. In fact we are not allowed to travel anywhere at all ~ as I know to my cost after my trip to Cancun was cancelled by British Airways. There is no chance of my recovering the $2,000 I paid for my flights. The schools and universities will not reopen in the New Year, probably until Easter, and all New Year’s celebrations are cancelled. If you’re caught having a party you will be arrested.
Things are so depressing here that I got drunk over Christmas ~ and that did not help at all. Booze never helps anything.
Other bad things happening to me are that I have no heating or hot water because my gas boiler is busted. It’s actually the gas control valve, and if I can’t fix that myself I’ll have no heating nor hot water until well into the New Year. I have a tiny space heater, so I won’t quite freeze even though it’s only 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside, but showering in cold water is going to be no fun at all.
All in all I just hope for much better things in 2021 than we had this year.
Have a Happy New Year everyone. I’ll be toasting the New Year in in apple juice, alone.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
love to all
for this New Year
Christmas is Cancelled
no Christmas please, we’re British
Here in England the government has become infested with a militant scrooge mentality, with a lot of the grinch thrown in. Eighteen million people in London and the South East are now forbidden to see anyone outside of their own households ~ no family Christmas for them.
In London and the South East of England; travel is not allowed, pubs, bars, restaurants, shops, and churches are closed, Christmas fun is forbidden.
Obviously face masks and all the previous lockdowns haven’t worked.
Look forward to a very Merry Christmas Everyone.
Unless you’re English ~ ashes are our lot.
It’ll be lonely this Christmas.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
Christmas? Bah Humbug
Isolated and Lonely
solitude and isolation are hurtful things beyond human endurance
abandoned and worthless
The first lockdown started here on March 23rd this year, and since then normal human contact has been severely restricted by edict of our governments, health officials, and petty bureaucrats. Here in England we’re a couple of days into yet another lockdown, strictly enforced by the police, covid marshals, and security guards. Some people even believe the lies Boris Johnson is peddling and are self-isolating. Sad buggers.
Whatever way you look at it, for most of this year most of us have been isolated and lonely. I don’t give a fuck fig how dangerous or not COVID-19 is, being isolated, lacking in the normal warmth of human contact, is very dangerous. Even for hardened and dangerous criminals the United Nations have banned the use of solitary confinement for longer than 15 days, and said that being without human contact for longer than 22 hours a day is unacceptable. And yet, for day after day, month after month, innocent people have been made to suffer a cruel and unusual punishment through no fault of their own.
We don’t heal in isolation, but in community. ~ S. Kelley Harrell
Whether they have the coronavirus or not, people will get sicker and sicker. Many will suffer unimaginable pain, many will die before their time. High blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, malnutrition, a weakened immune system, anxiety, depression. paranoia, cognitive decline, dementia, Alzheimer’s, muscle wastage, alcoholism, attempted suicide…. Death
Other than praying that people like Johnson, Hancock, Vallance, Whitty, et al either come to their senses or burn in hell, what can we do? For a start ignore every lie these disingenuous bastards are peddling. Then change our own mindset.
You are creating your next moment based on what you are feeling and thinking. That is what’s real. ~ Doc Childre
COVID-19 is far less dangerous than an average winter flu ~ and if you don’t believe me spend an hour doing some online research. Your inner potential has no limits. It is up to you to decide how much you want to make of it. You can drift from day to day believing the crap being peddled by governments, health officials, and the mainstream media ~ but you are the captain of your own ship, so take responsibility.
It is high time that we all got back to living a normal life. Get outside in the fresh air, get some exercise, reach out to your friends ~ nobody except yourself can really hold you back from anything.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
you can rot on the shore all you want
I will not accept any more lies
Living In A Police State
remember, remember the fifth of November
treason and gunpowder plot
about the only future we have to look forward to
Once again lives are being ruined in this Sceptered Isle as Boris Johnson’s catastrophically inept government imposes yet another 4 weeks of strict lockdown on the whole country. It could be that this is the most unpopular government since that of King James 1st ~ and coincidentally today is the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, when a cadre of disaffected men were going to blow up the Houses of Parliament, the government, and the king. November 5th, 1605 could offer some lessons to all good Englishmen and true ~ for it is surely time we rid ourselves of Boris and his power-mad advisors; Patrick Vallance, Chris Whitty, and the disgraced Dominic Cummings. (Who could ever respect a nerd called Dominic?)
It’s now very clear that Boris is incapable of running a PTA meeting, but that’s OK because our Prime Minister has given up all pretence of running the country. England is now being run by a shadowy politburo of unelected officials called SAGE, (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies). Having politicians run things is bad, having scientists in charge is infinitely worse.
Because of their blinkered conviction that they are right ~ a conviction that will brook no argument ~ millions have had their lives ruined, lost their jobs, gone broke, suffered tragedies, and been arrested by the heavy handed police, who too are enjoying their new-found power to interfere with people’s lives.
My personal pain isn’t so bad. I will suffer 28 days of solitary confinement. A very important trip I had booked to Cancun will probably be cancelled. And, I will go slowly crazy.
There is no future to look forward to, this is not our finest hour.
This is not how England is supposed to be.
It’s time this government went.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
November 5th is called Guy Fawkes night
Songs on Saturday ~ Billy Joel
we’re only human, we’re supposed to make mistakes
I screw up, I make mistakes, I go down the same wrong road time after time. But, I pick myself up and try to do better next time.
Last week I fucked-up in a big way, for no better reason than I was hurting after being to the dentist, and this town is in lockdown again. This song says something about how I feel today.
We don’t have to be always ready to make ourselves blameless and faultless, we can admit that we’re only human. I can accept myself as human and see that no human being is without flaws ~ me especially so.
I survived all those long lonely days when it seemed I did not have a friend ~ I with friends I know I can survive anything the Cosmos throws at me.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
perhaps the Cosmos doesn’t care when we screw-up
but perhaps my friends do
Lockdown Again
back in solitary confinement again
My part of England is back on strict lockdown again.
It’s very depressing, exhausting, and difficult to get fresh food. I don’t even want to chat with friends, anyhow I’ve been drinking.
I truly hope this is over soon.
~
jack collier
jackcollier7@talktalk.net
it feels like being in jail
not that I’ve ever been in jail
JackCollier7 
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