Plague Update #7 - First They Came For Our Alcohol...

As I become more accustomed to working from home its getting harder to maintain the basic standards of cleanliness and hygiene that I set for myself.  I think the wake up call really came when the mould in my favourite coffee mug moved out of home citing unsanitary living conditions.  Despite this vote of no confidence I have been incrementally cleaning my place up.  The truth of the matter is I rarely see my home in full daylight for any great length of time.  During the week I'm at work and I'm usually out during the day on weekends as well.  Now, having been subjected to a period of domestic incarceration I'm starting to realise that my home could be a bit cleaner.  So in five minute breaks from work I'm wiping down random surfaces and throwing away the occasional dust clogged item that I can't remember buying and have no use for.  This isn't as helpful as you might think because each clean bit is merely throwing the remainder into sharp relief but I like to think I'm achieving something.

While I have been starting my new career as a semi domestic the crisis continues to mount outside the walls of crumbling brick which protect me from the world.  Having seized pretty much every toilet roll in creation panic buyers are now sourcing alcohol before the insane restrictions the WA government have placed on its purchase get replicated across the country.  In what is probably a wise move given the amount of alcohol everybody is now sitting on the government has also moved to restrict access to firearms.  Fortunately I learnt my lesson from the toilet paper debacle and am now sitting on an arsenal that wouldn't shame a small country.  It would definitely be wise to phone ahead before dropping around for a visit.  That way I could persuade you not to come.

But it wasn't all guns and alcohol in the news today.  There is good news on the health services front.  Since all elective surgery has been cancelled private hospitals were planning to close and send all of their staff home.  Now in a staggering outpouring of community feeling these noble benefactors have decided that the government can pay them to make their facilities available to the general public should the pandemic reach trundling carts of bodies through the streets proportions.  Sadly it already has reached those proportions in Spain and Italy (although presumably not in Venice).

Down in Tasmania the premier of that remote and dismal land spent an uncomfortable press conference awkwardly answering questions whose basic thrust was "can we still have sex and if so, with whom?"  "Use your common sense," was his reply despite the fact that the attendees at the press conference were a bunch of heavily armed drunks surrounded by toilet paper.  In more uplifting Tasmania news my correspondent has been pointing out exactly how much of a degenerate, uncultured slob I am by waxing lyrical on her virtual tours of the worlds museums and watching live streaming of galapagos tortoises with her children.  All I've done in my spare time is play video games and stare at the ceiling.  It all went a bit wrong when she mentioned an online exercise routine she had intended to do with her children.  The children took one look and said "nope" leaving my correspondent to do it herself.  In their defence her children did at least watch, and snigger.  My correspondent is now aching in places she had forgotten she had which didn't stop her recommending it to me.  I thanked her politely and reported her to the authorities.

Up in Queensland a brothel has been fined for breaching social distancing rules.  Brothels are of course the hidden victims of this pandemic.  Maintaining a distance of over a metre between yourself and your customer(s) does make all but the most exotic of services pretty difficult to provide.  I anticipate Queensland will have a diuretic led economic recovery.  If you didn't get that joke you are a far more worthy person than I am.