Squeezebox man Trump strikes again and Covid 19.

 Squeezebox man Trump strikes again and Covid 19.

We are now well and truly entering the realms of the unfathomable and the indecipherable. This is a bent, twisted and misshapen object, a global virus which is spreading so far and fast that it looks like completely spiralling out of control so dramatically that, eventually, the end of the world may come sooner rather than later. Just when we thought it was safe to come out of our besieged bunker then things go backwards rather than forwards.

Until a couple of weeks ago Britain thought it had got a proper hold on coronavirus. We assumed that a vaccine would be with us in no time at all and that all of those Christmas celebrations would bear fruition just in time for the first mince pie or slice of turkey. But the looming spectre of yet more medical setbacks and greater numbers of second spikes has rendered this physically impossible. Apparently, there are small cross-sections of Britain who have been disobeying all of those vitally important guidelines and they should be held to account immediately.

So it is that the English language has undergone yet more radical re-adjustments, words and sentences that have been crazily thrown into the fiery cauldron of exposure and found to be wanting. Or maybe they are words and we just haven't been paying attention. The fact is that coronavirus has sparked off a whole wave of new pithy sayings, strange grammatical constructions and things have just been allowed to casually slip into the public forum. 

Now we awoke to the latest news on the global pandemic front and needed some genuine translation for what would seem the simpler facts of life. From a worldwide viewpoint we've always embraced the unorthodox and the unconventional. We've always welcomed differing interpretations on a whole host of everyday issues that none of us can make head or tail of. Within the last week or so everything has become so bogged down in arcane detail that you feel sure that Boris Johnson will have to issue Britain with a succession of easy to read pamphlets that make everything abundantly clear. 

Yesterday the government revealed so many warnings and tightening of Covid 19 restrictions that you'd have needed to be a multi-linguist to unravel the mind-blowing complexity of it all. Across the nation, hundreds and thousands of professors, language experts and academic lecturers have been at work. What are we to make of two-tier and three-tier systems, seemingly incomprehensible sub sections and categories of the Covid 19 hit communities?

In both Liverpool and Manchester there is something very distressing afoot. A pall of darkness has fallen over both the suburbs of Manchester such as Salford and the heart of Merseyside. Shortly all life in the world of corporate hospitality will have to be abruptly stalled, the shutters put up and quality leisure time postponed until further notice. 

Last night on the streets of north-west England, the once-bustling and prosperous streets of this once hotbed of manufacturing industry were stopped in their tracks. Hundreds of managers of pubs and restaurants must have been positively distraught, agonising and wrestling with employment dilemmas, looking with barely concealed dread at those horrendous looking balance sheets, very few customers and financial holes that may never be filled in the immediate future. 

But here is where it gets all tied up in knots, ultimately pretentious language, words that have been borrowed from somewhere without consulting us at any time. It seems as if everything that was once regarded as familiar and everyday has been caught up in a labyrinthine maze of drivel. Suddenly simplicity has been sacrificed on the altar of gobbledygook, a cascade of words that were never related to each other in the first place. 

We have now landed in the territory of what can only be described as a complete breakdown of society. The coronavirus is simply choosing English cities and towns for a second incarnation of Covid19. It feels as if that we've now come to a fork in the bumpy road to recovery. Now there are infuriating obstacles in our way, increasing difficulties and another radical outbreak of the disease we thought we were tackling with some ease and aplomb. 

Then some technological wizard may have had too much time and came up with a phrase that has its origins in some science manual. How have we arrived at 'circuit-breaker' when we all know that that circuit may have been broken for some time? We are going around in circles quite literally chasing our tail. We have been transported from one trouble spot to another and are none the wiser. We are wandering around in a room with our ankles attached to chains, blindfolded on a quite unimaginable scale and staggering around another room with no idea where we might be going and not knowing whether we'll ever get out of this mess. 

Meanwhile in the United States the country is gearing itself up for a good, old fashioned election-cum bust up. Donald Trump is waiting to take the country on a magical carpet ride and onto the Yellow Brick Road. He has yet to discover the Tin Man but he probably knows somebody who does know. Now the man with a wardrobe of different hand signals has unveiled his latest collection. Trump is loving all of this welcome publicity since no man does self-promotion so brilliantly. That image he sees in the mirror every day is one he just adores, an outrageous narcissist who worships himself every single day. 

For the last four years or so Trump has given us some wonderful impersonations of a man playing the accordion or concertina. The hands move in and out like the proverbial squeezebox and the gestures are those of a President who feels that self-expression with his fingers is his only means of communication. Trump's popularity though seems to be ebbing away albeit gradually and with three weeks to go before the election, the man with the bright orange hair is beginning to run out of material. 

Still, back in Britain winter is just around the corner, hospitals are fearing the worst, panic has set in yet again and the year that began with just the usual concerns has now developed into a wartime field hospital. The hastily built Nightingale Hospital in London has become almost an almost unfortunate symbol for everything the government were hoping to avoid. How many patients with the coronavirus symptoms were actually admitted in the first place and will there be many more if the country goes into another chronic slump?

Questions, questions, questions? There have been so many false dawns and optimistic forecasts that we may just decide to never go out again. All the doom and gloom merchants have got us exactly where they want us. Pessimism and negativity are the new watchwords and somebody out there is determined to say that they knew this would happen. If you'd followed the example of Sweden and been much more decisive then we'd never have found ourselves in this quandary. 

Still you'll never guess what we saw a couple of days ago. It was the first Christmas TV advert which means that before you know it, the sleigh bells will be ringing, the tinsel and glitter will be brightening up our lives and Santa Claus will be carrying out that famous tumble down the chimney routine millions of children have probably become very blase about. What have we got to worry about? It might even snow on Christmas Day. Yippee!