Social distancing has been something of a boon for me. In recent years I’ve discovered the depths of my anti-social inclinations. All it took was for the turbulent sea of my personality to be drained of alcohol. Turns out I didn’t like people: I liked alcohol. People make me anxious, you see, as much as my behaviour around people may suggest the very opposite. I need them, but they make me uneasy.
I can’t tell you, then, how grateful I am to have been afforded the chance to excuse myself from social engagements, not on the grounds of a fabricated child’s illness or an inexplicably dead aunty, but for bona fide ‘old people might die in their millions’ reasons.
Whether corona’s genesis can be traced to a secret Chinese lab, the skull of a delicious wee bat or just blind bad luck, I extend my heart-, and lung-, felt thanks. Obviously, my glee comes at a hefty price, and, of course, given the choice – and the power – I would undo all the death and suffering, and have it so that none of this had ever happened. I’m not so anti-social that I’d welcome genocide for the sake of being able to read a few extra books in a year.
Am I?
(looks at bookshelf)
(looks in mirror)
No, no, of course I’m not.
But it’s happened and I’m happy, so here we are.
One thing I’m not happy about in this new Corona Nation of ours – besides not being able to see certain people properly, or being able to take the kids to museums, libraries, cinemas, restaurants, swimming pools and big, long halls filled with bouncy castles – is supermarkets: places I hated to begin with, long before Satan donned a Mrs Browns’ Boys facemask and started moulding them to his evil specifications.
This year I’ve learned that Hell isn’t some hot furnace where a red guy with horns burns your genitals off once every ten seconds for eternity. It’s an arrow-littered labyrinth filled with shuffling hordes of dead-eyed zombies and coughing, fleet-footed gargoyles. It’s a place where you have to dance like a mariachi band-leader, and pivot and pirouette like an NBA player to avoid entering the spit-space of any one of the mass of grey-faced malcontents for whom the concepts of ‘social distancing’, ‘directions’ and ‘not being a total c***’ mean nothing.
Why is it just me who’s diving out of the way? Seriously, I’m like a one-man Morris dancing troupe, and everyone else appears to be playing rugby. On meth. And do you know who I’ve found the worst culprits to be? The most devil-may-care, stick-your-arrows-up-your-arse, I-won’t-be-told-what-to-do-by-the-likes-of-you, bunch of knuckle-headed harridans? Women in late middle-age. They’re dangerous with this shit. And they’re out in force, no matter which supermarket you choose, there they are, hordes and fleets of Karens and Brendas, sporting their requisite older-lady short-bobs, their faces like mountain crags that have been permanently chiselled into baleful frowns. Even now when I close my eyes I can see them coming at me against the flow of the arrows, with the faintest wisp of a Cruella de Ville smile tugging at the edges of their mouths; seeing me without looking directly at me, but knowing full well that I’m looking at them; a look of reply resting in their eyes that seems to say, well… it seems to say simply this:
Fuck you!
I don’t think it would be an unreasonable move on my part to modify a mobility scooter into a wheat-thresher and plough down the aisles mincing these rebellious wretches into so much leathery spaghetti. LET’S SEE HOW YOU FOLLOW THE ARROWS IN HELL, YOU SUPPORT-SOCK-WEARING, BIG-EARRINGED DOBBERS!
What a species we are, though. We built the pyramids, invented mathematics, harnessed electricity, split the atom, sent men to the moon, but apparently we can’t get our shit together to decide between two different flavours of juice. How long does it take, seriously? How long do I have to stand fidgeting in an invisible prison cell two metres away from some gormless git who’s hogging the fridges, watching with mounting irritation and disbelief as they stare intently at a bottle of orange juice like it was a new car or a lost book from the Bible? “You’ve seen juice before, right? I mean, this isn’t Sophie’s Choice; just put it in your fucking basket before I club you to death with a rectangle of Anchor butter, you inexcusably indecisive, walking spunk-bubble!’
Worse still – much like the c***s who overtake you when you pull over to let an ambulance past – there’s always some wide boy who swans into the aisle and nabs the space for which you were waiting. And then they, too, proceed to spend an obscene amount of time scrutinising each and every bottle of juice, on each and every fucking row, picking them up one by one and staring at them the way an evangelical minister stares at your wallet, presumably in case a miniature T-Rex emerges from the pulpy mixture to slam its teeth against the plastic shell, and they can put the bottle back down again and go, ‘Phew, that was a close one. Almost chose the one with the angry dinosaur inside of it there, good job I spent TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES LOOKING AT IT FIRST!’
This week everyone who enters a supermarket will be required to wear a mask, which should level the playing field somewhat. In recent weeks, mask-wearers have become the warrior class of the shopping world. Mask wearers increasingly believe that their face coverings are invincibility shields blessed by God Himself, or little sheets of cure. They’re like ninjas, these smother-mouthed assholes. You’re reaching out for a tin of soup, and then some little reject from The Chemical Brothers is suddenly ducking under you to grab a Fray Bentos pie. Get BACK, you shelf-sharing shit-bag. Wait your turn!
Yeah, I think I’m going to start doing an online shop. Or give up eating, one of the two.
