View from the Midden; rural affairs with Jock Alexander
It’s been a misslie wik in the village. Michty, I think I spik for ab’dy in the country fan I say we’ve nae seen a month like the een jist passed in mony a year – every day has brocht a fresh escalation till there was nithin we could dae but hide indoors.
Like that time that Feel Moira went on a twa wik rhubarb wine bender and ab’dy else hid tae hide inside till she knackered hersel’ pulling oot a’ the telegraph poles.
Except this wiz happening tae ab’dy, a’wye, the world ower. Fit a leveller it’s been.
I suppose this is the moment fan mankind steps up tae the plate and we see once and for all if he is a noble species, capable of acts of altruistic kindness and selfless charity, or if he’s jist gan tae sit aboot in his jammies eating frosties oot the packet and watching every funny cat video that has ever been pit up on the youtubes.
I’m nae yet sure which direction that particular pendulum is gan tae swing. I jist hope it’s nae a sword of Damocles above wir heids.
In fairness, the endless reams o’ online videos hiv been a wee source o’ entertainment in these dark times.
In only the last twa days I enjoyed the een featuring Slippers the cat, fa brought in a live dyeuck, tae his owner’s London flat. And some fine stories too – there’s the high-powered video conference, where the big important boss leant on the wrang key and activated a filter fit turned her into a cartoon tattie for the duration.
We in Meikle Wartle found this particularly amusing as our Village Guild is usually chaired by a big fat neep.
In fact, fan auld Sandy Mutch is ill we jist pit an actual neep on his chair, and, indeed, the meetings often ging a good deal smoother.
But these are nae the times tae haud on tae such emnity. Nae fan the streets are deserted and nature is stairting tae reclaim urban environments.
Noo you’ll hiv seen the footage o’ Llandudno in North Wales, far a pack o’ wild mountain goats hiv occupied the streets, unchallenged.
It warimmed my hairt tae see them strolling aboot the pleasant village lanes, quite unable tae believe their luck.
Weel I hiv tae report that spookily similar scenes hiv been occurring here an’ a’. Nae that we hae mony goats, nor a very urban environment, fan ye think o’it, but the sheep, coos and pigs are a’ oot there noo.
Of course, the livestock aroon aboot here are nae much given tae natural curiosity – this wiz a deliberate herding in tae the village square, so that Feel Moira could mak her ain youtubes tae pit up online and mak the village famous, and so Skittery Wullie could gi’e his o’er whiffy piggery a lang-overdue airing.
It’s like that recent blessing by the Pope in the empty St Peter’s Square, but in reverse.
Cosmo Fawkes-Hunt, 13th Earl of Kinmuck
By Jove the news is depressing at the moment, isn’t it? It’s all coronavirus this, infection rates that and quarantine the next thing.
There has been some confusion among the hoi polloi regarding what the government guidance in this situation actually means.
Well, allow me explain to you, simply and clearly what “social distancing” actually is: wishy-washy namby-pamby balderdash, that’s what, and it’s time we Brits put a stop to it!
The Fawkes-Hunt family is no stranger to the scourge of infectious disease, let me tell you.
My grand-pappy, the 11th earl, spent two weeks in isolation during the typhoid outbreak in 1964.
The price he paid for swiping a corned beef sandwich from a ghillie’s lunchbox, the daft blighter!
And his father, the 10th earl, kept what he claimed was a vial of smallpox in the pantry.
He used to wield it as a weapon whilst fending off unsolicited visitors to the estate, or to threaten slovenly staff who weren’t earning their daily crust.
Until, of course, he was forced to start paying the staff in actual money rather than stale bread after the General Strike.
The thin end of the communist wedge, in my view, with which we are still being wedgied today!
If you ask me, the government’s handling of this latest health crisis is entirely wrongheaded (a shock, given that they are populated almost exclusively by the very sort of well-bred privately educated chaps who can usually be relied upon to pull us through in times of trouble).
All this face-mask muck and hand-washing tommy-rot is doing is turning us into a nation of supine, simpering, protoplasmic weaklings who would blow over in a stiff so’westerly breeze.
You don’t need any of that fol-de-rol when you have a blunderbuss and a portcullis!
Let’s do it right, Boris. Dispense with the restrictions and let the blessed virus run its course.
Survival of the fittest, I say. Or survival of the most heavily armed and fortified, at the very least.