Really? Doris thinks he's 'Winnie'.

YET ANOTHER BREXSHIT METAPHOR

It was announced last year that the 2020 May Day holiday - International Workers Day - would be moved from it's regular slot of the first Monday in May to a Friday that coincided with the anniversary of the end of the war in Europe in 1945.  Perhaps not unreasonable as it was the working classes that inevitably suffered most in, and more notably after, the conflict.  But the latest UKGov announcement is surely taking the piss?  When I first saw it I assumed I'd been transported to 1 April, so ridiculous did it seem, but it checks out on several other sources.  For this is the Uk (for now) of Doris, master fantasist and liar-in-chief.

This was the story I saw.

We, the minions of the populace, are to be treated to public broadcasts of the speech Winston Churchill made on that day three quarters of a century ago.  What?  When did simultaneous announcements in public spaces become a thing?  With Doris fancying himself as the reincarnation of Churchill's ghost (or whatever goes on in that bewildered organ that passes for a brain) this has the whiff of a government propaganda machine - and for that there is already a recent precedent, following the news that we rebellious Scots are to be subjected to short films extolling the 'benefits' of the union (benefits to whom one wonders...?).

So what have we got here?  It's brexshit writ large.  Twist a day dedicated to the solidarity of workers, the most important holiday of the year to many, to other purposes.  Try to make as many people as possible listen to a racist drunkard so we appreciate the benefits of peace in Europe - whilst destroying our relationship with the political union that has done more than any other organisation or state to secure that peace for the past 70 years. 

Dystopian future, here we come. 

It's only a cold, but...

MANFLU MUSINGS

I am dying.

Well, we all are, aren't we? It's the inevitable end for everyone. But also the instinctive whinge in response to a minor ailment that inconveniences. I have a cold. Frustrating, as I feel a bit too out of breath to go for one of my (embarrassingly brief) gym sessions, and I'm not sleeping as well as usual. It's just a cold. And in a few days time I'll be back to normal.

But.

It is a reminder.  I've been very lucky, with little by way of serious illness or injury in my life.  The worst was probably the glandular fever that dragged on for six months or more in my twenties, and that was only really bad because it hit me  six weeks after moving to the deep south (Hampshire) and starting the job which would give me my career for three and bit decades.  But there's never a good time to be ill, is there?  It stops you doing stuff, it gets in the way of plans, it's never going to be welcome.  Even the small stuff.

A cold is nothing.  But nobody knows if, when, they might be hit with something worse.  Accidents happen, viruses circulate, cancers strike, there's a myriad of means for life to make our bodies go wrong, to stop being the thing we take for granted every day and become a microcosmic battleground.

Of course if something serious there are different ways of dealing with it.  I wonder if I'd be half as positive as these guys?  I don't think Doddie would have let a cold stop him doing much.