Lockdown

It was Friday 6th March 2020. I had just finished work and I decided that I would stop in Sainsbury’s on the way home to buy some Estrella.

It was a frantic scene. The car park was rammed, and as I entered the store people were wide eyed and clattering about with their trolleys full of utter SHIT they didn’t need. The panic was palpable and it was like a scene out of 28 Days Later.

I found all of this very amusing until i got to the alcohol aisle and the fucking cunts had virtually cleaned out every single unit of beer. After pacing up and down and muttering obscenities under my breath I noticed that the spirits section was virtually untouched.

I prefer drinking whisky anyway. But the way these selfish human beings were behaving, you would think that a fucking nuclear war was imminent and in that case spirits would be a better option for their underground bunkers. 

I’m not sure what people think the supply chain is like for multi billion pound supermarkets. But they don’t fucking order things in for next week like a corner shop.

This was just the start, but I look back at those desolate scenes on that Friday night with great nostalgia.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to the people who have died or have been affected by the pandemic, but 2020 was the best year of my life.

The lockdown didn’t happen for a while after that. The magic date was 23 March 2020.

Before this, I was grateful that Cheltenham 2020 was allowed to go ahead during the height of the pandemic. Mainly because I am a selfish young man and it is the best week of the year. 

However, allowing 200,000 spectators over 4 days crammed into a sickening claustrophobic pen doesn’t really require hind sight to conclude that it was an idiotic decision to not hold it behind closed doors.

The panic had long set in before the official lockdown was announced. As usual, the financial markets were in free fall.

It never ceases to amaze me the collective irrationality of people during a supposed crisis in all walks of things. Stocking up on toilet paper, selling your pension pot which you won’t even need for 30 years at a fifth of its value because the hysteric herd has lost the plot.

I read about one precious man saying how it is utterly DISGUSTING that people were profiting off the deaths of people by buying shares on the cheap. And “What are you going to do next, rummage through dead people’s pockets in the street”?

I had no plans to rummage through dead people’s pockets on the street. At least not until I was finished adding to my portfolio. 

I personally think the act of buying stuff you don’t need from a shop so no one else can buy it is more selfish than buying shares at a fraction of their value off some hysterical idiot. 

The most difficult part of the whole lockdown was that sport was indefinitely suspended. It left a deep hole in my widely varied life.

It was a disaster. Literally not much to do bar drink. I couldn’t really gamble at that stage either because there was no live sport on.

This caused me to eventually play bingo with pensioners on the internet. I had a great time doing this. Mainly because of the chat function where people constantly say GL (Good Luck), GLA etc. 

It really amuses me watching the chat on Bingo and I enjoyed playing heavily under the influence. I did well to not type something grotesque in the chat.

A little while after this in April, ITV decided to host a Virtual Grand National to replace the real thing. I was thrilled about this.

I ended up losing £175 on a computerised algorithm.

There was still over two months before live sport would resume but the utter joy of not having to mingle with the human race was utterly spine tingling. 

Conventional tv was full of droning bollocks from parents who were too lazy to homeschool their kids.

I watched a bit of TV. Nightmare neighbors was probably the highlight. Possibly the biggest collection of pathetic cunts on a tv show. Which takes some doing considering reality TV.

The neighbours on the show are made to reenact the scenes which leads me to believe the producers are taking the piss.

The best one i came across was some man in a dispute with a neighbour about something pathetic, and she had made the allegation that he had had SEX WITH A PIG.

Apparently this woman had discovered this man on his knees going at it with a pig in a field adjacent to their properties.

The police were called and this man was arrested. He was taken to the station and complied with a request for a swab of his penis in order to prove that he had not raped a pig.

Another magnificent memory of the lockdown period and probably my favourite is when I read a story of some fitness instructors creating a free zoom call so that they could teach people some fitness routines.

All was apparently going well until a few perverted old men appeared on the zoom call completely naked and proceeded to masturbate over the participants.

Live sport returned in June 2020 and the world was back to what it was without the tiresome human interaction. 

So yes. The 2020 lockdown was the best year of my life. It was a victory for solitude. It was when the world finally bent into my favour.

The world is predominantly made up of extroverted people. Where most of them actually enjoy the company of other people. So finally the tables were turned.

I took a healthy dose of schadenfreude watching people. Not people suffering because of personal loss, but people in disarray because they can’t get their social fix.