Tag: Nerf Guns

The C-19 Diaries. Lockdown.

Day 1

Approximately two hours after I write a blog post entitled “Not in Lockdown yet…” the PM – wilfully ignoring my blog activity – broadcasts to the nation that we’re now Locked Down. 

Of course he doesn’t use that phrase. But we’re not allowed to leave the house, mostly. There is no definite time given as to when the new restrictions come into force, apart from a vague “from tonight”, so I drive through eerily-deserted streets to make an emergency visit to the office, where I forage for some equipment that will make video-production from home more achievable. 

Along with some decent headphones, I find coffee beans, pasta, and PINE NUTS. Glory be, as my granny would have said under similar circumstances. I also rescue a half-full packet of Tunnocks Caramel Wafers. All of the above are known ways to improve video production.

Then, as an afterthought, I retrieve my Nerf Gun from my desk. You just don’t know when you’re going to need a personal firearm at times like these. Disco Dave has been self-isolating for days, and we are fearing a rampage sometime soon.

Today, I spend the morning reorganising my “office” space, aka the living room, which I will now be sharing with my flatmate. I spend so much time on the reorganising and tidying that I don’t get any actual work done before it’s time to stop for lunch. It’s a nostalgic throwback to the days when I would find any manner of domestic tasks to do rather than sit down and revise for exams.

Myself and the ops team work on a new plan for how to produce an online church service, without access to our church building, and working remotely from home. The main problem we foresee is that some of our content-providers – who will record themselves on video – reside in the Sticks, where the broadband is so slow it would make you crave the good ol’ days of dial-up.

We speculate on ways that we could more efficiently receive the video files from them. Suggestions include training up a carrier pigeon. Or taking the SD card containing the video recording, strapping it to a nearby sheep and hope that it wanders into one of our gardens sometime soon.

We’re a resourceful team.

Yesterday I ordered a few things from Amazon. This morning I get a text message:

Your driver will deliver your parcel today between 17:18-18:18, you do have options if you’re not going to be in.

Oh, it’s ok. I think I’ll be in.

I have another delivery earlier in the day. On opening the front door, the driver jumps back, sort of like a startled rabbit, so as to maintain the 2m distancing. I think she overdid it and it was more like 3m. I am trying not to take that personally. 

My delivery included a birthday present from my sister. I had originally requested a new pair of ski poles, having snapped one in an unfortunate chair-lift incident during this year’s ski trip.

However, on account of the PM’s announcement last night, and the sudden-dawning realisation that my hairdresser would now be closing, I felt that hair clippers would make a more pragmatic gift. So I am now quite excited to try these out. I am also nervous about the results.

No photos will be posted here, don’t even ask. But anyone with a Zoom meeting lined up with me anytime soon (there are a few) is in for a real treat.

Nerf guns and press-ups

Well, dear reader, time has moved inexorably onwards, like an ever-rolling stream, as a wise and poetic songwriter once said. The summer is on the wane, and the twilight gradually creeps earlier and earlier. Saturday saw the last day of the cricket season in Scotland, and marked the end of my twentieth season with Holy Cross Academicals Cricket Club.

Apart from a couple of short trips down to Yorkshire and over to Northern Ireland, I have worked steadily through the summer. The office, usually a hive of industrious activity, has been mostly quiet over this time, with many staff taking well-earned holidays.

One has to be one’s guard in the office. Chief among the reasons for this is the stash of Nerf guns in the Rector’s Office. There is a veritable arsenal of deadly plastic weaponry in there, and just as certain Western countries feel the need to have nuclear firepower on tap, as a deterrent to the Bad Guys, so it is with the staff, many of whom have a Nerf gun of some description within easy reach at any given time.

It should be said at this point that I am not comparing the Rector with Bad Guys of any kind, and any inferences drawn by the reader in this direction should be promptly repented of.

But on any given day there is no telling just when intra-office hostilities might commence.

Just the other day, I was fixing one of Disco Dave’s projectors on a nearby desk, when I was, without any warning, shot three times at close range. The Rector, discussing matters of great theological importance (perhaps grace and forgiveness) nearby, witnessed this unprovoked attack, and straightaway authorised me to plunder his arsenal to take revenge.

Within seconds a reasonably significant skirmish had commenced, sending the Rector’s Administrator scuttling into the Executive Director’s office for cover.

Meanwhile the Finance Director clutched her tin hat tightly to her head, and heroically carried on crunching numbers on her Fat Club spreadsheet. The FD has recently coerced the rest of the office (or most thereof) into joining her on a health kick, and a weekly weigh-in.

In the interests of getting a benchmark of current levels of overweightedness, and targets to work towards, the Executive Director and I punched some numbers into the online BMI calculator kindly supplied by the NHS and almost sent it into meltdown, with the result literally off the chart at the ‘overweight’ end.

It was then that I realised I had put in the ED’s vital statistics along with a mistyped age of “5”, and much hilarity ensued at the mental image of a five-year-old with the body of a retired hooker. (It’s probably wise to explain for the rugby-uninitiated that ‘hooker’ is a position in a rugby team. This is the kind of hooker-ing that our ED has retired from, not anything else you may have been thinking. Tsk.)

The implications of this (almost) office-wide enthusiasm for healthy living have been profound, with the office’s regular supply of cakes (of which the FD was a regular and frequent provider) having dwindled into near-nothingness. Instead, a fruit bowl has appeared on a shelf previously considered sacred. Conversations have been had about the relative health merits of various types of nuts. (Cashews, it seems, somewhat inevitably given their tastiness, aren’t all that good for you.) Empire Biscuits have become a Friday-only treat. And Disco has been advocating all manner of wild physical exercise.

A few days ago, he bravely wandered, unarmed, over to my desk. After reaching reflexively for my Elite Strike Jolt EX-1 Blaster, I chose instead to extend an olive branch and hear what he had to say.

Naturally he had a raft of new extreme press-up techniques to impress me with, including the “Diamond”, the “Crucifix”, and the “Superman”. He even dropped his waistcoat-splittingly muscular torso to the floor and demonstrated the Superman, which involved him flinging his arms forwards at the apex of the press-up, and back again in time to prevent him losing his teeth. I was impressed. I wasn’t sure how to confess that my own press-ups have been restricted to the “Common-or-Garden” variety, and not that many of them either.

But who needs press-ups when one is playing an athletic activity such as cricket in Scotland’s East League Division 6? After a comfortable win and early finish on Saturday, a number of the team sat outside in the sunshine and celebrated a mediocre season by working our way through the considerable left-overs from tea. Having assiduously monitored my diet through the week, cutting out all manner of tasty treats, I undermined my own efforts by piling into doughnuts and french fancies, and two Cokes. Plus a Coke Zero, but that doesn’t count. A lot of laughter was had, especially at the expense of everyone’s favourite Indian “bowler who bats a bit”, who still hasn’t told his mother-in-law that he married her daughter several years ago.

Sunday followed Saturday, as it is wont to do, and a late night pizza followed the doughnuts and french fancies. Given the nutritionally-suspect weekend choices, I held little hope of good news on the scales on Monday, but as it turned out still managed to register a slight weight loss.

Hurrah! Time for a celebratory carrot stick.