Lockdown Lager

Let's Express Posted on by

I’m happy to confess to being a beer drinker, lager in fact, but when I say I’m happy I don’t mean a langers-drunk, falling around, laughing helplessly, kind of happy. Instead I’m just a contented pint man.

Well I was until last March that is. As I got older, (not too old mind), my capacity began to shrink bit by bit so that before my sixties a ten-pint piss up was forever off the menu. Then eight became a struggle until now a session of six pints must be spaced out over many hours to be enjoyed. The ideal for me is two pints early on and perhaps another two over the rest of the evening. So I can safely say I haven’t been drunk for a very long time but a feeling of being tipsy is something I like and it doesn’t take too much for me to achieve that.

Like most young men, I had a sweet tooth around the time I first tasted a beer and I was genuinely surprised and disgusted by the taste of it. That many men could appear to quaff gallons of that bitter poison at one sitting was a mystery to me. At the time I would have gladly exchanged six pints of beer for a single glass of red lemonade, (popular in Cork still), or a ‘real Coca Cola’.

But a bit like smoking, it took persistence to understand the appeal of beer, so I persisted. In this country, (and the UK), we have a pub culture. That today refers to “wet pubs” that sell drink only but they will have peanuts and Tayto’s as a cursory nod to a food menu. These were the venues where you went to consume beer. My earliest memories are of smoke-filled bars full of men chatting quietly, arguing passionately, laughing wildly and generally winding each other up for the ‘craic’. Those pubs tended to be a warm welcoming shelter on a cold wet night where you could meet your mates, exchange views on everything while slowly getting happier and happier. It was the late seventies by the time the ladies began to trickle in and they had the effect of slightly altering the dynamic without destroying the culture.

And, of course, that culture is the point. The beer in isolation is not much use to you. Without the attendant good company, convivial atmosphere and the familiar warmth of human interaction, the pint is a pretty pointless thing. I’d always kind of known this but had never brought it to the frontal lobes for thorough examination before. It took a pandemic with the resultant lockdowns to drive home the message. Beer and socialising go hand in hand. If I develop that thought though I find that beer is not essential for socialising but socialising is essential for beer.

During these past three lockdowns I have gone walking several times a day during which I meet many people and socialise, (lightly). It is fine and good as far as it goes. But I miss meeting up with my two Saturday/Sunday lunchtime pint mates. The two to three pints with Jim and Noel on the high stool at those times can sustain a fellow through the dry week to come with the prospect of more fun next weekend. When I think of pints now, that’s what I think of, not the insipid cold can from my own fridge.

Somehow the lockdown lager doesn’t taste the same.

 

Covid cock-up

Let's Express Posted on by

I got some really great news yesterday by text.

Well it was received by my iPhone at 2340 last night, but anyway.

According to Biomnis, my Covid test results are back and my test performed on 30/11/’20 at 1312 hrs shows the virus has not been detected. Whoopi!!

A special thanks to all of the ‘Eurofins Biomnis Team’ for such a prompt response too. Imagine, getting the Covid test at lunchtime and having the results back before midnight the same day. Now that’s what I call service.

Problem is, I didn’t have the Covid test, never was called for one and never even asked for one. I don’t know how to put this other than to say, “Biomnis never tested me for this or anything else.

Oh, and their text message finished with the legend, ‘please do not text back’ so I can’t even tell them they’ve made a cock up.

Meanwhile some poor trusting idiot is out there awaiting his/her test results, hoping for good news but also fretting lest it mean insolation all the way up to Christmas.

Isn’t modern science a wonder?

Viral Fallout

Let's Express Posted on by

The Examiner this morning quotes an Infectious diseases consultant, Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh, as recommending that, “Pubs and restaurants should not open while levels of community transmission of Covid-19 remain high.” On the face of it you’d say that’s par for the course, but I’m a bit uneasy about it.

Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh is doubtless well-qualified to speak, you’d say. She’s the Associate Professor Consultant of Clinical Medicine at Trinity College and so she brings a certain gravitas to the table. But what she also brings is the comfort and security of her own tenure for life so Covid or no Covid, our Clíona will never know a poor day. I don’t begrudge her that and fair dues to her for all she has achieved. But somebody in her position, bought and paid for by the ordinary citizens of the State, should not sound so patronising and dismissive when they pronounce on the rest of us and yet somehow they, (Public Health), all seem to manage it.

The Examiner article is entitled, “Pubs and restaurants should not open,” and she means for the Christmas holidays. According to her,”There was evidence that restaurants and pubs were “significant sites” of the spread of the virus,” I would like to ask, “What evidence Doctor, where is it? We have not been shown any such evidence to support your claim though we have heard a lot of condemnation of the hospitality industry from you and your ilk”. I ask about evidence that the pubs are a hot bed of viral transmissions because, of course, they’ve been closed for the almost the complete duration of the virus. How was any such evidence collected? My own local shut back in March and has never re-opened. There was a short period when we flirted with pubs opening with nine euro piazzas being compulsory, if you wanted a pint, but that was short lived. We had more access to restaurants for a longer time but here too, the restrictions meant they were both financially and socially unviable.

But the pubs and restaurants when they were briefly open, insisted on masks, social distancing and hygiene and there was a limit to the duration of your stay. Does Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh adhere to the same high standards of restrictions in and out of Trinity. To coin a phrase, “We’ve seen no evidence that she does.” I might add that, “There was evidence that Schools and Universities were “significant sites” of the spread of the virus,” I mean, I haven’t seen conclusive evidence to the contrary, have you?

I think we all know that there are hundreds of business owners in the hospitality sector who have already gone to the wall. You don’t need proof or evidence to believe that. The hospitality sector is a fast moving cash business based on volumes, (of food or drink), by time. Most live close to the edge of profitability so for most the loss of a single weekend could put the whole business in the red. So you know that losing nine months has got to be a death knell for so many of them and with thousands of job loses as a result. In that light I say again that nobody in Public Health will lose a single high paying job during this pandemic or any other. One suspects that Dr Clíona Ní Cheallaigh is on a damned good wedge of taxpayers money and even if every single public house in the country is put out of business due to her advice, she will still be in permanent and pensionable employment when it is all over. So when she tells us today that, “The situation was heartbreaking given that pubs and restaurant owners had spent so much time and energy planning for a safe opening,” she had me reaching for the sick bag. She has absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever so her words are only so much condescending noise.

And this leads me to ask the other question, “How would it be if Public Health officials stood to lose by this?” Say, for example, the Government, (on our behalf for a change), were to say to Public Health as a whole, “OK folks, we are going to take your advice and keep the pubs and restaurants closed for Christmas, along with all of the other restrictions you’ve recommended we impose on the population. We will look at the daily numbers again in early January and if they have not gone down significantly, you are all out of a job, your pensions gone, the lot.” Imagine that!! “Clear out your desk, your last monthly payment will go through as usual and then make your own arrangements for another job and some private pension for yourselves.” So let me ask you, under those circumstances, do you think Public Health would be recommending the hospitality sector close for Christmas?

Of course, the above will not happen because one element of the entitled classes, (The Government), would never impose such a reality on another set of the entitled classes, (Senior Medical figures). They live collectively in the purified air of their own self made echo chamber where there is a high brow consensus on what is good for all the rest of us. From big Phil Hogan to the unmovable errant Judge to the staff at RTE, the rules for the ‘little people’ do not apply to them, (unless they are caught, and even then …..). The virus for them when it has passed will be just be another vague memory of some unpleasantness but it will have had no real impact on them.

And the idiot majority will be decimated by it and will have to pay for it all as usual.

Shut is the New Open.

Let's Express Posted on by

“Providing Gardaí with the power to shut pubs for up to a month will help pave the way to reopen all bars the Justice Minister Helen McEntee has said.”

The bold Helen is, of course, referring to the new sweeping powers given to the Gardai that will allow them to raid any pub currently open and if they aren’t happy that the place is serving €9.00 meals with the pints, then they can shut the business for a month. This, according to the Gospel of Saint Helen, is the recipe for the boozers opening all over the land, (‘Praise be the Lord’).

Well really? How does shutting pubs open them? How thick does the Minister think we are? In fact, how thick is the Minister? The current preposterous notion is that a €9.00 piazza in your local pub offers complete protection against all known disease and this Covid-19 virus in particular. I’m having trouble following that logic, never mind believing such obvious bullshit.

But if we give Helen the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she means that when the naughty pubs who are currently just serving booze without a €9.00 meal are all caught and closed then the time would be ripe to em, …….. em, ah, open all the wet pubs who will only serve booze with no food. I see! Would you just run that past me again Minister?

While I am on the subject of incredible nonsense a Scottish spokesperson for their Public Health outfit was on the radio this morning and she said that now, months into it, they had learned many lessons in treating virus sufferers. She then listed three of them, the last of which was that they’d learned to keep Covid-19 patients separate from non-coved patients in their hospitals, (I swear to God, that’s what she said). So Scottish hospitals full of doctors who know that this virus is highly contagious, took five months to come to the conclusion that it would probably be best if Covid and non-Covid sufferers should be kept apart. Were they sharing beds prior to this? But isn’t that just grand then? I wonder how long it took our white coated paranoiacs to reach the same conclusion here? None of it gives you that warm secure feeling does it?

All of the restrictions being imposed on us are based on the collection of the daily numbers of infections by NPHET. So how’s the testing going? Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Chair of NPHET’s Irish Epidemiological Modelling Group Professor Philip Nolan defended the turnaround test time after it emerged that it took more than 72 hours in one weekend. He said that while the team is “anxious” to bring the testing time down, the delay was caused by a large outbreak. “The vast majority of tests right now are coming back in 24 to 48 hours,” he added. Now, I can only speak of my own experience locally but I do know that for a few weeks last May a team from the HSE were operating out of a sports ground down by the river but this operation ceased when they ran out of some basic materials necessary to continue and it hasn’t restarted since. In fact there is no Covid-19 test centre anywhere on the North side of Cork City to my knowledge.

But anyway, Professor Nolan says there is testing going on so who am I to argue. However, let’s be clear here, we are just talking about some medical test that determines whether you have the virus or you don’t. This is not a treatment or, perish the thought, a cure. It’s merely a test. So why does it take between a day and three days to get the results? I did a preliminary check and discovered that, “COVID-19 screening can be conducted directly at various testing stations, and patients can get their test results in about an hour from the time they get a nasal swab.” Check it yourself. Mind you, that is in the US.

Something feels wrong about this pandemic. This morning Australia declared itself to be in a recession, to which you can only add, “Of course you fucking are. What did you think would happen when you shut down the economy for six months?” We are in a recession too we just haven’t been told yet. Get out your austerity knickers because cutbacks are coming down the line and there’s no money for anything. If you end up freezing and hungry in your home this winter just be glad the Government stopped you getting this year’s flu. The virus was to be expected but the official reaction to it has been way over the top and will have done more damage than good before much longer.

So what is the real story? Since the start of March this year, nearly 1,800 have died from COVID-19 in Ireland. But our annual death rate from all causes translates into 80 deaths a day. So for the six months up to the yesterday, approx. 14,720 people died here from all causes during the same period. So nearly 15,000 dying on average every six months in Ireland does not bring down the economy, shut most businesses or divert our health system away from its daily routines but 300 added deaths a month from a virus does all of that and more. Where is the sense of proportion in that?

And to end, we face the winter without the usual herd immunity to the annual visit from a virus because we locked down this time and socially distanced. It is the first time we’ve ever done this so we have nothing to compare it to. The Vintners yesterday said that many of their members will have to default on their pub mortgages but I’m sure those kind humane bank people will understand and take it on the chin like gentlemen, (Ho, Ho). And to think, the smoking ban in pubs was brought in to protect barmen in their workplaces. Soon those workplaces will be no more!

But Professor Nolan will still have his highly paid position with all the entitlements.