Has the world gone completely mad?

Has the world gone completely mad?

All it seemed to take was one horrifically worldwide deadly disease to send the world into a ferocious firestorm of madness. Suddenly the streets of America are in flames, a little girl who went missing years ago has now been brought to public attention again and the world, hitherto peaceful but crazy at times, is now in complete meltdown. In a way we should have seen this one coming, totally prepared for even more negativity, bleakness and incomprehensible behaviour. But we didn't and now for another news agenda with equally as  mind blowing consequences.

The unforgivably racist killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has once again concentrated all of our thoughts on everyday themes such as revenge, retribution, social unrest, violence and bloodthirsty aggression. This is just another day in the life of a world that just doesn't know what to do with its seething anger, its bleeding hearts and its air of racial injustice.

The events of the last couple of days may just as well have been a heart wrenching re-run of the last 60 years in the American heartland. The burning streets and buildings of Minneapolis are more or less a metaphor for the inexplicable deaths of black men throughout recent decades. They took to the streets in their hundreds and thousands, shouted the odds vociferously, pleaded for their voices to be heard and then discovered that, as usual, nobody was listening to them at all.

Wearing the topical masks of the moment, they gathered together en masse and bellowed out their slogans, their hurt, their flagrant sense of rejection, their understandable bile and bitterness before charging huge ranks of police with giant shields. It could have been a news story from any era of our lives but it was taking place here and now and you shared their grief and their fury. Flames leapt high into the American night sky, an innocent 75 year old was thrown senselessly to the ground and nobody seemed to notice the 75 year old bleeding and prone, the totally unwitting victim of circumstances.

At the beginning of the year we all assumed that 2020 would mark the beginning of not only another decade of a new century but a brightly auspicious new beginning for all of us. We hoped it would be the good one that John Lennon had so touchingly sung about just before he became the most famous public figure and was then assassinated because somebody decided to claim Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame and notoriety. What on earth is happening to this beautiful planet and can humanity save themselves? Oh for our loving and supportive families because some of the screws do seem to be loose in the most senior positions of world officialdom and authority.

For instance our politicians are beginning to behave like those jovial characters in a Punch and Judy show, the health of the world has now taken a complete battering and we're still being asked to remember a little girl who went missing years and years ago in a Portuguese restaurant. There are those who may believe that the parents may have shown perhaps just a little more responsibility or maybe this is too harsh a judgement.

When Madeleine McCann went missing in the early 2000s, Britain was both shocked and appalled without realising that the little girl with an infectious grin had been kidnapped. For what now seems a wild goose chase, the McCann parents have been torturing themselves, crying themselves to sleep and praying for good news. But here we are in 2020 and the longest kidnapping mystery of modern times has been resurrected in the middle of a global disease, a racist killing and much more besides.

The cynics would insist that we should have known better. Your biggest fear and concern is that somewhere in an empty Hollywood studio, an already obscenely wealthy director is collecting all of the information they need, composing the script, designing the set and then piecing together all of the essential details that would inevitably lead to a film called 2020, an epic movie weaving together all of the strands of a vast documentary about this year.

Of course every year brings with it all the trials and tribulations that are somehow unavoidable. We know what's coming but we can never be sure how hard and painful it may turn out to be. This year is becoming so astonishingly eventful and historic that it may take some social historian the best part of the next decade to come up with an accurate and comprehensive record of those tumultuous events in precise chronological order.

At the moment it really feels as though the whole of 2020 has just gone, disappeared into a dark tunnel and left to smoulder in some charred ruin. Some of us would even go so far to suggest that perhaps we should turn the clock back to New Year's Day and just have another go. After the terrible bush fires in Australia at the beginning of January there was a brief lull before, quite literally, the storm. A steady February that was superbly accident free and nowhere near as bad as January, now turned into the March from hell. The rest, as they say, is cliched history.

So here we are on the first Saturday of June and today takes the memory back to the D- Day Normandy landings which will now be beautifully commemorated by a Britain and the rest of the world which still feels as though it's battling another war. You saw the soldiers wading through the war torn waters and you could hardly contain your swelling pride.

More so than ever before you bowed your deferential head to the men and women who laid their lives on the line ,realised quite importantly the soul baring sacrifices they made, the dangers that had to be confronted and then overcome in the time it took for the bombs and bullets to subside. And so they will huddle together in front of their Zoom cameras before wiping away the rivers of tears and remembering.

And so here we are well into the third month of lockdown and the world keeps revolving on its axis. At times you begin to seriously wonder just how much longer the world will have to remain in shackled suspension, shrouded under a cloud of indecision and indecipherable facts, figures and statistics. The hours, months and weeks inch their way forward laboriously and awkwardly but we'll see the back of this. You see.

From Monday Britain will, by the law of the land, have to wear a mask on either train or bus which to some of us feels vaguely disconcerting and, to be honest, extremely worrying. But we won't panic because we'll see through this period with that trusty British stiff upper lip. Freedom of expression and global harmony are just around the corner. It's just taking a little longer than we at first anticipated. Patience will be our redeeming virtue. Hold on everybody we can see the light now. 

Covid 19 reaches a peak but when will normal life be completely resumed?

Covid 19 reaches a peak but when will normal life be completely resumed?

We have now been told to remain patient, not to panic because we seem to be much closer to a point of normality and the experts keep telling us that although the breakthrough vaccine is no nearer to fruition the middle of June could mark a pivotal turning point in the immediate future of the whole globe. Covid 19 is a deadly disease pandemic, still hovering around with malicious intent but sooner or later we'll all wake up shortly with a fleet footed spring in our step and bliss in our hearts.

At the moment though this is very much that interim period where something exciting could take place very shortly but where caution should still be very much the watchword. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is still ruffling his blond locks of hair with all the bewilderment of a man who doesn't quite know what to say anymore. He is now fully dependent on the superior knowledge of his chief medical officer and chief scientific officer, both very learned men who keep pointing to graphs in order to illustrate their points.

And this is where it all becomes very vague and ambiguous, a puzzle within a puzzle, the most complicated set of algorithms that remind you of an Open University programme on the BBC. Over 40 years ago the BBC would wake everybody up at a seemingly unearthly hour of the morning just to explain theories, point at eye-popping graphs with neatly drawn lines and carefully calculated figures that may just as well have been an entirely different language. But we forgave the BBC because, to quote Lord Reith, this was their mission to inform, educate and entertain.

The vast numbers of fatalities and deaths do seem to be dwindling rapidly and things are now heading in the right direction but not in the volume that some of us would like. The peak of the coronavirus has now been successfully passed but the doubts linger, questions remain stubbornly unanswered and nobody can be sure when it might be considered legal to stand next to your loved ones, when to gobble up a plate of burgers and hotdogs at that summer defining family barbecue and whether we should hug our families with a moving tenderness.

Of course the parks have never been busier, more vital and lively than ever before. You wouldn't have dreamt of stopping Britain's runners from putting on those trainers and hitting those pavements. On closer inspection this morning you noticed a whole community of joggers, strollers and T-shirted runners pushing themselves to the limit. It was beginning to look very impressive and something like the old days before this all happened.

Then you saw something you hadn't seen for some time. On the public tennis courts, members of the public were swinging their rackets with unbounded confidence. There were some tennis players who looked just relieved to be out on the court after so many months of wondering whether their rackets would just gather dust in the cupboard. That magical crack of yellow tennis ball did send a warm glow through you if only because it was as if summer had been given our consent to start and the coronavirus would shortly be shunted to the tramlines so to speak.

So it is that sport is up and running and not before time or so it would seem. On Monday the good folk of Newcastle could finally watch horse racing once again but only from the comfort of their home. Sadly, the bookmakers, or so we believe, are still closed so that's a tricky one. Then we discovered that the pigeon racing season could return once again as if any of us knew that, rather like the rest of the world of sport, it had started but then stopped for whatever reason. So we could breathe again.

Regrettably cricket may have to wait a little longer for its green light and Wimbledon tennis, as we now know, has been postponed until next summer. The start of the athletics season would also appear to be delayed, cancelled or just not happening. The world of golf, which would seem to be the epitome of self isolation, could be back on the back pages and media outlets who seem to take such inordinate pleasure in the ups and downs, ebb and flow of sporting confrontations, good natured rivalries or perhaps not so good natured rivalries.

Football of course may have lost its Euro 2020 but that could always be left to next year since footballers are very adaptable and if the competition is disrupted by pouring rain, nothing is going to stop England manager Gareth Southgate from donning one of those famous waistcoats. It seems that football will now forge ahead with a comeback date for the Premier League season now scheduled in just under a fortnight now. Opinions are now not nearly as polarised as they were perhaps a month ago since there is a passive acceptance that at some point the crucial relegation and promotion issues had to be resolved one way or the other.

Liverpool will win the Premier League quite handsomely and, more so than ever now, historically because surely there will never be a season like this one. Cut off in their prime after bowing out to Atletico Madrid in this year's Champions League, little were we to know that the crowd that night at Anfield would be a harbinger for a world health catastrophe. Liverpool departed Europe but the world caught the most shocking virus of all time.

The pros and cons, the arguments and counter arguments for re-starting the Premier League have been numerous and impassioned. But the fact is that Manchester City will welcome Arsenal on June 17 when some of us were probably looking forward to the tennis at Wimbledon, also off. The match will be attended by 300 members of the respective teams coaching staff and perhaps the odd mask here and there. It will undoubtedly be one of the weirdest and most surreal matches in the history of the Premier League the like of which will hopefully never be seen again in years to come.

The latest suggestions almost belong to the joke shop. There is a strong possibility that fake crowd noise will be pumped through the ground's speakers in an effort to replicate the real thing. The source of this noise, or so we are led to believe will come from the latest X Box game or a FIFA computer device. Is this really happening?

And then finally we must not forget the cardboard cut out people who will generate the most extraordinary atmosphere Premier League grounds have ever heard. If the Edinburgh Festival- which has also gone by the coronavirus wayside - were thinking of a bright new comedy vehicle for any of its stages then it wouldn't have to look any further for material than the Premier League. We are now in the realms of the Whitehall farce where doors are slammed and accomplished actors and actresses become overnight comedians or comediennes.

Still who knows Liverpool will still be jumping up and down with the Premier League trophy, amid a blizzard of confetti and paper streamers. Then they'll release the fireworks, play the triumphant music and Anfield will share its happiest day with a couple of starlings and a magpie from the Albert docks. It will be quite the most unique occasion in the history of football, a silent movie that the likes of Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Cops would probably have flourished in.

Meanwhile Bournemouth, Aston Villa, Norwich City and, one would like to think, not West Ham will be tussling for points in the Premier League basement in their battle against relegation. Within the space of several hurried weeks we will know for sure that football will have finally flipped. Who on earth came up with the wheeze that home advantage will not count when quite clearly neither side can hope to benefit from any imagined scenario? Oh what have they done to football? The hope is that this arrangement will work on all levels but if ever sport needed a pick me up this is not the medicine it may be looking for. We must hope that football will one day come to its senses.

London in lockdown.

London in lockdown.

As if you didn't know already, London is dead. In the small hours of an early March morning, London collapsed with a massive cardiac arrest. It looks though as if it might just come back to life in a couple of weeks time. For now though London resembles the quietest of graveyards, a capital city deprived of all oxygen and waiting for a post mortem that can only be a matter of time. Or is it? The chances are that all is not lost. At the moment though it doesn't look good at all. In fact it's terrifying.

This morning you set out on what will hopefully be the last journey to London in lockdown. You would not believe what has happened to the West End of London although you may have an idea of what it looks like. But to see the heart of the commercial West End in all of its rawness and earthiness was to witness a city that looked thunderstruck, dumbfounded, barely familiar and completely unrecognisable.

It is a London that stopped breathing in March, gasped for air during both March and April and then just vanished without trace. The global pandemic coronavirus had plunged us all into chaotic turmoil and heart wrenching tragedy. There were those of us who were deludedly convinced- and with every justification- that Covid 19 would just blow over in much the way that all seasonal illnesses and viruses pass through and then just go away. How wrong we were.

And yet you wandered through all of the West End's most celebrated landmarks, its winding, twisting roads, its long and lingering thoroughfares, sighing with open- mouthed astonishment. Was this the West End that my late dad would regularly wax lyrical about, the West End with its thousands and millions of tourist admirers from all over the world and now a West End he would have been truly horrified to see?

Walking down Charing Cross Road you were suddenly reminded of its olde world charm, its centre of literary excellence, the second hand bookshops in noble profusion, Foyles, its flagship, world famous book shop. Foyles is still now shut up, shuttered, gagged and locked up for the duration until the government deem it safe to open again which could be any time. Charing Cross Road was frighteningly silent, a morgue, a chilling mortuary, even a mausoleum that has been left to rot with nobody in sight to lift its mood.

You walked down Charing Cross Road and the pavements may just as well have been a sandy desert, a vast concrete bowl of sun kissed pavements but little in the way of human life. Occasionally groups of builders would emerge from somewhere only to then find that the people wearing masks were now outnumbering them. The buses were trundling through the West End almost apologetically but they looked, for all the world, like red ghosts. The sprinkling of musical instrument shops in nearby Denmark Street had now lost both their percussion and woodwind quality. Tin Pan Alley had now forgotten all about its traditionally hypnotic rhythms.

But wherever you looked the West End looked in a state of petrified paralysis, its once healthy heartbeat now gone, stolen and robbed by circumstances completely out of control. For the time being London must continue to function without its supporting actors and actresses, its leading stars of stage and screen, its multi- cultural cuisine, its cosmopolitan food and drink, its histrionic theatre and all of its lovably ostentatious gladrags.

If London were a human it would be weeping and sobbing floods of tears. Oxford Street is still grieving because it has nobody to turn to. The shops and the huge department stores look like lonely individuals with nobody to call a friend. At some point you were reminded of a state funeral procession without the coffin. The tourists, in all their varying states of intrigue, will not be visiting London this year because this is not the time for cheerful revelry and charming comment.

As you stepped off the bus at Trafalgar Square you cast your mind back to the mid 1960s when your wonderful dad would point at Nelson Column in the gathering wintry darkness and introduce you to a world of total escapism, the centre of a capital city that glittered and flickered with its tempting blandishments. The whole of London used to light up in a remarkable show of neon Coca Cola. Now though London is totally without its fascinated humanity, denied the chance to show off, flaunting its party frocks, riding freely in its after theatre rickshaws and then supping a late night pint or two.

Outside the National Portrait Gallery, with its marvellous columns and pillars, there were a sprinkling of people although it was hard to tell why they were at all since there was nothing to look at as such. The fountains in Trafalgar Square were still cascading water with absolute abandon but around them were only the occasional set of passer- byes.

You passed the Garrick theatre, the Trafalgar Studios and JK Rowling's The Cursed Child at Cambridge Circus and wondered whether their seats would ever be full again. The Dominion theatre in London's Tottenham Court Road was conspicuous by a blank screen that told its own story. No tickets will be sold at any time in the unforeseeable future. There is a greyness and solitariness about London that can never be accurately defined because none of us have seen this before. The pavements are no longer echoing to the beat of endlessly pounding feet from all over the world. It probably feels like the end of the world to some but to the eternal optimists we must believe that those feet will once again dance to a happier beat shortly.

For the time being, London will have to be monitored like the sick patient it quite clearly is. Nobody though should bring up any grapes or flowers for London because it just wants time to clear its head before somebody wakes it up from its slumbering state. And yet in a couple of weeks time we've now been re-assured that we will indeed be able to shop until we drop, shopping will become the latest fashion statement and families will once again be able to do the Hokey Cokey with their loved ones.

But then you moved away from the scene of broken hearts, of inexplicable estrangement, of social distancing and lockdown and then took another deep breath because the lump in your throat had just got to you. All of this apartness, solitude and painful alienation had just hit you right there. You convinced yourself that you never wanted to see London like this, that this should be a once in a lifetime experience. No more second spikes of the Coronavirus should ever visit our wonderful planet because we really do miss our loved ones and we hope that Covid 19 never rears its head again. Never.

The John Player League, cricket and Valentines Park.

The John Player League, cricket and Valentines Park.

The late and great John Arlott allegedly once described Valentines Park, in Ilford, Essex as one of the prettiest county cricket grounds in the country. Arlott of course was always a connoisseur, a wine connoisseur, a discerning observer of all the modern movements and trends so was perhaps best judged to pass comment on the good things in life, the arts and crafts, the timeless beauties of cricket and all of the batsmen and bowlers who came before his critical eye.

So it is that on the last day of May that our thoughts turn to one of Arlott's great loves, the John Player League on a Sunday afternoon when summer's musical cadences drifted through the warm and caressing breezes of the afternoon serenity. Of course Arlott loved the cut and thrust of the five day Test match, the feisty, frisson of its fiercely competitive edge but he also had a great deal of time for the biff and bash of the John Player League, the 40 or 50 over run chase excitement that preceded Sunday evensong, the late call of the magpie, kingfisher, the gull or the swooping Canadian geese.

In the old days when BBC Two had all of Sunday afternoon to itself, the John Player League represented a light, late lunchtime aperitif just after Family Favourites with Jean Challis and Cliff Michelmore on the radio. Then, two sets of strapping and virile gentlemen from the finest that English county cricket could offer, bounded down the pavilion steps, white shirts billowing like sails on a catamaran, thick white pads firmly strapped to their ankles, batsmen's caps perched daintily on their heads and bats swinging rapidly and purposefully, arms windmilling at a fair rate of knots.

Then the fielding side would emerge as well, bowlers frantically stretching their arms and shoulders, pulling and snapping their fingers as if their lives depended on it. Then they would arch their backs somewhat awkwardly at first but then find comfort in the knowledge that their day's labours might yield the fruits of victory at roughly 6pm just before the pubs opened. The John Player League was, essentially all about the fun of it all, the knockabout nature of cricket that never took the competition seriously but still had a rip- roaring day of jollity to remember and cherish long after the last Sunday hymn.

But for those of us who grew up in the leafy, bucolic idyll of Essex Valentines Park still meant much more than a Sunday John Player League match against equally as rustic Hampshire, warm- hearted Worcestershire, lovely Leicestershire, stockbroker belt Surrey or the seaside, coastal delights of Sussex. It was about BBC commentator and ex- professional Peter Walker sidling up to a microphone at just after two in the afternoon and announcing the two teams who had now been primed for this mini- festival of cricket.

Then the heavily jumpered umpires would slowly trundle their way to the crease, pennies in their pockets, shirt and tie neatly adjusted, white coated and black trousered, models of the utmost impartiality and neutrality but nonetheless wise figures of authority, calm, detached from the afternoon's action but still engaged in the game's atmosphere and meaning.

With all the slips and gullies in their right position, mid on and off lengthening their stride to deep backward square leg and a string of cover fielders guarding the central areas of the cricket strip, cricket takes off its hat once again and allows the afternoon to take its course. John Lever or Keith Fletcher would be deep in earnest discussion about the price of apples and then admired the stature of a Basil D'Olivera tapping his bat thoughtfully on the crease and then sweeping away some irritating dust in his eyes.

Then the runs would flow, singles, twos, hasty threes, boundary fours and then the magisterial sixes into the local supermarket car park. Lever would plough a lone furrow, thundering in from one end of  Valentines Park like a man possessed. Then the arms and shoulders would seemingly open up to their widest extent and the ball would be delivered from its highest point with a splayed action. Wickets would clatter quite frequently and by the end of Essex's 40 over slog the opposition would always know that they'd been in a match.

Behind Valentines Park toffee box of a ground, you would find yourself in the midst of yet more mouth watering sights to behold. There would be and, to this day remains, the beautiful clock tower next to the relaxing boating lake with families of happy go lucky rowers. Then there is the exquisitely green bowling green where elderly gentlemen and women roll down that huge black bowling ball along grass that had quite obviously been lovingly preserved with the heaviest roller.

The bowling greens- since there is another at the other end of Valentines Park- are still there because bowling greens have always been there. Next to the bowling greens are a whole series of tennis courts with drooping nets and alarming cracks in the ground. These are reserved for both club players and whomsoever chooses to wield a racket for no price at all.

Now the eye focuses on the children's playing area, the swings, tunnels and roundabouts, the new exercise area, the relatively new black sign posts, the park cafe that seems to have been there since the Boer War. Doubling as an ice-cream parlour, the 99 and flake ice cream sign outside the cafe swings gently like a Wild West saloon door.

The long, meandering pathways lead to the bridge that leads to the boating lake and tall avenues of trees stand proudly in every available open green space. Then there are the hundreds of scurrying squirrels, more bobbing birds in secretive corners, the handsome Valentines Mansion which can tell stories from way back when, centuries of aristocratic families who were once an integral part of the Ilford landscape.

Sadly, the once immensely popular Valentines Park lido, a swimming pool of Olympian proportions, was demolished, flattened to make way for nothing at all. In the memorable summer heatwave of 1976, Valentines Park lido burst into life. In the mind's eye, the Valentines Park lido will always have a place in your youthful heart even though it is now nothing but grass, heather and bush which still has its aesthetic advantages if you're of a gardening type.

But you can still see hear the vivid splashing of the fountain inside the lido, the serried rows of light blue lockers, the screeching of the children, the running, dashing, chasing kids hurling themselves into a freezing tank of cold water that was the pool. The story was that the diving board had to be taken down because one of the kids had tragically died. Then there was the slide which always seemed to be heavily populated but was eventually dismantled as well because maybe it didn't quite have what the kids were looking for in an exciting day.

Half way through the afternoon when the feverish frenzy of the day may have been fading and burning out, the lifeguards sat comfortably on the railings, twirling their whistles endlessly, shouting and castigating those poor teenagers who just wanted to show off in front of their mates. The dive bombing into the pool had to be stopped immediately and if you were seen doing anything remotely unsavoury then you would be clipped around the ear by a local bobby. How we love the police.

Still here we are on the last day of May. Years ago Valentines Park used to be the venue chosen for Essex cricket club in a week long county championship round of games in the first week of June. Now even that's gone so now the ground has to make way for the local cricket club and that has to be ample consolation for those who still savour the game's grass roots.

Even more disappointingly and perhaps predictably the John Player League is no longer a cricketing pot of gold on a Sunday afternoon. John Arlott died in 1991 and somehow Sunday afternoons for many cricket fans will never be the same without its weekly fare of slogfest cricket and enthralling run chases before Sunday Night at the London Palladium hosted by Bruce Forsyth. Cricket loves its memories.

Football gets its way- let them eat cheesecake.

Football gets its way- let them eat cheesecake.

So football has finally got its own way and not before time. Nobody deserves it more than football. Well done and hats off to you all. This is the result you've all been waiting for and you've now been rewarded for all of those months of perseverance and sheer force of character. How can we ever thank you? Go to the top of the class, accept all of those bouquets of praise and let's get back to the hurly and burly, cut and thrust of top- flight Premier League season because you've now been given the all clear.

After weeks and months of agonising, soul searching, tormenting itself, procrastinating, dragging its heels, swabbing, testing, steam cleaning and spraying goal posts, cross bars and footballs themselves, football will find its voice again - or not as seems the case- on June 17 live from a free to air, BBC or Sky TV channel near you. You should be adequately warned that you are not to come anywhere near a football ground because if you do you'll be severely prosecuted, arrested, thrown into a medieval dungeon, questioned by the police and then sent to jail for a considerable period of time.

You see the problem we have here is that football, essentially and most delightfully, is very much a spectator sport. It has been for as long as any of us can remember. Since the early days of the 20th century when players wore laced up shirts and boots the size of the average pair of Doc Martens, football has always embraced the weekly joys of massed crowds on its heaving terraces.

It has revelled in those stirring chants, the collective tribalism of the football experience, those special moments before, during and after a game when the fans sing at the top of their voices and cheer themselves hoarse. Football loves its captive audience, the hundreds and thousands of the mellifluous multitudes who shamelessly belt out those lovely old folk songs and the salty obscenities that have always followed every club throughout the 92 club pyramid.

But yesterday football parted company with its sanity, lost its collective mind and finally discovered that none would object to finishing the remainder of the Premier League season behind closed doors. As long as football can rely on the remarkably substantial barrowloads of cash to see it through to the end of the season then this is the way it has to be. Nobody cares least of all TV or its faithful ally the Premier League because it's all about money, money being the root of all evil and the road to ruination.

Now in the general scheme of things there would be none of the objections that we might have come to expect from some quarters because football is still the Beautiful Game and the fans are the least of its problems. Or have football fans just been completely forgotten about, totally marginalised in the whole of this fierce debate. The truth is perhaps staring us in the face and maybe some of us have lost this one in the translation. Football, certainly for the time being, is no longer a spectator sport and the fans are just surplus to requirements.

Never mind that these same hardy, devoted, loyal supporters regularly shell out vast sums of hard earned money for both a large stash of increasingly expensive season tickets before the season. Who cares whether you've paid shedloads of money for the much coveted merchandise, shirts, key rings, books, programmes, players photographs and such like? Never mind that those passionate supporters think nothing of paying for refreshments before the game, those precious seats next to family and friends. Are these, above all, just minor considerations?

In the days before Covid 19 football used to take great pride in its traditional pre-match routines. You would walk into your favourite team's ground, armed with a bountiful cargo of meat pies, hot dogs dripping with tomato ketchup, Bovril, cups of tea or coffee and perhaps a packet of crisps for good measure. Then you would carefully drop down onto your well paid seat for the season, look around your magnificent ground, wave to Uncle Pete or Auntie Barbara in the stand opposite you and then chuckle at the funny messages on the electronic scoreboard opposite you.

Sadly, this has now gone, stolen from football because of the deadliest and yet most unknown global pandemic disease since whenever. Now football has do without the very people who make the game tick. without whom the game will resume on June 17 amid the kind of atmosphere you'd expect to find in a local church throughout the week. The parishioners won't be there because they no longer matter and we simply take them for granted anyway. Football is no longer sacred or sacrosanct because the idolatry and adoration that used to be part of the football going ritual no longer needs its gloriously raucous supporters.

So how does this leave us now? Do we try to close our eyes and pretend that the game will no longer feel like either a game or sport or do we just snigger and laugh at the outrageous absurdity of it all.
Do we now wait in eager anticipation of a sport whose apparently sole reason for its existence is its stunning audience participation or do we just allow football to quickly disappear down a long, dark tunnel where rows of empty seats will greet every goal scored and every goal scoring celebration. This is not a dilemma because decisions have been made and this is football's new normal.

We now stand poised on the verge of a new footballing dawn, an age of silence, deafening silence, lifelessness, hollowness, nothing but peace and quiet. Oh and incidentally you must not disturb any of their players in case their concentration is disturbed and we wouldn't want that. Are we to assume that when the players come out of the tunnel for those first few matches that the players will have to be ready for the greatest show of indifference and apathy since goodness knows when? Perhaps the players will simply wave at thin air or stare blankly at a huge concrete bowl.

Lest we forget the mascots and the complete lack of any of their families in the crowds, the gaping spaces in the ground, football impersonating mime, totally dehumanised, drained of all colour, completely sanitised, stripped off its soul, a humiliating vaccum of nothingness. The thought occurs to you that all of the matches may just as well be played out in a local park or recreation ground so futile and pointless will this exercise become.

But money talks folks and let's just bring onto the stage our million pound footballers with stars in their eyes and wallets bursting at the seams. We can hardly wait for the referee's first blast of the whistle when Manchester City play Arsenal and the Etihad Stadium will begin to sound like the reference book section in one of Manchester City's many libraries or that distant, but beautiful field in Middle England where only the cows come out for a leisurely stroll. Then we'll see all of the Etihad's lush green pastures and may be tempted to pick a punnet of strawberries for the half time cup of tea.

There is a dawning realisation here that football may be on a collision course with the summer solstice where the cricket season should have been up and running but also finds itself a casualty of Covid 19 until the beginning of August. How we may rejoice to watch football's fittest athletes slogging their way through 90 minutes of football and sweating buckets in 80 degrees of heat should that be the case.

Then there's the small matter of cramming in as many matches as possible within a couple of days in a frantic race for the finishing line of the Premier League season. Football is about to race into the fairground, jump into the dodgems, climb onto the ferris wheel, shoot a rifle at a target that might reward them with a goldfish and then nip onto that carousel again just for another quick adrenaline thrill. It'll be fun, fun, fun all the way regardless of the consequences.

And once again there is the football showpiece, the big day, the FA Cup Final which this year could coincide with the Harvest Festival when the conkers are on the ground and an autumnal chill can be felt for miles around us. Apparently, the FA Cup Final will be held on August 1 which could mean that the opening day of next season may have to be put back to Christmas Day when we'll all be opening up our presents and scoffing large quantities of turkey. The date of course for the opening fixtures of next year's FA Cup third round could be pencilled in for next Easter Sunday or maybe Whitsun. Who knows?

Whichever way you look at it football's immediate future has now assumed some radically different complexion, the like of which none of us could ever hope to guess at. The perception of the Beautiful Game has now radically changed, the mentality of the game now in the most unusual of places and the game that used to start at roughly the end of summer is now any random choice of month or season for the Premier League or the FA to take their pick from.

Today though is also of course the Jewish festival of Shavuot which means the FA and Premier League may also have their cheesecake and eat it. It is a day for consuming dairy products, gorging ourselves happily on cheesecake and then washing it all down with healthy supplies of any beverage of your choosing.  It is a time for cheesecake parties, sharing end of week tales of lockdown achievements and looking forward to re-uniting with family and friends as long as there are only five in the same room. You really couldn't make this one up. Stay safe and stay alert everybody.

The good news or is it? Possibly.

The good news or is it? Possibly.

The good news is that come the middle of June part of Britain could be on the move again. None of us can really know how things are going to pan out until we first see those first tantalising glimpses of commerce, enterprise and financial happiness. Yes, from June 15, some, if not all of our blue riband, flagship department stores in the West End of London and more of those non essential shops have been given the go- ahead to open. It should be all systems go or that's the hope.

Regrettably though, it seems that this maybe just a gradual, tentative step towards a major rehabilitation on the way to a grand, trumpet blowing, all fanfares return to normal life. Slowly but surely the layers are being peeled away in preparation for a much bigger, more momentous celebration of the full time, big time spectacular when everything opens on a much wider national scale.

At the moment things are still very much in the air, balanced uncertainly at times and not sure whether to commit itself to anything more serious than full- time family reunions, all day trading, weddings, barmitzvahs, garden parties, the inevitable summer barbecues, corporate gatherings. Then there are the business functions and endless days, weeks, and months in pub gardens swallowing huge quantities of lager, wine, beer, vodka, gin, brandy and wide varieties of cocktails while not forgetting the Sunday carvery lunches with friends and families we thought we'd never see again.

As things stand at the moment we may be compelled to think in the present rather than plan anything elaborate since the future isn't quite sure what to do with itself. We are in no man's land here, neither nor there for these are very troubling and troubled times. Others would rather settle for full-on optimism. We look around us wistfully at the parks, streets and roads and the irony is not lost on us. People are still running, walking together comfortably within their own particular family unit and yet there are those of us who can never be sure what to do in the best interests of all, how to react emotionally or whether to just accept the status quo. Acceptance and resignation are almost indistinguishable.

The corner shops next to us are still doing, you would have thought, extremely well if only because small businesses with perhaps small overheads are never likely to struggle. They wander in and out with their basic groceries, loaves of bread, milk, tins of peas, dog and cat food readily available without forgetting the scratch cards for the Lottery. How very accessible and cheap the food is in these tiny goldmines so why pay more at Sainsbury's when you can fork out peanuts in the local utility store?

But next door to us the chemist is still imposing its very strict policy on those whose needs are much greater and more urgent than those who can still cope with the cocktail of pills and tablets they may have on hand at home. The people outside wait patiently, still bemused, hot and bothered by the ever- continuing state of hardship, stress and duress. They move very slowly as if mourning the loss of old friends before realising that they themselves are still very much alive and still trying to enjoy life as best they can. Every so often the chemist pulls down its shutters as if scared of something they can't quite put their finger on. Covid 19 is quite clearly indefinable and intangible.

We know why this is happening but it almost seems as if we can't reach out and touch it. If we could only just get our hands on it we'd take it outside and deliver the most scathing lecture to Covid 19. What on earth are you doing here and why are you here? This would be the ultimate comeuppance any disease has ever had if only we could get rid of it.We are though no nearer the all- conquering vaccine or panacea that would wipe the floor with this wretched contagion. How to find the definitive cure for something that is totally invisible and somehow annoyingly elusive? There can be no time frame so let's just be philosophical and take long, deep breaths. Easier said than done.

Now we find that the dry cleaners looks as if might be open because the washing machines are spinning away quite furiously, water sloshing around mechanically and clothes bouncing around quite joyfully. Then there is a dawning realisation that, although the doors are open, people are still not being allowed in. Members of staff are, you feel sure, simply being employed to clean their customers clothes in the vague hope that one day those customers will be given the chance to pick up their washing. But nobody knows when.

The hairdressers is still shut for the time being and if you're still longing for that special Mohican or a more or less complete scalping then you may have to wait for some time. Those clippers will have to suffice at home and some of us had our follicles chopped fairly recently. The forest on your hair was beginning to look so unruly and wild that you began to feel like one of those rural sheep who simply can't wait until spring before Farmer Giles gets to work with the shears.

Still, here we are at the end of May and there is a very real sense that we may not be far away from a partial recovery if not quite the genuine article. For those among us who are desperate for a drop of alcohol or a good, old fashioned weepie at the cinema, the wait continues. You glance inside those neglected and disconsolate pubs with their wooden chairs on tables and you realise that the sociable boozers with a predilection for a Prosecco or a large jug of amber nectar may have to wait until the second week in July to get back in touch with their work mates. It can only be a matter of time.

The pizza parlours, vegan cafes, Chinese and Indian restaurants as well as a whole host of nosheries and eateries, sandwich bars, coffee shops, fish and chip shops, Costas and Pret A Mangers still look like lost souls in a windswept wilderness. There's nowhere to go to for the public who so regularly patronise their premises. These are exceptional times of course but we'll keep going because we have to and we will. We are battle hardened and we do possess the strongest backbone. We will come out of this with flying colours. We know we can.

Dominic Cummings a loose cannon, genuine asset or is he going? The latest Covid 19 bulletin.

Dominic Cummings- a loose cannon, genuine asset or is he going? The latest Covid 19 bulletin.

Scandal and controversy stalk the corridors of Westminster. What a palaver! What a disgrace! Send that man to the Tower of London, off with his head and dig out that guillotine. This man should be excommunicated, driven out of office and kicked unceremoniously out of the country. He should fall on his sword, never be allowed to hold any kind of high profile position and exalted role in the Tory government cabinet.

Heads will roll and his days as aide and adviser to Boris Johnson's top table of politicians are now numbered. Or so it would have seemed. But yesterday Dominic Cummings got out of jail without any blemishes on his career and, to all outward appearances, innocent and absolved of all blame. After all the woes, tears, heartache and suffering that have spread across the world during the last two months or so Dominic Cummings was given the benefit of the doubt. He did so because some kind of strange political immunity had rendered him clear of all charges. It wasn't my fault governor.

But here's the point. The latest politician to be dragged through the mud, tarnished by association and branded a blundering fool, is smiling like the proverbial Cheshire cat and grinning from ear to ear as if that bank robbery had nothing to do with him. Cummings was caught off guard and tried to sneak away from the scene of the crime as if the incident had nothing to do with him. There is something about the whole maddening, madcap world of politics that fails to make any sense at all. There is an underlying current of naivety, arrogance and rank stupidity that seems to follow everybody who walks into the House of Comedy. Or should that be the House of Commons.

Over the weekend though Dominic Cummings emerged blinking into the sunlight from his home and seemed mightily offended that everybody was fuming, boiling over with resentment and ready to bay for his blood. Cummings had broken every law in every legal tome known to mankind, he'd stumbled blindly into a honeytrap of his own making and thought he'd got away with murder. His crime was simple but for a man who should have known better this was just a complete embarrassment.

And yet Cummings, dressed in loose T-shirt and perhaps more suited to a game of basketball in the park with his Westminster colleagues, just dismissed the cameras and prying microphones rather like a man who thought people were genuinely invading his privacy. In fact he was furious, incandescent with rage, frothing at the mouth because nobody could prove anything and besides where are the fingerprints? He didn't do anything wrong and that's final. Get out of my way! The hands were providing a complete defensive mechanism, fingers pushing away the accusers with righteous indignation.

In those final few moments before driving off in a huff, Dominic Cummings performed like a man who'd never been anywhere near a place where he shouldn't have been. If a court of law had proven that he was guilty then where was the incriminating evidence? Go on, where are the facts, the truth, the documentary proof? How could they pin anything on him? He hadn't perpetrated any sin or wrongdoing so he'd be grateful if you could please let him get on with his Sunday. And so the day continued.

The fact is though - and it looks to be as clear as yesterday's blue early summer day- that Cummings had broken the very law of the land that his government had implemented only months before. He'd travelled up to the North East in Durham to visit his family when we all know of course that Boris, his colleague and Prime Minister on the front bench, had implicity told him not to if only because Covid 19 made it abundantly clear that everybody in both Britain should have been self isolating, staying safe and staying at home.

Now there are times throughout any government's tenure of life when maybe they should listen to logical advice, toe the party line and just obey the laws of the land. It all seemed to be going swimmingly well for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair until the Iraq war left him in a crumpled heap on the floor. Education, Education, Education reminded you of a stuck needle on a record.

For the fairly new incumbent as Prime Minister Boris Johnson this year should have been his honeymoon period, a purple patch, a time for forward planning, radical thinking and just being free to breathe the rarefied air of a man who'd just pulled the lid off the sweet jar. It was all there waiting for him, loads of positivity, major progress on the Brexit agreement and by the end of the year, Britain would be floating on a sea of affluence, away from all those wicked old, interfering European Union busybodies with their officious airs and pompous graces.

But oh no there had to be something, the fly in the ointment, the ultimate spoiler. Who'd have believed it possible after all those years of wrangling, bickering, procrastinating, waffling, double speaking, blah, blah blah! He'd thought he'd seen the back of those problematic complications, the long, wearisome hours, weeks and months of bitter warfare, confrontational politicking, going red in the face, getting all hot and bothered about piffle, jargon, nonsense and just shouting for no apparent reason.

It was all too much for many of us but to others just a warped thrill because we do love a good, old fashioned bust up, a row over the garden fence, a big, meaty altercation where compromise is the last thing on anybody's mind. So when somebody mentioned 2020 and another year in his life, Boris Johnson just jumped up in the air with joy and wondered whether he could just have a peaceful New Year without any troubles. It would not be that though and here we are at the end of May and the demons are out to get Boris Johnson. We're going to haunt you my friend and you'd be well advised to get used to this way of life.

Come the end of February and then properly March Johnson was suddenly spiralling out of control, drowning in a sea of nightmares and waking up in cold sweats during the night. Within the first couple of weeks of March, Johnson was metaphorically up to his neck in water, waves devouring him and dragging him under. Suddenly, a couple of passengers aboard a Chinese cruise vessel had been quarantined and tested for an unheard of disease known as coronavirus and the rest is too hard to talk  about anymore.

What then followed was the stuff of calamity, worldwide panic and emergency, a deadly disease that was killing hundreds, then thousands and then millions of innocent people. Then it got worse and worse and now we can only look at all of our media and social media outlets with renewed disbelief. Now you'd have thought the last thing one of Boris Johnson's friends wanted was some village idiot type to spoil his weekend but he got it and for a minute or two you privately hoped that Johnson would do the decent thing and just give him the sack, the heave ho, go now and don't come back.

Yesterday though Johnson stood outside 10 Downing Street without any resemblance to the Worzel Gummidge look he'd assumed a couple of days beforehand and shot from the hip. He stated his case, jumped to the defence of Cummings and explained that he wasn't particularly bothered about what had happened because essentially Dominic Cummings hadn't really done anything drastically wrong.

Cummings told us that he simply wanted to travel back to Durham to see his family and that when he got there he'd just speak to his family from the bathroom if it made people any happier. He'd keep well away from his loved ones, shout downstairs to them by way of communication and then use a tannoy system to make himself even clearer. Nobody should panic but Cummings had this one all worked out. But oh no Cummings had to sit down with his family, making pleasant conversation over tea and biscuits and then sitting down next to his family over Sunday lunch with a nice roast for good measure.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster where Cummings should have been all the time, members of the Tory party were seeing red. This was nothing but the most deplorable indiscretion ever committed by any politician, a hanging offence nay less. Accusations of vile hypocrisy, dim wittedness, ignorance and plain insubordination should be rightly levelled at him and the sooner the better.

Sadly though Prime Minister Johnson missed a sitter from close range, an open goal. He didn't seize the day and the moment had passed as quickly as it had come. According to Johnson, Cummings remains a man of fine, upstanding principles, accurate judgement and honour. And yet the whole nation are up in arms because this is quite clearly not what the Prime Minister should have said. He should have told Cummings to sling his hook, exit the back door and get out of town.

And so the nation rubs its eyes again, yearns for something to cling onto by way of salvation, somebody to guide them through these anguished days, weeks and months. All they can find is some circus clown who just loves to fall over, run around the ring with a red nose and then insult the intelligence of everybody around him.

Several less than flattering expletives should be on their way to Cummings but perhaps he knew that was inevitable anyway. So Dominic Cummings here's an easy to understand warning. The next time you come out of your house and fold a bike into a car boot be sure you do it when the coast is clear and there's nobody around. The chances are that you'll be exposed to the eyes of Britain, humiliated, questioned relentlessly and then reprimanded by huge sections of society who then attack you for doing something morally incorrect and plainly daft. Make sure you don't do it again Cummings otherwise Boris Johnson may not be quite as forgiving. Now turn off the light and go to bed. Let that be the last time we tell you not to misbehave.