map of blog

 Reproduced on 18/12/2020 from Big Mac Facebook site.

 Friday, 27 March 2020.

 Hi everyone. I woke up this morning and wished I hadn’t. One moment we were doing our usual dance worship of the Big Mac band, the Coronavirus just a new rock group that probably wouldn’t last, and the next moment a few weeks later here we are, the Earl Haig just a distant memory as if it were yesterday, and yesterday the same as today with everybody shunning me as if I had the fucking plague.

 Last night I waited for Val to push me my porridge through the serving hatch of the isolation unit that the government had ordered me to convert the garden shed into. Then I got totally blinged up, even down to the diamante red trousers and dancing shoes and the turquoise crystal rivet belt that I’d had specially made for me by myself and then I clicked on one of the Big Mac videos and closed my eyes. And the years fell away and I was back in the Earl Haig of recent weeks; but when my eyes blinked open again I wasn’t. And two little tears welled up one from each eye and trickled down my face, neither being able to see the other until they had passed my nose, at which point they ran towards each other and merged together on my upper lip, just as we humans used to embrace all those decades ago last week before the Great Social Distancing Event.

 Is this how it ends, with each of us the isolated orphan of the Big Mac Band’s demise? Well, no, for the band are alive and kicking and still in full possession of their instruments and playing just as well mentally as they did on stage. No, I have no idea what that means, but I do know that they’ve given a great deal of pleasure to thousands or millions of people over the last three decades; also, that the world, or this corner of it, is a better place because of it. Oddly, a kingfisher just flashed across my mind, like an iridescent bolt of blue, but probably nothing to worry about. How do we feel, I wonder, about helping the band financially? I hate to think of them scavenging in dustbins late at night. What I suggest is that we organise a fundraising dinner and dance, perhaps in the Earl Haig if we can find a window open. Oh, social distancing. Then we can buy the band CD’s that are for sale online. Once you navigate to the methods of payment section you’ll find that PayPal is one.

The day will come when we push ourselves back onto the road from the ditch that we all seem to have careered into, ultimately because of the dangerous driving of a crazed microbe. Just think how good it will be when the ditch is at last filled in, the virus buried out of harm’s way, and a pond is built and attracts kingfishers (Ah, now I get it) and once again the excitement builds as we wait for the band to appear, heralded by the wind section on the dance floor and in and out of tables and then on stage, and the first number will whatever it will be, and then once more we’ll dance the night away. In the meantime we are either short of money or there is nothing to spend it on apart from face masks and tins of spam. Cheers, Laurence

Here is the CD seller link:

 

STORE.CDBABY.COM

♫ Again in the Midnight Hour - Mike McNamara. Listen @cdbaby

Click to listen at CDBaby

11Mike McNamara and 10 others

7 Comments

1 Share

Like

Comment

Share