The moving finger rants

I was in self-imposed isolation when the national lockdown began on 27th March. When I emerged, fourteen days later, blinking into the daylight as might a newborn babe, the world had changed. Edinburgh had become a ghost town. The few people one could see on the streets all looked vaguely shell-shocked. I found it difficult to resist the urge to whistle the soundtrack to 28 DAYS LATER while walking around.

I've always found those animated advertising hoardings somewhat dystopian, but now they were all reading SUPPORT YOUR HEALTHCARE WORKERS and then SHOP RESPONSIBLY and then an advert for lager, because Scotland, and then IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER. It's possible I imagined that last one.

I was given a letter that I must carry on my person at all times, authorizing me to travel as an essential worker. Blue observed that being told by my employer that I'm an essential worker is roughly equivalent to being told by a stripper that I'm her favourite. The hotel has been closed but there's still a need for a security presence, and we've been taking the opportunity to do some deep-cleaning. So I'm basically a night watchman now. But at least I have a job.

Since then everything has changed again, and again, and we speak fondly but with a lingering bewilderment of the before-times. And today is the grand reopening of most businesses in Scotland. Everything's going back to normal, except it's really not.

I know we're ready, at my place of work—plastic screens and signage everywhere, QR codes all over the place, mandatory sanitizing stations, staff all trained and drenched in PPE—but I question whether society is ready. I'm in customer service: I talk to humans for a living. I'm not optimistic.

Eleven people on the rota today, to take care of all of our guest. With that sort of staff-to-customer ratio, I think we deserve an extra star.

See you on the flipside, folks.

I will be in That London for a training course next week, and I've wangled an extra evening there. Who fancies pints and/or ramen on Friday?

Hello Paul, your Star Trek costume has arrived. Bloody hell, my life just took a weird turn. However it's just a top, so if you could please wear black trousers and shoes... welcome to the wonderful world of movie stardom. Please provide the bottom half of your own spacesuit.

Has anyone seen my legs? They don't appear to be below my waist, where I normally keep them.

Playing the Star Trek psycho (it's just occurred to me: That Scene with Janet Leigh wouldn't have worked nearly so well with a sonic shower) tomorrow and Friday, and then, on Friday, I have to change out of the Starfleet uniform and run off to audition for a completely different piece. Specifically, I need to stop killin' dudes, cross town, and do a romantic scene with a beautiful twenty-year-old. I can't see this ending well, and not only because the romance is written by Dostoyevsky.

I mean that quite literally. Dear old Fyodor Mikhaylovich is not particularly renowned for his mastery of the screenplay as an artform, largely due to his untimely death some years before the genre was invented. This script is lifted straight out of the book into a single fixed scene, one set, one shot, no direction, and no regard given to how films work. I gather this company have previously only done stage work: it shows. More work for me. Would be a good part, though.

~

At regular pays-the-bills work today I've received a single-sentence email (Can you please confirm that we have a reservation with you for 2 people for 2 nights Nov 11-12) in 100-point Arial text, taking up four screens and requiring me to scroll. I don't respond well to being shouted at. I've considered answering in 200-point ALL CAPS AND BOLD FOR GOOD MEASURE, or maybe whispering a reply in Flyspeck-3. Neither option amuses me sufficiently. I think I'mma sophisticate this up.

my dear mister price
your reservation stands firm
like the ancient oak

Better idea: commission Brian Blessed to phone him up and reconfirm.