29th July 2020

We were helpfully reminded last week of the need to smile. Some comedians recently agreed that, although the loss and grief of the coronavirus crisis should not be ignored, nevertheless there was a funny side…

A few weeks ago, when the government’s advice first began to change, there was a TV sketch, “stay at home… don’t stay at home… go to work… don’t go to work” it began. It could be updated, “stay alert… return to normality… Eat Out to Help Out… don’t eat too much… go on holiday… quarantine for two weeks on return… work from home if you can… go back to work if you can…”

And people are telling jokes…

“A class of 8 year olds was asked to sum up the experience of 2020 as simply as possible. One wrote, ‘everyone stayed at home, there was no toilet paper and no school, then it was summer’….!”

“I asked the assistant in the chemists to recommend something to clean surfaces. She said ‘Ammonia cleaner’. I said I was sorry; I thought she was one of the staff, besides, being a cleaner is just as important as being a pharmacist…”

Humour is one of the ways we human beings cope. Of course, one person’s humour isn’t somebody else’s. But when present confusions are less enlightening than an 8-year old’s essay; at least it shows that we’re all in this together.

Michael Docker