Quarantine Blog - Day 8

 

“Its Friday Thennnn, Saturday, Sunday! WHAT! ITS FRIDAY THENNNN! SATURDAY SUNDAY! WHAT! WHAT! WHAT! WHAT! GO! GO! GO! GO! AHHHHHHH!!!”

There will never be Friday in my life where I will not hear this in my head. Just the thought of the word Friday brings the image of Mufasa dancing along side the car in his outrageous pineapple coloured, short sleeved shirt, red shorts, grey school socks and brown loafers. Instant Friday mood. Only Friday mood in quarantine is just daily mood for me, just a constant contentment for existing without having to do anything. 

I was trying to think of something to write about today and I saw some notes I made on a previous date. When me and my friends meet up, we tend to talk lot of…well…shit. We have built a strong relationship based on a mutual hatred of each-other. I once accidentally called one of them and immediately hung up after realising my mistake of calling them in the first place, my reaction was to say "why would I want to talk him”.  On the other hand we do tend to come up with some gold on occasion. We were in a pub once and we were thinking of some great business ideas, I tend to write them down when I inevitably go to toilet every 15 minutes because me bladder is the size of a peanut. I’ll list a couple for you now: 

'Where's Jesus' - our take on the popular book franchise ‘Where's Wally’. The idea of the book is that you will be searching for hours in a crowd of famous scientists for him then finding out that on all the pages Jesus isn't on any of them. We may have actually came up with this in Shrewsbury, the birthplace of Charles Darwin. Or Newcastle, the birthplace of Alan Shearer. Which reminds me of a very funny story about my father. For Christmas my brother had once booked tickets for them to go see Ed Sheehan at Wembley, but he told everybody that he was going to go see Alan Shearer at Wembley. Wonderful.

'Crisp fest' - when we were young used to have an annual get together we affectionately called ‘crisp fest’. This is where we would each buy as many variety of crisps as possible, we would start eating them early in the morning and watch tv and movies all day. We had plans to start an events business until our original idea was stolen. Apparently it's now deemed very similar to 'Netflix and chill’, very comparable except we didn't start having the…you know the…chill bit. 

‘Possum’ - This is less of a business idea but more a a game we play a lot still…as almost 30 year olds. We all take as many beers as we can carry and climb a tree as high as we can. We cannot leave the tree until we have finished our beers. If you had access to our WhatsApp group, you’d be surprised to see the amount of tree photos we now send each other with the tag, “Possum tree”. We’d then all comment on its capability to be a possumable tree. Because I have artistic licence here, I’m going to let you all know, I’m the best possumer out of the lot of us…I can hear their anger from here.

Being off work for an extended period of time sounds great when you’re sat in an office not wanting to deal with responsibility. It’s only when your sat on your arse without any responsibility do you realise, that responsibility keeps you occupied. Unfortunately my chosen hobby, that keeps me occupied, requires a lot of space and equipment, which meant bringing it over to Guernsey would have been entirely impractical. In January 2020, I decided I wanted to start brewing beer, why? Maybe because I like to think I’m incredibly good at drinking it, so why shouldn’t I start making it? Obviously the way I’ve drunk beer has matured in recent years. From downing pints of lager in my late teens early twenties, “down it fresher!“ (a common university slogan), to now enjoying the delicate/intricate tastes that the finest hops and malts can deliver to my taste buds. I have become somewhat a beer snob. You know those kind of guys who wear glasses, drink out of variously shaped chalices, and spout BS about what their favourite hop is. If you’re asking it’s Simcoe. The dream is to open up a micro-brewery/taproom in the UK, I was hoping to get some experience with some local breweries as and when they needed an extra hand. I was getting into some decent conversations before Covid struck, and annihilated the pub/drinks industry. Fortunately being on Furlough gave me the opportunity to complete an online brewery course I had started and in June I achieved my IBD General Certificate in Brewing. Since then I’ve been making my own beer in my flat. Which is incredibly rewarding. 

If you want to follow my progress my instagram is @sarnianbrew…selfless plug! Its an expensive hobby, and one you can’t actually start making money from until you’ve got licences etc to sell alcohol, so it’ll be awhile until it’s technically a business. But it’s the start of journey that has me enthused. I’m going to give you some pure cheddar cheese here. If you have a dream, chase that son of a gun. And don’t be afraid of failure, because it’s a necessity to progress, pain is inevitable but suffering is a choice. Cue quotes being written on the background of a sunset and posted all over social media.

I miss being outside. 8 days doesn’t sound like a long time, but as a dog owner I walk between 2-4 hours a day, everyday. I miss my dog and our walks a lot, my legs are starting to lose muscle mass, and I’ve got thin legs as it is, any thiner and you’ll only be able to see them at certain angles. My dog’s a cross breed, we did a DNA test on him to find out what he is, turns out he's 30% Lurcher, 20% Husky and 50% a prick. It’s been 2 years, I’m very proud, since he last took a shit on the sofa. His name is Crixus. I’ve given up trying to correct people when the call him ‘Chrisus’, ‘Christmas’ and my favourite so far ‘Princess’. He’s named after the roman Gladiator in the Spartacus saga. In the TV programme, ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand’, he was played by New Zealand actor Manu Bennett, who we fortunately got to meet at Comic Con. We told him our dog was named after his character, he didn’t really acknowledge it, but proceeded to tell us about the cosmic connectivity of everybody in the world and our ancestors….huh…ok. Also have you noticed how weird dog breeds are getting. There’s a pattern to them? You just use the nationality of some bizarre country you've never heard of, and then use a made up word ending with a consonant. 

"Beautiful dog what breed is he? He's a Herzegovian habaroo" 

“This little darling? she's a djiboutian yappa"

"this fella is Guadalupen fuffiernarie”

I also miss you too Mel, I didn’t forget about you. Mel works at the Surrey and West Sussex Fire and Rescue Control Center, I couldn’t be more proud of the work she does as an essential worker, not just through Covid, but essential 24/7, 365 days a year, every year. You go Glen Coco! I’m going to let you all in on a secret of hers, she is a sugar fiend. I’ve never known anybody in my life that will drive to a Tesco 24/7 at 1am to pick up chocolate and strawberry laces. I am now also addicted to sugar because I can’t let her eat all of it by herself obviously.

The most exciting thing to actually happen in our Quarantine day was that we watched the new Christopher Nolan film ’Tenet’. It’s my 3rd viewing of it, I’d love to tell you what its about, but I haven’t a Scooby Doo. Quite relevant that we watched a film all about the entropy of time given our current situation of time moving soooooooooo slowly. I completely related to the protagonist of the film when he starts moving backwards through time, I swear the clock’s second hand in the living room is going backwards…oh wait it’s broken. I finished my day like every other, Beers, Bowel Movements, Bed.