Amina Sopwith

There was a little girl on our street whose birthday was last week. She couldn't have her planned princess party, of course. So a load of us printed/coloured pictures of princesses and put them in our windows with birthday messages so they were there for her when she went for a walk with her parents on the day. One person on the street, a professional baker, left a princess cake for her on the end of the driveway. The WhatsApp and Facebook groups have been wonderful. I've picked up some click and collects for isolating neighbours and there have been so many offers of help. I saw a woman had no rice during the shortage so I messaged her to offer some...but in the half hour since I'd seen the message, two others had already contacted her and she had enough for her family. Several people have made it clear that if we need to isolate, they'll make sure we have everything we need.

Oh bollocks is that what he was saying. He was doing that trite, insensitive, out of touch, patronising and offensive crap (he's Raab, after all) whereby one implies that living or dying rests on whether or not one has the moral character required for it. Perhaps the people you ask about it can include the family of those people who apparently died because they didn't "fight" enough, as opposed to because there were too many cancer cells or their heart stopped working or there was too much COVID-19 fluid in their lungs. I'm a parent (thank God it's not my child who's died, just more or less everyone else) and you can ask ME if you like, and I say it's offensive bullcrap. "Come on, stay positive" is an utterly different mentality to "He'll be all right because he FIGHTS". I don't much like the former anyway for other reasons, but it's not a slap in the face to every casualty of this horror. Johnson will have to fight anyway after all those years of underfunding the NHS and the nurses in whose care he now rests.

You mean like when Johnson told us we would be "pleased to know" that he was shaking hands with COVID-19 patients??? None of us wanted you in ICU, Boris! Losing the election would have sufficed!

What a surprise, Dominic Raab has pissed me off. This time by telling us he's confident that Johnson will recover (which I truly hope he does) because he's a "fighter". Seriously, Raab, just f*** to the far side of off and then come back so you can f*** off again. Dying isn't a sign of some kind of weakness of character, especially with a disease that's so contagious and so serious that it's literally put the world on lockdown, but unfortunately not your stupid blaring blowhole. You've insulted every single casualty of this disaster and even every single person who ever died of any illness that is sometimes survivable. Yes, this offends me deeply for personal reasons, you guff cloud. Thank you Seicher, I feel a bit better now.

Corner shop.

I know because I was a student once, in halls of residence no less, and I kidnapped a cactus and attempted to hold it to ransom. They were quite nice about it, though, they answered my phone for me. I suppose Prok's comment about millennials being stupid wasn't entirely off, but back then we were the age everyone thinks we still are. My God, if anyone I know reads this, I've just outed my secret identity quite spectacularly.

You probably wouldn't, it makes you sweaty and leaves your skin wrinkly. Ask me how I know.

Just pay someone to tar and feather you and cling wrap you to a pillar. It'll be more enjoyable and leave you feeling less dirty.

Fgs, Prok, it was rhetoric. It was not meant to be taken completely literally. It was just meant to make the (side) point that teenagers and early 20s undergrads are not millennials. I actually thought it was even very slightly humorous. Clearly I need to change careers to become a Gorean comedian. I'm sorry to hear she's ill and I hope she recovers quickly.

You should hear what my NHS worker friends say. They are furious. I'm angry that it took something like this to get a certain type of high earner to understand who the real key workers are in this country (or do they?), and what years of austerity have done to the NHS. I'm relieved for the economic assistance but I'm angry that it seems there is a magic money tree after all when the crisis strikes rich people too. It seems to be going away now, but the overriding narrative at the start of this s***show about this not being a cause for concern because the only people who were dying were elderly or ill made me spit blood. As if those lives don't matter. What is the point of a society if we don't care for the most vulnerable? And as a side point, all those people who were and still are complaining about "millennials" having house parties and all that - please look up how old the millennials actually are. You're thinking of Gen Z. It seems my generation is doomed to be castigated as the feckless, irresponsible, irredeemable youth of today even though we are mostly in our late 20s and 30s and generally married with kids, mortgages and lumbago. Leave us alone already. And I really hope Johnson recovers. I didn't vote for him, I don't like him, but that's awful.

The world is ending but there will be a new one. Let's make it better.

Search warrant.

I kind of thought that too. You don't usually get such a huge "BIGOT IDIOT PRAT STAY CLEAR" klaxon rung so early and voluntarily.

Some people are all hearts and flowers when things are going their way and it suits their conceits of how they imagine themselves... but turn on a sixpence when you fail to feed their sense of entitlement. And boy, can it get ugly. I believe the Americans have a saying about the trash taking itself out? God, that initial fake flounce. What a bloody princess.

Granted, it looks like the one my son made out of toilet roll and crepe paper, and flies half as well. I wish I were better dressed in lockdown. I need new yoga trousers.

Budget analyst.

I'm generalising. "Usually", "tend to", "likely" etc. Obviously it's never going to be the case that all men are X and all women are Y. Unless you're John Nobhead of course, but he's a gutless, worthless, snivelling green discharge of a man and I pray for pine cone poo. But in the case of you being more emotionally resilient...I think that's in support of my overall observation.

I believe that women tend to have a wider support network; men, in my experience, don't usually have as many confidants. In fact, for many men, their wife/partner is the only person to whom they really feel able to talk, whereas women are likely to have several people they can look to for emotional support. It really is a man's world, despite what a lot of people say. You'd think that this would give men a survival advantage, but they die younger and take their own lives more often. Seems there's a lot of pressure there, hmm. I do believe that most modern feminists are aware of this and it's a key reason for the cause, as well as affording women better treatment. In a more egalitarian world, literally everyone benefits. This is, incidentally, yet another reason why I hate Gor and would like every one of John Nobhead's stools to be a pine cone. That brand of toxic masculinity kills men even as it dehumanises and subjugates women.

Chinese food is even better cold the next day. Maybe I'll order in tonight.

Pleasure cruise.

Nice try.

She's into one or two things that I really couldn't stomach.

The Wife of Bath is the best. The Clerk can feck right off.

Heads up.