I’m bored. Are you bored? I am like, SO FECKING BORED. Covid. Brexit bollocks. More Covid, except more contagious and a new strain, FFS. Restrictions. Lockdown 3 (or is it 4? I’ve lost count). Actually I am not just bored, I am bored and agitated.
Now I’m not bored because I have nothing to do-I’ve just lost the will. I am fed up with it all. I am fed up with the Small Child following me into the loo and the Older One melting my head about the quality of entertainment that’s on offer. I’m fed up with cats demanding food as I make the morning coffee. I’m also bored with myself. Take this tale as an example. Brace yourself.
I went a massage a few weeks ago because I felt like a ton of crap.
‘How was it?’ asked LSB as I came in, dropping my bag in the hall.
‘Splendid,’ I replied.
I could have told him how the wonderful Tina of Natural Roots Wellness eased my knotty neck and stiff shoulders. But I didn’t. I could have told him how I almost floated down the stairs of the salon, out into the street and the velvety black skies and twinkly lights of Stranmillis. But I didn’t. Instead, I chose to labour the point about overpriced vegetables.
To save my newly kneaded neck from the trials of Forestside carpark, I nipped instead into a convenience store for the few items I needed. One of these was a cucumber*. To my display though, the cucumber was a startling £1.65. This was over a pound more than in Sainsbury’s, thereby 107.25% more expensive. (See, I told you to brace yourself. I even did the maths.) I had, however, already lifted the cucumber, and in these days of Covid safety measures, I felt I ought to purchase it. This irked me greatly. I’m still not sure I’m over it, to be honest. LSB, is definitely not over being regaled with the tale.
‘That was some story,’ he said, when I drew breath.
‘It almost rivalled yours about the lights on the Ormeau Road that take an age to turn,’ I retorted.
‘The ones at the junction at St John’s?’ he replied.
‘No, I thought you said they were the ones near the park, opposite Candahar Street?’* *
‘Ah yes, those lights. I hate getting stuck at them,’ he muttered darkly. ‘The dog does too, she complains at them.’
See? Do you see what 2020 has reduced us to? A pair of boring bastards. I’ve written about this before, how we see so much of each other that we run out of things to say, and thus fill our craic vacuum with banalities of this ilk.
It’s the last day of 2020, and while I’m not expecting the New Year to bring about anything drastic, I’m daring to hope for better things.
In 2021, I’ll write more, I’ll whinge less, and for LSB’s sanity I’ll not get so wound up over cucumbers.
*According to Michael Ball on Radio 2 on Sunday, cucumbers are actually a fruit, not a vegetable. Did anyone else know that?
**If you are very bored you can read how there used to be a dairy farm here and a load of cows during WW2.
