Reproduced on 18/12/2020 from Big Mac Facebook site.
Friday, 27 March 2020.
Hi everyone. I woke up this morning and wished
I hadn’t. One moment we were doing our usual dance worship of the Big Mac band,
the Coronavirus just a new rock group that probably wouldn’t last, and the next
moment a few weeks later here we are, the Earl Haig just a distant memory as if
it were yesterday, and yesterday the same as today with everybody shunning me
as if I had the fucking plague.
Last night I waited for Val to push me my
porridge through the serving hatch of the isolation unit that the government
had ordered me to convert the garden shed into. Then I got totally blinged up,
even down to the diamante red trousers and dancing shoes and the turquoise
crystal rivet belt that I’d had specially made for me by myself and then I
clicked on one of the Big Mac videos and closed my eyes. And the years fell
away and I was back in the Earl Haig of recent weeks; but when my eyes blinked
open again I wasn’t. And two little tears welled up one from each eye and
trickled down my face, neither being able to see the other until they had
passed my nose, at which point they ran towards each other and merged together
on my upper lip, just as we humans used to embrace all those decades ago last
week before the Great Social Distancing Event.
Is this how it ends, with each of us the
isolated orphan of the Big Mac Band’s demise? Well, no, for the band are alive
and kicking and still in full possession of their instruments and playing just
as well mentally as they did on stage. No, I have no idea what that means, but
I do know that they’ve given a great deal of pleasure to thousands or millions
of people over the last three decades; also, that the world, or this corner of
it, is a better place because of it. Oddly, a kingfisher just flashed across my
mind, like an iridescent bolt of blue, but probably nothing to worry about. How
do we feel, I wonder, about helping the band financially? I hate to think of
them scavenging in dustbins late at night. What I suggest is that we organise a
fundraising dinner and dance, perhaps in the Earl Haig if we can find a window
open. Oh, social distancing. Then we can buy the band CD’s that are for sale
online. Once you navigate to the methods of payment section you’ll find that
PayPal is one.
The day will come
when we push ourselves back onto the road from the ditch that we all seem to
have careered into, ultimately because of the dangerous driving of a crazed
microbe. Just think how good it will be when the ditch is at last filled in,
the virus buried out of harm’s way, and a pond is built and attracts
kingfishers (Ah, now I get it) and once again the excitement builds as we wait
for the band to appear, heralded by the wind section on the dance floor and in
and out of tables and then on stage, and the first number will whatever it will
be, and then once more we’ll dance the night away. In the meantime we are
either short of money or there is nothing to spend it on apart from face masks
and tins of spam. Cheers, Laurence
Here is the CD
seller link:
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