Hands, face, spaced...
Exactly how much shite can one man buy on ebay? A newsletter to find out...
Hello from this billionth week of lockdown, where last Monday we comprehensively ran out of hand soap at our house. No matter, I reasoned. I'll just ask Lee to pick some up on his way home from the Co-op. We'd had a couple of giant bottles of liquid soap by each sink, and all had run out at the same time, but you can pick up hand-soap just about anywhere right?
The following day, as I took delivery of a really quite heavy Amazon Prime delivery, hand soap was the last thing on my mind. My youngest child comes home from school most days looking like he's been digging a ditch, and this particular day I'd ordered him to just get straight into the bath to wash the caked mud off his knees and legs. He generally comes home from school dirtier than he does from rugby practice, which is saying something really. The reason his bare legs get muddy is because, unbeknownst to me, Lee had bet him £10 that he wouldn't wear shorts to school every day throughout the winter, and god loves a trier it seems he's taken this very deliberately to heart.
I love my little son, and his eccentricities. Most days, he pairs his school shorts with an enormous oversized pair of knee socks, lace up leather brogues, a khaki green bomber jacket which wouldn't look out of place in This Is England, and a giant blue bobble hat crocheted by his sister with an enormous neon orange pompom wobbling around on top. The overall effect is part tiny football hooligan, part Just William - if Just Hooligan had also been sent down the mines for a few hours to dig for coal. Fuck only knows what he does all day at school to get into such a state.
Anyway, after scrubbing the mud out of his ears in the bath that day, I went back downstairs to open the box.
It wasn't hand soap.
I concede that Lee had probably vaguely registered something about hygiene during the process of me asking for soap, but he was probably also simultaneously thinking about what car to buy next and the message had clearly not quite got through.
Inside the box, were twenty four 'fun size' bottles of portable hand sanitiser gel.
Twenty. Four. Bottles. Of. Hand. Gel.
For clarity, there are just the four of us in the house, and given that none of us every go anywhere except 1. the office upstairs, 2. the empty office in the next village, by car or 3.the village school approximately a hundred paces away, our need for portable hand gel throughout the entire pandemic has been adequately catered for by the one tiny bottle I keep in my handbag.
On-the-go disinfection is pretty low on my list of requirements. Soap, to wash the 100million active bacteria present in a teaspoon of soil off my child's blackened hands daily, however: pretty vital.
It reminded me of that time back at the start of lockdown before masks had become anywhere near compulsory, and weren't generally on sale anywhere apart from DIY stores. At the time, Lee had been paying quite a lot of visits to building merchants to pick up big orders of trade materials. Spying a box of masks on a counter display as he signed his trade invoice for some tiles, he decided on a whim to chuck in a pack too, reasoning quite rightly that they might come in useful somewhere down the line.
It was only a few days later that he idly pondered that the pack of tiles seemed quite expensive. Making a mental note to check the invoice, he'd carried on driving home, having not yet had cause to open one of the masks.
It was a few days later still that he opened one of the masks, and realised that instead of picking up 5 masks - which might reasonably be expected to cost a couple of quid each - he'd actually picked up 5 packs of TEN masks. This explained why the total amount of money he'd spent on facial protection was tipping £50.
Fifty quid on masks. It almost makes twenty four bottles of hand sanitiser seem reasonable, but not when you consider that I still had to go out and buy soap.
In a classic case of life mocking my art, after I’d written the bulk of this newsletter, I went downstairs to find the children opening another Amazon packet.
Fifty more disposable face masks.
“Well, we’re in this for the long haul aren't we?” Lee protested as I gave him The Look.
Yes. Yes we are.
What’s funny this week?
I mean, I think we all know the real answer to this, which is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL IS FUNNY IN THIS UTTER SHITSHOW OF A YEAR, but you’ve got to take joy where you can find it, however scant.
These terrible drawings of pets might bring a smile to your face. As an aside, this story was pointed out to me by a member of the writing group I’ve joined courtesy of London Writers Salon, which host online writing hours throughout the day on zoom. Sounds weird, and is, a bit, at first, but i can definitely say it’s made me a tiny bit more productive on the writing front. Worth a look if you, like me, write down words for a living but sometimes find yourself wasting time eating cheese directly from the packet out the fridge instead of working.
Have you had a go on that government careers quiz that advises you what to retrain in so you can become a useful and productive member of society? There have been some amusing results doing the rounds (Fun fact: I did it and the first suggestion was ‘football referee’, as if you needed any proof that the world is actually on fire). Anyway, the best take I saw on the sheer stupidity of this was this guy. I can’t stop watching it, although possibly because it reminds me very much of my brother.
Finally, this leaping dog is the best thing you’ll see today. You’re welcome.
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Who am I anyway?
I'm Lindsay. Bit of a dickhead, freelance writer for money, author of And Other Idiots and other internet shite for kicks. This newsletter will be a short story of some idiotic exploits from quite close to home, for no other reason than to make you smile every two weeks. Exactly how much shit can one man buy on Ebay? I intend to find out.
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