Funfiltered Episode #040 - "Astoundingly Evitable"

The government put my friend in the hospital.I have been a devoted Tory my whole life and, now having renounced that allegiance, I feel “safe” admitting to it. The infobahn is not the natural habitat of the Conservative. So I trust that your embrace will be warm as I turn coats. Though the evidence is somewhat contrary.This past year, we have been inundated with a novel lexicon - one whose terms are familiar to our ears but shrill with the pitch of catastrophising re-contextualisation. Lockdown. Tiers. Isolation. What once principally applied to sci-fi/horror flicks, wedding cakes and insufferable wallflowers, respectively, is now a-washing through our minds with doomy din.To be ever vigilant of the capricious dictates of our beleaguered overlords is to drive oneself insane. It has produced a virulent monomania that rivals even Covid itself in its danger - not actually, but for the sake of a nice bit of writing… It is this shitty idée fixe that plonked my pal in A & E.Vernon Lesburrell is my best friend and neighbour. He is an octogenarian widower and works in Dog Maintenance. I insisted that Vern spend Christmas with me and Pfidze. Paranoia chained him. I urged him to see in the New Year with us. Alas. What began as caution begat worry begat terror begat Vern refusing to leave the house.Through the accident, we discovered that Vern had not only closed himself off from the outside world but from every other room in his abode. His world infinitely nautilus-shelling inwards, he had stationed himself on a blow-up mattress in the lounge, surrounded by cigs, tea bags and David Icke books. An ardent acolyte of the idiot box and notoriously the opposite for craning his neck, he had, through a system of hooks, ropes and extension leads, suspended his television from the ceiling to achieve profoundly total immobility.Need I precisely outline the nature of the mishap?Yes, the TV fell on his head.The wistful harmony of “Auld Lang Syne” trickling through the wall was cut short by the cry of bending hook-metal, fraying rope and the phlegmy clamour of an eightysomething conspiracy theorist, all due love. One must do a lot of work not to interpret the timing as a sign.Medically, he’s now roughly okay. But he hath become confined in an NHS Petri dish, the set of every nightmare of the now. This is a parable about consequences but do your own bloody literary analysis. I can’t even extract a penny from you, I’m not going to extract my own themes.If Vern’s trauma weren’t traumatic enough, Pfidze hit it off with one of the paramedics, a middle-aged chap named Dexter. In her words, ‘he has eyes that have seen much.’ Incisive as always. Even as I type this, they’re Zoom-ing. Giggling like a goddamn schoolgirl. Don't even get me started on Pfidze.Ba dum tish.It’s 2021 and still I sweat gold for you, pay me!