Monday
The deed is done. When our daughter, Anna, left home for good about four years ago, she made it very clear that she expected her bedroom to be left intact as a shrine. Not so with our son Robbie. When he left university and decided to remain in Brighton, he told us we could do what we liked with his room as he wouldn’t be coming back to live with us permanently. So last week I sawed up the wooden pallets he had insisted on using as a bed, and we got a builder and decorator in to turn the room into a workspace for my wife. And very lovely it is, except I can’t help feeling some sadness at having packed up in boxes what few possessions he had left in the room for him to take back to the rented house he now shares with friends. I know that it is as it should be – that helping your children learn to be independent is one of the main functions of a parent – but I can’t help experiencing it as some kind of loss. I’d almost rather have maintained the pretence, as with Anna, that he might be coming back at some point. Even though I know that if either were to come home for any length of time, we’d be sure to get on each other’s nerves within days.
Tuesday
Time passing has also been much on mind with the death of Nobby Stiles and the news that Bobby Charlton is suffering from dementia. The 1966 World Cup was the beginning of my lifelong obsession with football – and indeed with Spurs, as Jimmy Greaves became my favourite player in the early games of the tournament. He just seemed so impossibly glamorous. Now most of that 1966 World Cup-winning team are dead and their names are at best old newsreel clips to most fans these days. But to me they were my heroes. My love affair with Spurs continues, but my relationship with the players has changed. Don’t get me wrong, I still invest far too much time in the progress of Harry Kane, Heung-Min Son and Gareth Bale, but they have morphed from icons to cartoons. I now need them to exist off the pitch largely as figments of my imagination, where I can bend them to my will and they can create havoc as extensions of my psyche. Which is a long way of saying that in many ways the 1966 team are still more real to me than the current Spurs team. And I mourn their loss.
Wednesday
Like many people, I was up ridiculously early to tune in to the results of the US election. And when the first thing I heard was that Donald Trump had won Florida and was performing far better than the polls had predicted, I felt a strange mix of despair and inevitability. Why should the presidential election be any exception to all the other things that have gone wrong in 2020? As I kept checking in through the day, trying to recall data that I never knew, such as how many electoral college votes Wisconsin had, I found myself becoming more hopeful of a Joe Biden victory. I was a complete nervous wreck by the middle of the evening and had to switch off all the news channels. So I found myself watching some mind-blowingly dull documentary on the Discovery channel about an Alaskan family helping a couple from Ohio build a homestead in the middle of nowhere. I suspect I may have been the only person in the entire country watching that programme. Part of me would rather have been watching the remake of Rebecca, but I just can’t bring myself to do so as the reviews have been so terrible and I couldn’t bear to see one of my favourite books of all time ruined. If you haven’t read it, then do so now.
Thursday
We need to talk about Kevin, yet again. My friend of the many coronavirus tests that have gone missing. When I had my right knee replaced about 10 years ago, my left knee, which had also been giving me problems, suddenly started behaving itself. As if it had seen the pain and trauma inflicted on the other one and decided enough was enough. Kevin’s knee has come to the opposite conclusion. After he had one replaced, the other one immediately became noticeably worse and started demanding the same surgery as the other one. So late last month, Kevin found himself in a caravan that was doubling up as the outpatients’ X-Ray department at his local hospital. On arrival, he was asked to stand on a chair so that the radiologist could take the X-Rays from the right angle. Kevin did wonder whether this was a new form of triage. If he could manage to get on the chair and stand up without falling over, then he probably didn’t need surgery. Anyway, a week or so later he received a letter marked ‘You have an appointment on Monday, 21 December at 12.30pm.’ When he read the letter, he was surprised to find that it came with a disclaimer in capital letters. ‘THIS IS AN ASSESSMENT SERVICE ONLY’, it said. ‘PLEASE ADVISE YOUR PATIENT THIS IS NOT A VALID APPOINTMENT AT THE HOSPITAL. THE TRUST WILL CONTACT THE PATIENT TO AGREE A SUITABLE DATE AND TIME.’ So Kevin finds himself with an appointment that is an assessment and not an appointment. Much like Schrodinger’s cat, he’s beginning to wonder if he actually exists.
Friday
In his public declarations, Boris Johnson has been very keen to emphasise that the current lockdown will end on 2 December. What has been far less clear is what happens if the R number of infection remains above 1 after four weeks. Will we extend the national lockdown or return to the tiered system of regional lockdown that we already know doesn’t really work? What does seem certain, though, is that all large office Christmas parties will be cancelled this year. Something for which I will be profoundly grateful. Not that I have actually been to one in years – a combination of general paranoia, not drinking and being so deaf I can only pick out one word in five in most conversations has made avoidable large social gatherings a no-go zone for me – but it will at least spare me the guilt and shame of being too insecure to go. What I will miss, though, is the small annual office Xmas dinner with my lobby colleagues in Westminster. Those I can cope with and enjoy. Even the often indifferent turkey with all the trimmings.
Digested week digested: ‘Get your act together America. Can it really take days to count all those votes?’