Monday 18 May 2020

Musings from outside a bolted door...

Coronavirus: Pubs and restaurants could close across UK | Metro News

One issue Scrobs has with 'lockdown', is that meetings with good friends like Elias and Gloriette Sagtrouser have been suspended.

For two months, the normally open doors of 'The Bells' have been firmly shut and bolted, although the lovely people who run the place are doing takeaways of enormous proportions at weekends, and we try and support them on our meagre pensions (?), as much as we can, the various pints of Sheps' 'Spring Ale - 8.7abv' and the large Anno and Fevertrees are just not apparent at the moment!

So there's a sad dearth of seeing the trilby hat, sloping to the rear of the noble head, with a twenty pound note swaying in the breeze from a gnarled mitt, and the tiny feet, tiny hands, and huge - gins of the lovely lady, and things just don't seem right somehow.

Elias has been working hard though, keeping his business going, and I guess Gloriette has been working just as hard, doing the books, taking the orders over the phone etc, because I have been gladdened to notice, only last week, that after several weeks of the muck-away boys trundling past The Turrets with loads of subsoil, the Sagtrouser trucks are arriving with a variety of heavy building materials to a site down the road, where we believe another ornamental fishing lake is being constructed.

Life goes on I suppose, but discussions with hard-working chums still at it in the building industry have indicated that the good builders are getting to grips with the situation, and finding ways to keep working, which is what they always do, rather than be paid by the state to sit around and do very little.

These guys and gals are still the people who are providing the taxes to pay for the lockdown, and all the public services who are on full pay, pensions, soft hours and lots of excuses, especially from the 'management' end, but thankfully, the real money is going to the front line worker bees.

6 comments:

A K Haart said...

We'd like to support local businesses on our meagre pensions too but we aren't going out much and everywhere is closed anyway. I fished some folding money out of my back pocket this morning which has been there so long I'll have to check if the notes are still legal tender.

Scrobs. said...

Ha ha ha, Mr H! Fabulous response!

The only time we use a twenty note is to pay our window cleaner, whenever he arrives, and we have to wonder where all the 'local' cash is, it may be in Senora O'Blene's purse, but there again, it could be in the hiding place, where we flatten all the plastic stuff to pristine condition, which isn't much use if we can't remember where it is...

My wallet is the sort that has flies lurking in it, it only has a few loyalty cards, and a receipt from the garden centre from November last year...

goosegirl said...

If your wallet has flies in it I presume you close it with a zip! OH's leather wallet has suddenly disintegrated due to a long-standing moth infection. I managed to find a lovely hairy-chested man from Rentokil who I thought would give me some good advice. All I got was the full collection of the Wallace and Gromit DVDs!

Scrobs. said...

Ha ha ha, Goosers!

You actually have to pull the zip down, not up, pulling it up causes strictures and stuff; downwards is much better, and releases the things...

I don't know why I'm telling you these facts, you'd be better off telling them to me!

goosegirl said...

Scrobs. This is no time to tell me how to open my wallet because I've used it so much lately that it needs a dentist to sort the teeth out! Unfortunately I'll have to contact the man who bravely pulled his tooth out so I can borrow his pliers to remove OH's cards from his wallet 'cos they rarely see daylight. Bless his little cotton socks as last night's meal was a venison haggis from McSween's which has been lurking in our freezer since last Xmas. BTW, I've had trousers where said zip doesn't connect when pulling it to the top, so I've had to use one of my cunning plans so I don't reveal my current underwear to all and sundry.

Scrobs. said...

Goosey, I never ever thought that I would be discussing ladies' zips on a simple place like here...

But now you mention it, if Mrs Grow - O'Blene agrees, I may just be able to do a Dom Cummings and be there in about five hours...