The anti-climactic slide towards third tier living

Day 80 dispatch

Over the weekend I went out for dinner and over-ordered; consciously this was to really savour the event of leaving our house, sub-consciously probably to soothe my soul via my tummy and make the feeling of fullness part of the memory. As I get oft-reminded — we’re not making many memories this year — so I like to really heighten my senses when I see some memory-making coming on.

In some ways, although life feels smaller, in other ways I’m all too aware that I can use that time to my advantage and ensure my relationships/my home/my mental state/my tummy feel as full as possible. It also means I am now the sort of person who has time to watch the Marr Show on a Sunday (who am I!?) because I became aware that our commander-in-chief Andy Burnham was to make an appearance.

I think I’m fan girling him as he seems to be the only person following a sensible and linear narrative on current proceedings.

I read this, this morning, which offers a really sensible take on the goings on — far better than doing a scroll through Twitter which offers me up a variety of conflicting updates and therefore conjures up a more nightmarish scenario in my mind.

A particular excerpt caught my eye:

Gove’s message to Burnham — delivered with the silky menace of an antagonist who will make you a nice cup of tea before ordering a napalm strike on your village — was quite clear: get back into your funny little Mancunian box, Mr Mayor, and listen to your Oasis records while the grown-ups run the country.

But Burnham has no intention of getting back into his box. He is a former health secretary and was runner-up in the Labour leadership election of 2015. He cut his teeth taking on Gordon Brown, who is a much scarier Scot than Gove.

Simply gorgeous, isn’t it. Never have people looked so contrasting as the last few days. The problem will surely always be that people like Gove can’t help but sound patronising and people like Burnham inevitably, therefore, sound more matter-of-fact. Both sides do it to their advantage.

Anyway, what does day 80 look like? Well, as i write this Wales has announced a fortnight-long national lockdown. This shifts things in my brain as I try to second guess what our fate will be.

I’m not a betting girl, but if I did have some chips to put down, I’d only be willing to go all-in on the fact that by day 85 I think everything will be totally different for us once again. By us I mean Manchester, and the UK.

In the meantime, I’m going to continue my targeted digital consumption this week because there’s only so much ambiguity each brain can handle.