The Meerkat Muse – 23/2/22

Greetings ‘kats, I hope you have been behaving, for the Eye is watching. It’s always watching.

May or may not be an eye carved in spread

Let’s kick-start this Muse with some exciting news!

The Awakening

I was contacted by my publisher the other day. My book is next in line to go through the next stage of editing, and once this is complete we’ll be one step closer to publishing. I have no idea what to expect but I am excited to sink my teeth into whatever challenges await! I am also working on something else for my publisher, and when the time is right I’ll reveal a bit more of that too.

Routine

Routine is the word and also the theme. The last couple of weeks haven’t brought about much excitement. I go to work, come home, sit down, watch some telly, go to bed, then repeat. This isn’t automatically a bad thing. The last couple of years have been full of disruption and chaos, so getting back into a steady pattern is good. It helps make life seem more normal. It’s funny – sometimes we crave excitement and drama, only to realise that we actually don’t. Related to this, I really hope we avoid a war. Letting Ukraine get attacked is a mistake, but an all-out war with Russia would bring bombs to London, and I don’t live far from London. There are forms of ‘excitement’ I do not want.

Stability in life is a platform to build on. We all seek it. We all need it. How we attain stability differs from one person to the next, but we all want it.

Work

A review and a Frank discussion at work has reminded me that I need to be a bit more proactive. Pushing a bit harder and taking control of situations will help me enormously to earn more money, so it’s a worthwhile conversation! I dare say elements to being furloughed and stuck in lockdown have made me somewhat lazy, and as we (hopefully) return to something resembling normal I hope I can shake off the cobwebs.

Halloween

It may be a wee bit early to consider a Halloween costume, but one can never be too prepared! There are a few candidates…

You can probably guess which one I’m leaning towards. There’s a fifth pic it’s wiiiiildly inappropriate for Halloween!

Wildlife

This adorable duo parked their butts right outside our house. Foxes are wild animals and not to be treated as pets, but that doesn’t prevent them from being absolutely adorable! These two could be the pair that we saw playing as cubs outside, for they seemed to be quite playful with one another.

We’re not exactly inundated with wildlife in my corner of Essex. Foxes are the most common (well, the most common that I see, there is the occasional mouse and even rat), though last year my wife and daughter saw a deer wondering about near the town centre (the poor thing must have been lost), and a local park has large numbers of geese, ducks and even what I think are turtles.

War

As of writing this, the situation between Russia and Ukraine has not yet transformed into open warfare but Russian claims of withdrawing troops appear not only to be lies, but in fact, they seem to have more troops on Ukraine’s border than ever before. Needless to say, this is an alarming development and if a war breaks out there’s no telling where it ends. All we can do is hope cool heads prevail and diplomacy staves off shooting.

One person who seriously needs to learn that war is serious is Jane Moore, who writes for the sensationalist and often rather vile S*n paper (who can call what The S*n contains news? I mean come on). Ms Moore was building upon the idea that being ‘woke’ is the most serious problem facing the UK right now (never mind the cost of living crisis, the dumping of sewage into our water supply, and an incompetent government overseeing thousands of needless deaths due to covid). Her answer to this ‘problem’ (gee, when was trying to tackle racism, bigotry and sexism such a bad thing?) would be to send young people to Ukraine to fight – when conveniently she and her S*n pals would be seen as too old and would never take the trip themselves. She is absolutely right that there are serious issues to deal with – to quote:

In other words, experiencing the real problems faced by those who aren’t fortunate enough to live in a country where certain people have the luxury of noisily trying to undermine its vales at every turn.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17662973/jane-moore-real-problems-ukraine/

Some of those issues concern the UK, like the aforementioned cost of living crisis. Where is Ms Moore’s ire for that? She should worry less about people being woke and more about how she can use her platform to confront the government’s squeezing of the working class whilst the rich get richer and richer. Lemme guess, that’s not serious enough…

Needless to say, Ms Moore’s remarks have backfired spectacularly, as well they should. She has children who could be conscripted if things went badly wrong. What are the odds she would never expect her offspring to risk their lives in the name of opposing wokeness?

The trouble with S*n writers is that they are spectacularly tone deaf. Take Simon for example:

https://twitter.com/SimonBoyle87/status/1494598741478752258?t=BrdQpHQWa59Hhzc5HOQcSQ&s=19

Simon was reacting to reactions to an earlier tweet of his:

https://twitter.com/SimonBoyle87/status/1493976280840159238?t=ZmSopHLWY9v2SHW4M1LP2w&s=19

Does Simon not live in the real world? There is a reason working from home has become the preferred option of millions. In fact there are several reasons. It saves time. It saves money. Oh, and in case Simon has forgotten, the pandemic isn’t over. Covid is still out there. People are still dying from it.

We have rising fuel bills and a National Insurance hike. It stands to reason that people will not want to spend money on petrol and train fare if they do not have to – what is the incentive to spend out extra cash? To satisfy landlords and office owners? They don’t need the money, but the working-class does. Maybe Simon could focus on the rising costs of food and essentials in the UK, due to the disaster that is Brexit? Perhaps he could direct his irritation to the illegal parties held by top Tories at a time when others were unable to say goodbye to dying loved ones? Maybe he wants to ask why banks are paying out huge bonuses at a time when regular folk are deciding whether to heat or eat?

Both Simon and Jane suffer from what the right generally suffers from – they do not live in reality. They are obsessed (and it’s with a lot of irony that they accuse the left of this) with terms and names and descriptions and ignore the very real problems faced by people all around the world. The S*n is a rag that has often aligned itself to some of the worst elements of the political and social right, and they have proved that to be true yet again over the last few days.

Dreams

Let’s end this on a weird note. Alongside dreams of shopping for/selling electronics, and a dream about Iron Man fighting Dr Strange, I had one dream that stood out as one of the strangest in recent times. I was round my Nan’s home and my Dad, Brother and I learned than an uncle of mine (who I didn’t recognise) had been kidnapped by gangster rappers. We agreed (even though I was fearful of not surviving) to go and rescue him. My Dad fetched a shotgun from an old cast iron furnace and off we went! We parked up at a hotel where we could watch the gangster holdout, but we must have been spotted, for they dropped off a body part as a warning – a dehydrated… ahem.

We attacked – my Brother had some kind of armoured suit and he charged in, and then I woke up. I can’t explain the dream and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to. On that note, take care everyone, stay tuned for the next Muse!

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