Sunday - let's just keep cool.

Sunday- let's just keep cool.

There was a time when Sunday meant rest, reflection, rumination, worship, prayer, taking the dogs for a walk, sauntering around your local park, feeding the ducks and swans, running, walking, cycling, sharing lively banter, exchanging all manner of civilities, cracking jokes, gathering yourself for the week's toil and endeavour, composing yourself for another week at school and then swotting furiously for those end of term exams because everything was make or break and life defining.

But all of that has gone by the wayside. The normalities are no longer considered as normal, the formalities have been delayed for who knows how long and the festivities are definitely out of the question. So where does that leave all of us? Maybe we're all caught in the middle of a no man's land, stilled and frustrated, shackled by circumstances that are none of our making. We can't function properly because the law of the land has now dictated as such and all of those mind broadening and physically stimulating activities we would usually think nothing of,  have suddenly been brought up short and just ceased forthwith.

Our noble Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who could be easily mistaken for his fictitious grandfather and comedian Tony, is now seriously suggesting that all parks and recreation grounds should be padlocked up firmly and no one should ever be allowed to go anywhere near this deeply invigorating green space where the act of healthy exercise has always been permitted for every day apart from perhaps Christmas Day.

But ladies and gentlemen you have to be informed here and now that because Britain has committed the most heinous of violations and offences, the nation has to suffer the consequences. Yesterday's burst of glorious sunshine was the perfect incentive for all of us to stride out confidently into all of our lush greenery, floral beauty and those pretty parks with their yearly profusion of daisies, tulips and the first buds of luxuriant roses.

Guess what though? Mr Hancock, in his infinite foolhardiness, has decided to put his foot down and is poised to impose the ultimate sanction on the human race. If you don't obey the Government stance on the coronavirus then you may be prosecuted, arrested, hung, drawn or quartered, taken to the gallows, beaten senseless to a pulp and then warned that if we see you anywhere in the midst of a sunbathing area in your local park you'll be swiftly taken down to the police station and warned quite sternly. Never ever do that again sonny Jim or Jean if you're a woman because you may have to get used to prison food.

We are now living in absurd times, surrealism has now made its way into pop culture and one day we will almost certainly wake up and find that this was the April Fools Joke we thought we'd been the victim of a couple of days ago. But no, it's happening. Has everybody though gone stark raving bonkers though? Have we taken leave of our senses? Around us all is utter pandemonium, pettiness, hyper sensitivity and emotional chaos. Or so it would seem but with perfectly good reason.

Of course well over 4,000 lives have been tragically lost and you can only imagine the atmosphere within those closely knit families who have lost a loved one. Our compassion is naturally a given. Of course those non essential shops are now shut, some of us may have to wait for ages for another haircut, we're stocking up on milk on a much more frequent basis and the supermarkets are beginning to resemble an episode from some deeply shocking episode from the 1970s science fiction TV show Blakes Seven.

Wherever you go now you're suddenly confronted by long lines of shoppers quite literally standing on a painted footstep yards away from each other. There is a weird sense of estrangement from each other, a creepy air of solemnity, a morose mourning for no particular reason and that overwhelming hollowness that only becomes apparent when all of the commuters have left the pubs and theatres of the West End of London.

You cast your eyes around the whole of the West End in London and convince yourself that everything has just been airbrushed out of the photographs, that some very imaginative picture editor of a trendy magazine has deliberately removed any sign of human movement. But this is very much real life, authenticity in all of its harsh reality, a real life horror show that has come to life. There is no time frame and the speculation changes according to which media outlet you happen to be following.

Football and the Premier League is still deluding itself, kidding itself that sometime in the middle of May or the middle of June the football season may go ahead as if nothing had ever happened. It does seem though that the FA, in some ludicrous fantasy world, has forgotten what's happened to the game thus far.

Football, it has to be said, has lost all perspective and its moral compass seemed to desert the game when the Premier League season was initially stopped at the beginning of March. What on earth is going through the collective minds of the FA? How to reconcile the thoughts and intentions of a sporting organisation whose only concern at the moment is naturally the welfare of its players and their families while singularly insisting that the nine remaining matches of the season have to be completed?

This is the point we have now reached. There is a school of thought which believes that those remaining games have to be played behind closed doors. What a preposterous notion, the brainchild of some bone headed idiot who has no idea of the importance that football fans attach to their game and just wants to experience that unique feeling of either disappointment or heartache, joy or jubilation in either relegation or promotion issues. It is part of their rich tapestry of their life and there has to be a logical conclusion, a signature, a clear line drawn under the whole of the season. Oh what utter nonsense.

Now we have discovered that the players themselves have now been attacked for selfishness, greed and sheer ignorance. The ongoing taxes on players wages either paid or unpaid, the deferral of those wages because no player has kicked a football in anger since the start of March and all of those ethical dilemmas that have been wildly thrown up into the air  leaving the game hanging its head in shame.

In mitigation of course there was that wonderful act of generosity and altruism that touched our hearts when Liverpool skipper Jordan Henderson donated millions of pounds to the NHS. In contrast we have now been told that members of staff at clubs including those working in catering have now been overlooked in that mad stampede towards the land of  greater riches paid out to already wealthy and pampered footballers.

But then we look back to the broken hearted, the weeping families, the thousands who have died and you begin to question the sanity of football and its narrow minded bigwigs. When do they propose to re start the football season again? The middle of June, early July or maybe it should overlap with the beginning of the new Premier League season? Would the pre-season be foreshortened and maybe, rather like dray horses, footballers should be expected to play every weekend almost constantly until the end of the year.  The latest wheeze is that TV broadcasters could show all of those remaining games live as if that would prove to be the sugar coating to satisfy all football fans. Is this is some very unfunny joke?

The fact is that every sporting event has now been postponed, every cultural event postponed and quite literally everything has been cancelled until further notice. How much clearer does that have to be? There can be no other explanation. Of course we enjoy football and quite possibly wallow in its unpredictability and capriciousness, the realms of the unexpected where nothing is quite what it seems.

The bottom line is though that yesterday's Grand National was reduced to a virtual charade, a computer generated spectacle off every scale. The London Marathon, that great family event that keeps delivering to the London streets every April, is off, and, more importantly perhaps, the Olympic Games, that four yearly sporting extravaganza where the athletes of the world come together and unite behind the four rings. There's no cricket until perhaps May, the Wimbledon tennis gathering is just a summer, strawberries and cream dream and everything is off limits, not even up for coherent discussion. These are truly historic times and it's time to hold on for a while, remain patient. We can all be victorious.