When in doubt you can always read the news for a good dose of dozy. Allow me to guide you around a few gems from today. As if to prove that people can’t be sensible regardless of how many old people are dropping dead we have a 400 strong wedding party broken up by police. In a school. That is used for testing at the weekends. In Hackney. Which has a Covid case rate per 100,000 that is 150 higher than the national average. You could try and make it up but I suspect it would be a struggle. Even more astonishing is that at a time when our economy is throwing up blood into a sock drawer the most we’ll get back is a £10,000 fine for the organisers and £200 off five other silly pricks that took part. I would say that if you afford to host a 400 strong wedding party then you can afford to pay a much bigger fine than that, and if you are stupid enough to attend you deserve to have your bank account drained as well. I hope the marriage is a deeply unhappy one which ends in tragic circumstances involving sharks. Bastards.
Staying on the you-know-what I am sure everyone is pleased to hear that Billy Connolly has had his vaccination jab. I’m being serious. I am very pleased that his health and wellbeing are being catered for but I fail to see why it should be in the news. Connolly is without doubt one of a small handful of the greatest comedians ever – perhaps even the best of them – and I am profoundly grateful that he has spread the joy for so long. That said I really doubt the value of a daily update on the latest famous pensioner to have had a shot in the arm. The other day we had Prince William gushing on about how ‘proud’ he was of his grandparents for having the jab and it made me wonder which part of the process required pride; well done on having a potentially life saving vaccination, you’ve really taken one for the team’.
The curse of the bat continues to haunt the next James Bond film, and by this point I have ceased to care. I expect hundreds of films have been postponed in the last 10 months whereas others have been stuck into cinemas to die a death they never expected, and in some cases didn’t deserve. Bond, we are therefore to understand, is different. Bond is a little bit better than the rest. Only he isn’t. It isn’t. I like a bit of Bond but it is arguably one of the most inconsistent film franchises ever to have drawn an audience. Even the Carry On films had a steadier, if smellier, ship. Daniel Craig may be a decent Bond but of his four outings only one is truly great (Skyfall), another good (Casino Royale) and the other two best described as OK but a bit shit as well. The conclusion is that whatever manner of Bond is coming round the corner all we know is that it’s going very slowly and there’s every chance we’ll have waited a long time for not a lot. It would be more honest for the company to accept that they’re greedy and that they value money over their art. Can it be that they are putting their audience off as well as their product? That would be foolish.
In other entertainment news it is with a joyous heart that I learn this will be another Glastonbury free year. Glastonbury is my idea of hell. I would sooner visit a Ukranian orphanage than go to ‘Glasto’. I would sooner visit a burning orphanage than listen to a lot of the shit that gets played there too. Musically speaking Glastonbury is all about picking out a pound coin or two from a huge dog turd. It is a weekend citadel populated almost exclusively by dicks with too much money and a distinct lack of taste. And when it’s not flag waving white arseholes in Hunter wellingtons barfing on about how much they love Lily Allen and Stormzy (because they heard that song of his in that advert and they can’t understand a word he’s saying but, oh well, we’ve got tickets now) it’s hairy old swingers looking for bullshit ley lines and some healing crystals that were bought as a job lot from a market in Swindon. Believe me, it doesn’t matter that Glastonbury won’t happen this year and it doesn’t matter that Paul McCartney won’t be there to do a 12 minute version of ‘Hey Jude’, because in the end that will always be 11 minutes too long.
That’s it folks. Just a few odds and sods to sign off on at the end of another bleak week on planet earth. If I felt sorry enough for myself I’d tell you that I’m struggling, but that line should be reserved for anyone who has to put up with the kind of crap the likes of me is lucky enough to have avoided. The wedding idiots should be sent into space without a helmet, we don’t need an individual break down of who has and the jab and, frankly, who gives a fuck about Bond and Glastonbury? Nothing other than that. There is no philosophy or hidden agenda; I just wanted to share my thoughts. You can do whatever you like with them.
G B Hewitt. 22.01.2021
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 