Dear Forge,
I’ll be honest, I’m getting so sick of writing to you. Oh, not through any fault of your own.
It’s just the trouble of letter-writing in today’s world: the second you start writing, give it two days and the whole world has shaken itself again. That is partly my fault, I admit, but I started this letter last week when work was drying up due to the sodding national lockdown, and you’d best believe I was annoyed. How could I not be? All through lockdown, jobs have been harder to come by.
All they do is sack (sorry, ‘let you go’) now, and yet houses, schools, hospitals still need
building. They still need nurses, construction workers, engineers. It’s all starting to remind me of the eighties, and I only survived that by hook or crook.
Now we’re back in that tier lockdown again, only with about 90% more of the
country now in what they call ‘severe’ restrictions, I wondered if one of you could honestly
tell me the difference between Tier 2 and Tier 3? Is it ‘scary’ and ‘super scary’? You’d be
forgiven for thinking things were the same as before if not for everything being shut now.
Right before Christmas too! How is anybody to get in the Christmas spirit if everything is
online?
This is where Boris Johnson has saved the day. By letting the country have a ‘Christmas window’, it gives us the freedom you voted for! No nonsense approaches have
been missing from this country for years, and now here is a man who will let half the country visit three different houses as many times as they wish. Who needs health
and safety with Johnson in charge?
Christmas 2020 is going to give me one hell of a wage packet, and I couldn’t be happier. So go! Go across the country! Kiss and hug as many people as you wish! Spread the love!
Which reminds me. The ‘travel window’ for students, which means they get certain days where they can go back home and cuddle everyone. I’m all for it, personally. What better way to make sure someone isn’t ill by going halfway across the country to prove it? It’s like that book, Catch-22. I suppose they could have clocked that one the first time. It’d have saved loads of bother; it’s almost like inviting millions of people across the country to live in the same place in the name of education and then blaming them for doing so wasn’t a daft enough idea. So they’re going to do it backwards, by sending them back out all over the country again. The Cummings Test, it ought to be called. Not that he has much say anymore, with him having now left the sinking ship. I don’t know about you, but if he’s made out to be this super genius, he’s made a bloody terrible job of it – they’re only now testing students once they’re going home! Talk about not seeing the wood for trees. What do they expect will happen? I’m pushing all my jobs back until January and February time because of it.
It helps the students of Sheffield too that teaching is going online where reasonably
applicable on December 4. Better late than never. That’s about right for most government
response nowadays. It benefits my business, yes – all those young people, feeling
invincible, hugging Granny Pat and Grandad Pete – but I’ll show you how it could have been done better. They should have put classes outside! That’s what all them rules are
about, aren’t they? Everybody outside, distanced, jumping on the spot like in Year 5 P.E.,
all while some lecturer tells them all about thermodynamics. Exercise, education and
everybody involved!
Also, it seems VC Koen Lamberts reads my letters! I heard that, for the month of
December, students residing at University Accommodation are to receive two (2) weeks’
relief on their rent for that month. Wonderful! Terrific! Welcome, Comrade Lamberts! Glad
to have you on board. If only they’d have thought of not paying rent at the times when
most students generally won’t be there.
There is one benefit to Cummings leaving, however. They can now put me in
charge. That’s what we’ve all been thinking, there’s no harm in denying it. I can see it now.
Mr C. Ovid, the new advisor to the Prime Minister. Gives me shivers, it does.
Yours,
Mr C. Ovid
Featured Image: Barnard Castle, the home of the original Cummings Eye Test (Credit: Keith Ruffles via Wikimedia Commons)