How to… Race to the Bottom

I’ve not watched the debate. If I’m being honest, I’m not really sure I want to. Two dudes in their seventies prowling around a stage, flinging words and shouting down mediators isn’t exactly my idea of a thrilling evening of television. Is anything about such a spectacle likely to change anyone’s mind as we’re all still mired in the middle of 2020?

But I can still recap it for anyone who feels like they’ve missed out on an experience. Trump appealed to pockets of hateful white supremacy and… fine, that’s pretty much all I’ve picked up through my light browse of social media. However, unless the two men had pulled off an elaborately choreographed tap dance routine your opinion of whether or not you’d have lent them your support (regardless of if you’re eligible to vote in the upcoming election) would likely be unchanged.

So, what’s the point in having the debates in the first place? This is an excellent question and deserves answers beyond just it’s what’s expected at this point in the endless chuntering electoral cycle in the States. I mean, the broadcasters could morph the non-event into a no holds barred bareknuckle fight or a more diverting Taskmaster-style competition. You can’t help but feel you might get a bit more information about them as people, since the policy details probably aren’t going to hold as much sway as they might once have done.

We’ve still got weeks to go of this partisan mud-slinging, the Supreme Court debacle to solve and little to no power to actually do anything about it. In so many ways, it feels like this election has been running for years and years and years. And not just because thanks to the pandemic days blend into weeks into months and off into a hazy eternity. March was only six months ago and yet also several lifetimes. A point? No, I don’t have one but, then again, neither does anyone else.

Race to the bottom – Glen Hansard

How to… Light My Fire

It’s all gone a bit gloomsome. I know, I really ought to wait until we’re deeper into the dark part of the year (literally dark. We all know that 2020’s been a general bin fire. Obviously, it’ll all be over the moment the clock ticks over into 2021) before I considered such a thing as popping on the heating. I don’t have a drawer of stylish knitwear for nothing.

And, if I were being the responsible eco-conscious citizen I attempt to paint myself to be, I definitely shouldn’t for one moment be contemplating the dubious delights of a merrily crackling log fire. It would pump carbon dioxide into the air around me just to curl up in front of the dancing flames, a book in my hands, a cup of tea off to the side, a blanket carelessly draped around my legs. I don’t even have a fireplace, so it would be all the more silly for me to try and have a fire this evening.

What you definitely shouldn’t do is come to my house, potentially playing havoc with local restrictions, decide that it really would be mad to install a fireplace just for the occasional whim (the focal point in my living room is, rightfully, the TV. We’d have to have a long and boring discussion of how to rearrange everything), carry on through to the back garden, tools in tow, for you to construct a fire pit.

While you worked, I’d bring you cups of tea or coffee made just the way you like it, and in between your slurps I’d scamper off to collect potential kindling. When you got to the end of your endeavours, we’d stoke the fire and light it, sitting around swathed in thick blankets and discussing the assorted ins and outs of our lives, cradling hot drinks and looking up at the night sky. Yeah, that would be a terrible way to spend a chilly September evening, you mustn’t come over and bring it about.

Light my fire – The Doors

How to… Get Me to the Church on Time

Throughout this pandemic and the general reporting on who’s at fault this week for the spread of cases, I’ve largely been on the side of the general public. Sure, there are folk who don’t make it easy, what with their stubborn refusal to wear masks correctly and cling to their insistences that they must carry on with their raves (somehow I suspect that there have been far more middle class garden parties than illegal raves). But it all comes from the top and you can’t deny that the guidelines have been incredibly muddled to say the least (plus, delays, u-turns galore and general blaming of the public all make me rather angry).

So, I’m all for love and parties and pledging your troth to the person you’re going to be with forever and whatnot… but. What I don’t entirely understand are the people carrying on with weddings in the midst of the 2020 of it all. Funerals, there’s not much you can do to put them off, what with Nana curdling in the casket and that. But a wedding? Do you think maybe not? We’re not having big ass birthday parties or whatever. Right? Sure, my social circle is limited to say the least but I don’t think the large scale events we used to get into are still happening so why not put weddings on the back burner too?

Then again, people are going to plough on with whatever they had planned, maybe even enjoying flying in the face of whatever they’ve been told to do. And if there’s money involved, all going into the pockets of venues and caterers and other contractors, there’s no way that the government’s going to outlaw them altogether. And no one wants a mask to ruin the elegant lines of a big white dress (if pockets are enough to wreck an outfit, masks aren’t likely to get incorporated into the bridal ensemble anytime soon).

Anyway, I’ve got objections to make, not a lot of time to do them and the track and trace people on my back. Step on it.

Get me to the church on time – Stanley Holloway

How to… Blow us all Away

Dear Mr Wolf,

We need to discuss your methods. In an age when building methods haven’t kept pace with access to weaponry and asthma is on the rise, I’m not sure that sticking to your previous threats is going to get the job done. I know, the moral point of your whole story was that breath alone wasn’t going to get the job done up against bricks and mortar. But that’s the sort of thing that should have only fooled you the once, right?

I mean, really, the one who built his house out of sticks really wasn’t making much of an effort in developing their carpentry skills. From a certain point of view, you could be described as carrying out your duty as an unpaid, unappointed buildings inspector. How could anyone be to blame to the form you wished to take out your payment in? This time it’s going to be different.

So, an important thing to be sure of is that you’re sporting. Bringing dynamite to a house demolition effort first of all isn’t going to make you any friends and if you were hoping to get a delicious bacony meal out of it, you’re probably going to run an unacceptable risk of charring it all to cinders. If you give everyone involved the illusion of escape, that it’s possible to overcome you, your inevitable victory will become all the more impressive.

It might all get a bit sinister if you rock up with an AK-47 though. These are tense times, of course. Grab your wind blower, hire a wind machine, take everything involved a bit too literally and watch how impressed everyone is five minutes before you take it all too far and make them homeless in the middle of a raging pandemic. The least you can do after that sort of behaviour is to put them out of their misery by devouring them as swiftly as possible.

Blow us all away – Hamilton

How to… Sound the Alarm

It’s never much fun to kick up a fuss. Scratch that, it can be a laugh riot if you get it right. However, what’s rather less delicious are those occasions when you’re motivated by a little blind panic of the consequences of what might happen if you don’t cause a bit of a stink over what’s concerned you in the first place. These aren’t talk to the manager situations, these are scream bloody murder because it’s the only way to save all souls aboard the flaming wreckage.

Of course, when sounding the alarm you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it right. The last thing you want to do is to get into it too many times over nothing of particular significance. We all know what happened to the boy who cried wolf and the townspeople who wanted rid of him in a way that would teach a moral lesson.

Whatever it is that’s got you all a-flutter, I’m sure you’ll know when it’s worth raising the hue and cry. We’re in the middle of an emergency which, for all its other ill effects, does provide quite the yardstick. If it’s something worse than the viral shutdown, then you ring that bell loud enough for all around you to take notice. If people keep ignoring you, poke them with sticks and threaten them with a vicious large mammal attack.

How to go about it then? Well, don’t just moan into some obscure corner of the internet. Hire a town crier, commission some sky writing, take out an advertisment in your local paper pumping a dribble of cash into a dying industry, write to your local MP, shout fire in a crowded theatre and then get straight onto the phone to the track and trace people because that is a blatant violation of the beloved rule of six and there isn’t even a grouse moor in sight.

Sound the alarm – Hudson Taylor

How to… Hang Onto Your IQ

I feel like there are people out there, more than one might expect, who don’t really understand what IQ is. Not how it’s measured or whatever or what it’s a measure of but what the resultant score is. Maybe it’s simply because I didn’t quite realise before I read it somewhere so I automatically assume that everyone out there is as uninformed as I used to be.

But there are some fundamental discrepancies between how IQ operates and how it is used. For one, average IQ is always 100. No, always. 100 is the average IQ of any population. If you rocked up to Mensa’s HQ and insisted on subjecting them to tests, well, some of them would be in for a nasty surprise because they’d slip below their preconcieved lofty heights of mental superiority.

Maybe I’ve just been driven up the wall by mobile game adverts promising a blatant misrepresentation of how IQ works. Sure, I could spend less time on my phone but we’re in the middle of a pandemic, you can’t appreciate what a difference to my day having like an hour and a half back in my pocket is like after the much shorter commute I now have to the back bedroom. Plus, I’ve got to vent this stuff online because content.

So, if you want to hang onto a particular IQ, and I’m guessing that if you do it’ll be quite a high one, you’ll need to carefully select a cohort of idiots (or possibly children). Then, provided you don’t get some kind of nasty surprise (like getting outwitted by what you previously considered to be a five year old with a seriously limited academic future), you can hang onto that particularly impressive IQ for the rest of your existence by refusing to get tested ever again. Screw any other metric of self worth or personal growth, you’ll be set for life.

Hang onto your IQ – Placebo

How to… Beat Again

We already knew that accusations of hypocrisy are meaningless. When power’s up for grabs, all bets are off with folk of a certain mentality. You can’t pin them down with gotcha statements, even when they’re made up of their own words from four or two years ago. Last time around the roles were reversed, which means that the very behaviour they were decrying back then will get them what they want now. Don’t look so surprised when they do exactly what you thought they might.

All that being said, it must be rubbish to be an ageing Supreme Court justice. Sure, you get all that delicious sway over people’s lives, but there are all those pesky colleagues who have to vote with you to get anything you want done. And then everyone starts monitoring your health like hawks, predicting when you might peg it to make way for someone bouncier, perkier, and more in line with the thinking of whoever the bigwig of the day happens to be. You have to live with the knowledge that the moment you go, the vultures will descend, picking over your life and legacy before the body’s even cold.

Sure, not everyone’s doing it. There are those taking the time to honour the world-changing, fearless force that was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was incredible and is already sorely missed. But, sadly, the balance of the court is important. Especially since the other side seems to be wetting its collective knickers with glee at the mere idea of ripping reproductive rights away from women.

Maybe the next president who comes along with half a brain cell to their name will implement a route out of the madness. I’m not talking about court packing, what’s needed here are term limits. You get, I dunno, ten years on the court and then you can move on. I know the Republicans wouldn’t be happy with that. Why would they? They’re poised to cement a decades-long lead in the balance of power even though they represent a sizeable minority of the country in both opinion and voter numbers. But, you know, a change has gotta come.

Beat again – JLS

How to… Tighten Up

So, the government is inching the lockdown fist closed once again. They don’t want to go all the way, of course, inflicting a stranglehold on an already ailing economy but they’ll do it, by gum, if the public doesn’t fall in line. It’s somewhat galling to be told that we’re in the last chance saloon, like errant toddlers cranky from being startled awake from a nap, when they’re the ones endlessly screwing up and now taking precautions that just aren’t going to get the job done.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so negative. I ought to appreciate the efforts my political betters are making to try and keep me safe. But we’re still this deep into a crisis without a viable track and trace system, the summer was wasted letting testing fall by the wayside, basic preparations could have been taken to protect schoolchildren (renting out conference spaces for extended classrooms, handing out grants for building works to replace windows that don’t open and a hundred other practicalities that would be better than whiffing out stuff about bubbles three minutes before term was due to begin) and all the while the economy was placed far ahead of public safety. Eat out to help out has driven cases back up again when a few basic tweaks could have made it far better and still helped out restaurants. Prioritise anywhere with outdoor seating or make it take away only and make Covid-secure an actual standard that eateries had to meet before they qualified for the scheme.

The back and forths they’re spitting out are enough to make your head spin. Am I the only one who remembers mere weeks (days? It’s honestly difficult to keep a handle on timelines these days) ago when they were all about forcing workers to return to the office come hell or high water? We’re all missing out on the fizz and bustle or whatever it’s supposed to be.

Now, it turns out that the new restrictions don’t really have anything to do with me. I already work from home and having six friends to meet up with has long been a social aspiration far out of reach. How can I tighten up and do my bit to stop the spread? Not leave the house, keep the mask on while inside, continue to hand out criticisms from my lofty perch on the moral high ground? Cracking.

Tighten up – The Black Keys

How to… Protect Me From What I Want

Of course, the level of protection granted will wildly vary depending on whatever it is I happen to want at a particular point in time. If I feel like taking a dive into a bathtub of jelly, well, with the greatest will in the world, if you start trying to protect me from that wish, I will fight you rather hard. I don’t care if I’ve got a job interview in five minutes followed by afternoon tea with a visiting foreign dignitary. All folk involved with that arrangement will just have to delight in my strawberry stickiness.

Then again, if what I want is to swagger out to house parties, maskless and feral, exploring the world through my mouth like some sort of pooch, getting all up in the personal space of others, well, I agree that we probably ought to look into having me committed. The general point is that there’s going to be something of a spectrum of my level of cooperativeness with your efforts to divide me from whatever’s become my heart’s desire in the past five minutes.

Sure, there are other factors at play, resources at your disposal, your proximity to both me and whatever it is I want, how bothered you are about it all, whether what I want to do is complete this list.

Ultimately, I think that since we’re talking about protection rather than just keeping me from what I want, this is all going to rest on your powers of persuasion. Create a temporary barrier between a man and a lake full of fish and you’ll have protected your quotas for a time, convince that man that he has an allergy to scales so severe that his hand will drop off should he so much as brush a fin with his finger and you’ll never run the risk of him finding Nemo ever again. Equally, if you break me psychologically, I might never want things again. Job done, well done you and you can go and enjoy a teacake.

Protect me from what I want – Placebo

How to… Dance in the Dark

There are a few different ways you can choose to take this year (if you’re a privileged, white lady with the capacity and space to work from home, but you already knew that was my perspective. For those operating with rather different raw conditions… you already know what this year is panning out as).

You can whinge and moan about the unfairness of all the changes going on over your head. Because you don’t want to wear a mask, that’s why. And if someone wants to take away your god given right to slather yourself over innocent strangers in the pen, well, they’re going to have a hell of a fight on their hands. Or you could walk about operating within the letter of the law but with your nose poking cheekily out of your mask as if you’re some magical pixie whose respiratory system somehow doesn’t connect up with your nose.

These are all options open to you. But there are other ways to go forward. This isn’t some positive thinking hippie bull. I mean, it is a bit but you don’t have to think of it that way. This whole year (and, let’s be honest, beyond) is an opportunity to dance like nobody’s watching as, unless you’re doing it in the middle of a crowded street, they really won’t.

Don’t focus on all that constructive stuff you’re not doing. It’s not for a lack of time or energy that you haven’t learned Mandarin or retiled the bathroom. We are in a global crisis and that’s not going to do the old calm mentality any favours and you can probably forget anything you thought you knew about carrying on. So, draw the curtains, block out as much of the rest of the world as you can possibly manage and have a dance in the dark with anyone in your immediate bubble prepared to go along with the activity. I recommend Whitney Houston as a backing track.

Dance in the dark – Lady Gaga