2021

Good morning lovely peoples of WordPress land!

It’s that time of year where we all sit here thinking about the year past and the year on its way in.

Well, the year past almost killed me and not figuratively speaking either, on the 23rd March 2020, (Yeah, National lockdown day in the UK, my timing is impeccable!) I was rushed into hospital with pyelonephritis (severe kidney infection to us lesser mortals) and sepsis. Go me! I’ve always been of the mind you should either go big or go home in life and apparently that ethos carries over into illness as well. I was incarcerated on a Covid free ward for 15 days and basically had my system bleached with the Super Daddy of all antibiotics, TAZ. Never will I doubt the ferocity of that Tasmanian devil again. I don’t know whether they named it after that little cartoon character on purpose but let me tell you, that stuff wipes the floor with you.

I had hallucinations for 10 of the 15 days I was in there! Tripping became my new normal and I scared a lot of people for quite a few weeks, including my Consultant. He was rather concerned at the turns some of my hallucinations were taking, I patiently explained to him in one of my more lucid moments that I’m a writer so have no limits to my imagination. He was most interested in my chosen genres of thriller, comedy and erotica and not necessarily as separate genres. He asked for the blog address anyway. I believe he may be following Karla’s journals with interest.

Regardless, I got better and to prove it I’m here! Many thought I was checking out but as we know I’m rather stubborn and ornery and I have no intention of getting off.

Which brings me to how I brought in this new year.

With another kidney infection. I have deduced that I have kidney behaving badly syndrome! It’s all good, I am medicated up to my eyeballs on antibiotics again and I am on the other side of it now but really? It’s not the way to bring in a New Year. Just sayin…

Aside from the strange behaviour of my kidney, I am happy to report I am the happiest I have been in a very long time. There are a few reasons for this none of which I am willing to share right now, but change is good people. Old habits have left, and new good stuff has come in.

As far as Covid is concerned? Enough people have talked about the strangeness of the world these days that it made me think.

Is it strange? Really? I mean think about it this way, before we had super tech running our lives, before the advent of 20 cars per family, before mass consumerism took hold of the world, before instant gratification became the norm, before ‘I want it right now’ was the demand of the impatient, we kind of lived at this slower pace anyway. Okay, so the isolation aspect is newish for most of us, but not to those people who have always lived alone. Not to the people who have lost their life partner and find themselves isolated in their own homes 24 hours a day because they are lost without their other half. Isolation is not new to them. Or those people that for whatever reason have found themselves living an isolated life, their isolated world got a whole lot scarier and they have no one to share their fears with.

What Covid should have taught us all is that we need to slow down and look out for each other in a more conscious way. Instead of buying up every bar of soap and roll of toilet paper to be found and hoarding it, make up a box and gift it to an isolated person who has no one who can shop for them. Not everyone is internet savvy. Not everyone has a person they can ask to do something for them, go and collect prescriptions for them, you know, the stuff we all take for granted. Talk to them, spend some time standing at a socially acceptable distance from them and just chat for a little while. You could save so many people from tumbling headlong into depression that way. It would help them feel connected, even if it’s only for 10 minutes a day. It’s a connection. Human contact is out of the question physically, but not verbally. Take a moment to discuss someone’s garden with them, watch them light up like a Christmas tree because someone noticed the work they’ve put in. Take a moment…

For many people, covid has been an irritation, why do they have to stop their lives because of a bug? I kid you not, there are those people wandering among us who think they are immune based on either their religious belief that god will save them and therefore they don’t have to do anything about protecting themselves or others, or those who think they are too young to catch it and even if they do, it won’t kill them will it? They are young and fit and healthy, (and particularly selfish and stupid too) they think it doesn’t apply to them. They believe themselves to be exempt from catching it based on their age. They want to party, because, well, it’s their right!

Wow. Did anyone give Covid the memo?

I believe it may be too late for a lot of the idiots out there who are impatient with living in the time of a Pandemic. They needed a haircut and a glass of alcohol, that was far more important than staying safe. The list of stupid behaviour is endless… it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Then there are the really special people, the conspiracy theorists, who believe this is a world wide government con to get us all vaccinated with a secret microchip so we are all forced to be part of the ‘matrix’. Really? I mean really?? They believe the virus is a hoax. Oh my goodness.

Tell that to the families of those who have died from this dreadful virus. Tell that to those who have caught it and thankfully survived the ravages of it on their system.

Conspiracists, tell it to your toilet bowl, because that’s the only place ideas like that belong, in the pan. Stop spreading wildly paranoid theories cobbled together from tiny pieces of information all sewn together to make up your fantastical theory that every government was willing to tank their economy on a world wide scale in order to control us all. Please… just pack it in now, you are all looking and sounding very silly not to mention ill informed and coming across as unhinged. There could be a special place reserved just for you in Karla’s world.

There will be no quick fix for Covid. The vaccines are only one step in a whole host of many that need to be taken in order to stamp this virus out. The main steps are those we take ourselves. We need to continue to be vigilant, we need to keep our social distance even though it’s a right royal pain in the backside, we need to make sure we disinfect surfaces, packaging, homes and we need to keep washing hands, wearing masks and only coming into contact with people when we absolutely have to. We need to self govern and stop waiting for our hapless government to tell us what to do next. Quite frankly in the case of the UK I think it’s safe to say this tory government couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. We need to self govern. Common sense and practical application of the knowledge we already have will guide us through the coming year of pit falls and spikes in viral growth. If we all just do it right… all of us…together… please.

That is the way to stamp out this virus, starve it of food. Currently, we are not at the top of the food chain, we are food. This virus has a ferocious appetite, quit feeding it!

So, my message for everyone for this New Year? Don’t be FOOD!

Stay safe and well my lovely peoples, this too shall pass, but it will take time and effort. Let’s continue to put in the effort. It will be worth it in the end.

Happy New Year peeps, may it be kinder to you all than 2020 was.