Another gorgeous day dawns in lockdown, early morning frost blooming on the lawn, driven back idly by the rising sun. Blue skies. Promise of a good day. Bird song, blossom on the hoary trees, dripping in the thaw.
Stay indoors you fucker or you’ll catch it and die.
Nature’s toying with us. The writing is on the wall. Biblical style. Mother’s tried a bit with climate change. Teasers, like floods, fires, heatwaves, drought, surfeit of mice.
Now have a plague. See what I can do, take heed – this has all been mild so far, but still just playing.
It’s all very well blaming some unwitting peasant 1000’s of miles away, knocking up a bit of bat stew for his dinner at the market – dinner is at 1pm remember, not bloody 6 p.m. That’s tea time. Northern time. Northern time existed long before GMT, along with flat caps and whippets. When we all knew our place in the world.
Let’s face it we’re hardly in Black Death territory just yet. The general effects nationwide are no worse than an annual flu epidemic, for which many don’t even bother to take up the annual vaccine proffered. Total deaths in the EU are still below the seasonal average for the last few years.
Imagine the carnage waged by the living if this was the real deal. Eating their pets and their neighbours. Living in holes in the ground. It would make Mad Max look like Snow White. Maybe we should look to all the old sci-fi authors. They seem very good at predicting the future from their armchairs, in a totally bygone pipe-and-slippers age.
Typically it always seems to be a dystopian future predicted. Most stuff was written in a prospering, expanding industrial age with amazing new inventions springing up. Telephones, electricity, fridges, aeroplanes, the space race, internal combustion engine and TV. Life was getting better all the time yet they always predicted eventual societal breakdown.
The very talented late Douglas Adams was one such author with a more light-hearted view of life, his words spilling over into reality maybe. Prescient. Good old Douglas. I believe he played guitar. Foresaw a dying Earth. Ravaged and ruined by Man nonetheless.
Story goes the global population realised they’d fucked up and decided to colonise elsewhere, off-world, having spied a suitable blue planet floating around in the Cosmos.
And while we are on planets, how come those combined fuckwits Bezos, Musk and Branson are allowed to whiz things off into space, creating more pollution and CO2? Do we not have enough problems on the ground that their undoubted talent and wealth could help to solve? But the rich, powerful and connected do what they want, control the fat controllers.
So, the conniving Powers-that-Be decide to build three huge spaceships with a cunning plan for a much improved Brave New World.
Spaceship No. 1 is to depart first, being No 1. This contains all the hardworking low paid essential people. The ones who get things done, largely unnoticed behind the scenes and make the world work. Builders, cleaners, cooks, drivers, guitar menders (maybe, hopefully, I can hope), painters, electricians, lollipop ladies, zoo keepers, healthcare workers, emergency service personnel, bakers, butchers, plumbers, teachers, bin men, people who wear those big tool belts and carry ladders, blokes that wear overalls. They all have two things in common – put up with loads of shit and are poorly paid.
The third spaceship is last to venture out, being No. 3 This ship transports the elite, powerful and seriously minted. Think royal families, heads of state, gangsters, governments, people that own islands and car companies, aeroplanes and rockets.
People who keep you in your place, regularly fuck you over and take most of your money. Sell you all the stuff you do not need and persuade you to buy yet more.
Their intention is to arrive on a pre-prepared beautiful fresh planet and take over, once all the hard work has been done by No. 1 crew. This brings me to Douglas’s 2nd ship.
Ship No. 2 transports all the middle surplus people. The totally fucking useless that have crept into society to offer needless services and goods and bleed you of what’s left after the occupants of ship No. 3 have shafted your pocket. Personal shoppers, nail technicians, telephone cleaners, financial advisors, shopping channel exec’s, Tupperware salesmen, the Avon lady, middle managers, line managers – I always wonder what they are in charge of and just imagine huge lines of cocaine on the floor with somebody running round saying “get off, don’t touch, I’m in charge, I manage that”, or is it to do with road marking? Bank managers, estate agents, fake tan sprayers, bookies, HR departments, parish councils, mayors, councillors, fashion designers, house dressers, influencers.
I can see me losing a few loyal followers as this list expands, just feel free to ramble on in your head or deny your occupation.
Spoiler alert – so the elite secretly plan to send ship No. 2 straight into the heart of the sun. Who needs them anymore? The rest of the plan goes swimmingly until the planet is wiped out by a virus caught off a dirty phone.
Of course this was before the mobile was ever thought of. People shared phones. Seriously. Breathing sand spitting all over them. And they were not mobile. Permanently fixed with a wire plugged into the wall. But there’s a moral in the story somewhere, you work it out.
I read American gun sales have rocketed. Maybe two million new sales in March alone. That’s terrifying. Take your chances with a virus or some cranky neighbour who’s just run out of dried pasta. Apparently some US states deem gun shops to offer an essential service and so they stay open.
Whether you live in such a crazy environment, or not, firearms are available online throughout the US. Whereas I’m sat in my armchair perusing the web for pavement chalks to keep a seven-year-old happy.
My Bruce Willis styled counterpart 4000 miles away is trying to buy an Uzi and 1000 rounds of ammunition to add to his expanding armoury. Just in case. Fucking nuts but what do you expect from a population that can elect Orange Donald. A man putting all his faith in the Easter Bunny.
Have a read of Douglas Adams, it’s from a long-forgotten golden age. Which ship would you be on?
