Franklin's Tower ☮ Grateful Dead, 5/9/77

Covid Queeries

'If someone's famous does that make it OK if they break the lockdown?' asked Tuppence.
'It helps if they are both rich AND famous.  But mainly rich.  And it doesn't make it OK,  it just makes it easier transport-wise and less likely that you'll get arrested.  Are you referring to the second home phenomenon?'
'Yes.  Apparently a rich author has just jetted in to one of Val Nark's luxury glamping yurts for some rest and such-like.  He arrived with five cases of baked beans, five boxes of Chili Heatwave Doritos and five barrels of McEwan's 80 Shilling.  His wife has ancestors from Hereabouts and he's self-isolating, he announced with a megaphone when he arrived.  There's also a notice pinned to the post-box, stating the same.'
'Is his wife with him?'
'No.'
'This is an outrage.  It isn't a second home phenomenon - it's a glamping situation which is even worse and he doesn't even have the figleaf of the wife's ancestry to cover himself with.  Clearly Val Nark is complicit in this blatant rule-flouting, because  - true to form - she has rented the luxury yurt to said famous person.  For actual hard cash money.  Tuppence - you won't have experienced such an event, and even I can barely remember the last time it happened, but - this is a pitchfork job.'
Geoffrey nodded.  'If ever there was an occasion to use them , this is it.  T-G - are the pitchforks still to hand?'
'Yes,' he replied quietly.' They're in the Iron Age burial chamber up on the moor.  They haven't been used since the last violation, during the Great Plague of Incomers.  We chased them off the cliffs with them.  My, we were a magnificent sight, wielding our pitchforks, our blue faces shining in the light of flaming torches rudely fashioned from the thighbones of our ancestors as we ran full tilt at the infected incoming hordes.'
'Why were your faces blue?' asked Tuppence.
'The exertion Tuppence.  When you're charging across the moors slightly out of condition with a pipe of baccy gripped between your teeth, a pitchfork in one hand, a flaming torch in the other, plus a flask of soup and a snack for later in your backpack with the usual emergency medical supplies,  it tends to get you out of puff.'
'Will the pitchforks be sharp enough though,' asked Tuppence,' Might they not have rusted up a bit after all these years?'
'Oh but I've maintained them Tuppence.  Polished them carefully with fine wire wool and WD40 by the light of every Full Moon.  Excellent question by the way.'
'Well what are we waiting for?  Let's go!  Let's rid ourself of this selfish incomer.  Pitchfork him over the cliffs and make a Tiktok of it so nobody else thinks they can come here to self-isolate.'

next time - we end up going 'over the top' as we rush headlong and willy nilly at anyone 'strange'.  Tuppence decides not to make his charity single as the lockdown will be over soon. 

'It escaped from a lab in Wuhan Uncle Tuppy,' Tuppence raved as he paced the room with a loaded pistol in one hand and a empty packet of hot 'n' spicy Niknaks in the other.
'What did?'
'For pity's sake, Tuppy,' yawned the T-G (for he had returned), 'Whatever else does anyone talk about these days but that tiresome virus.'
'It's not a virus though,' continued Tuppence, his eyes glittering feverishly, 'It's a bioweapon.'
'That doesn't preclude it being a virus Tuppence.  It could be a weaponised virus.'
'What about the bats?'  I asked.  'I thought it originated in bats. Someone in China et one and it jumped species.  Didn't they?'
'I thought pangolins,' said Geoffrey from the kitchen, raising his voice over the sound of sizzling bacon.
'I'll tell you precisely where it originated,' said the T-G, filling his pipe. 'It originated in darkest South America, in a Nazi colony that's been thriving since the fall of Hitler and waiting its chance for world domination.  Do you remember when you got stung by the giant South American wasp, Tuppy?'
'I do.  I'm still troubled by occasional hallucinations about being pursued by that massive egg.'
'That was just the start Tuppy.  They were only warming up at that point.  You, yes you - were the guinea pig.'
'You mean, the wasp that stung me had escaped from a laboratory run by Nazis?'
'Yes.  Or was it released? You see Tuppy, those Nazis are determined to return, using hi-tech bioweapons delivered by wasps that will wipe out half the population of the earth with minimum effort.  The concentrated venom of the giant South American wasp makes the effects of Covid-19 look like a five year old's birthday party.  They intensified its toxicity through years of careful inbreeding.  Just one droplet is now enough to wipe out a city the size of Inverness.'
'I thought that the wasp had escaped from your vitrine - the one in the topmost tower of Tupfinder Towers, late of this parish.'
'It did. A contact of mine had managed to capture it and sent me it via Yodel in a cast iron strongbox, bolted and padlocked but sadly with no key, so that I could study it. I was out when it arrived but they left it in the coal bunker and put a note through the letterbox.  When I eventually crow-barred open the box and got the creature under a hi-powered microscope with a pair of two foot long fire tongs I was appalled!  So appalled that I let go of the tongs and the wasp escaped and - well, you know the rest.  Yet that wasp was only an outrider Tuppy!  The wasps they've got now make that one look like a Mayfly.  They're super-intelligent, but also completely insane due to the inbreeding.  And their venom - dear Lord.'
The T-G shuddered and I signalled to Geoffrey to fetch the sal volatile.
'What can we do to protect ourselves?  Stay indoors and save lives?  Wash our hands for twenty seconds in hot soapy water?'
'That won't do any good.  We need a plan.  I suggest that firstly we must construct individual hazmat suits, so that we can safely go out-doors.  Then, we should all meet up in the Puff Inn.  Stormy's re-opening while maintaining social distancing - though, how he's going to manage that with a pub the size of your average bathroom, beats me.  But we need to support local businesses so -'
'But his staff have been furloughed T-G', Tuppence interrupted, ' and why should they return to work when the virus is still on the loose?'
'Stormy hasn't got any staff, he does it all himself,' I replied. 'He uses rats when he needs casual labour.  Fetch the sewing machine and the tarpaulin Geoffrey.  We'd better get those hazmat suits made up.  I could murder a pint of Purple Peril.'

next time - battling our terror we venture down to the Puff Inn in our newly-fashioned hazmat suits to find that Stormy has devised a foolproof method of keeping himself and his customers safe - six foot long drinking straws, leading from external seating to the bar, and a six foot long 'money chute' for 'contactless' payment.  Also, Tuppence releases a charity single to raise funds for the NHS, featuring a 100 year old care home resident playing the theremin with his false teeth.

'They're loosening the lockdown and I'm not ready to die Geoffrey.'
Geoffrey had returned from being away.  'Away' was an illicit visit to his elderly cousins-twice- removed, who are 'self-isolating' in their second home on a rock somewhere off the St Kilda archipelago and needed some groceries dropping off.
'Sorry I didn't tell you where I was going Tuppy, but I thought best you didn't know cos you'd only have blabbed to snitches like the Fulmars or someone and I'd have been reported to the authorities.'
He was sitting on the mantelpiece eating a four-fish-finger sandwich (his third since his return).  I was so glad to see him I'd even made the sandwiches myself.
'Sandwich all right Geoffrey?'
'Reem thanks,' he said through a belch, wiping tartare sauce from his chin with the large red-spotted handkerchief he'd used to carry the groceries. 'Nobody's ever ready to die.  You just have to get on with it when it happens.  There's not a lot else one can do, short of finding the elixir - ,' he belched again, 'Pardon me, the elixir of eternal life.'
'Remember how we used to worry about smoking Black Bogey and eating too many biscuits and fatty foods?  We thought we were living on the edge if we had a bacon sandwich.  Halcyon days Geoffrey.  Now look at us.  Scared to leave our own four walls.'
'I believe Val Nark's offering free online 'Meditations on Mortality' in podcast form.  I saw a notice nailed to the gate-post by the post-box as I flew in, and I asked Razor Bill about it when he arrived to collect the mail.'
'Free?  That's not like the Narks. They're always such money-grabbers.'
'Entrepreneurs Tuppy.  Up and coming go-getters.  Trying to get by during straitened times.  But on this occasion what they're offering is free, or, free at the point of delivery as Val puts it.  She does the podcast from the healing yurt with all her products carefully price-labelled and arranged in full view.  Her own-made artisan pine-scented earwax candles, antiseptic creams, herbal cough linctus, masks woven from nettle fibres and so forth.  And there are adverts for eco-funerals at intervals during the sesh.'
'That's nice.  What part does Dave play in all this?'
'He sets up the camera of course.  You know how he does his wildlife vids..  I reckon not many people watch anyway.  Nobody really wants to meditate on their own mortality.  They'd rather take their minds off it by getting blind drunk, or binge-eating Hobnobs while watching The Chase.  Mind you that's much the same thing.'
'So here we are, dancing our merry way along life's razor edge, as usual.  How are we going to get through this one Geoffrey?  Must we return to the Old Ways, and fetch the opium from the medical chest?'
'No Tuppy.  I think we must indeed return to the Old Ways, but by that I mean the Old Religion rather than opium.  We need to find the key to eternal life Tuppy.  If there isn't an elixir (and I'm not saying there's not) then there must be a key.  And if anyone can find it, it's us!'

next time - we set out to find the key to eternal life, and Tuppence and his band release a charity single produced by Gob Beldof . 

Grateful Dead - Attics of My Life (Studio Version)