‘Where the sun don’t shine’

‘A little lighthearted blog in a heavy time’

By Daniel McSweeney

I have been known to be a whiner when I get sick. It is my duty as a man to pull the covers up over my head and generously gift Sandra with opportunities for exercise; running to and fro catering to my every need. Pills. Hot chocolate. Coffee. Fluffing up my pillows – you know all that sort of stuff that allows a guy to wallow in delicious self male pity. That’s perhaps why she wants to keep me well. It has little to do with her concern for my aches and pains; more that my male whimpers and complaints drive her completely crazy. As I write, I am pushing her close to the edge by constantly taking my temperature. I started doing this as soon as I discovered  a high temperature might be a sign of catching the corona virus. I immediately whipped out a thermometer and inserted it under my tongue. Lips clenched tight, I asked her in a muted mumble  if I was doing it correctly and wondered how long to hold the device in place. It suddenly dawned on me that temperatures are taken in different ways; using different ’orifices’ of the body. In response, she casually took her time to musing out loud about where our thermometers had been. I misinterpreted her query. “What do you mean by that?” I asked with considerable alarm. “You mean somewhere in the house right? Not somewhere, you know, ‘down there?” They say a pregnant pause is a great thespian tool. She used it well; allowing my panic to linger in the air. “Let me think about that,” she said – followed by a smile and a guffaw that brought me instant relief. The thermometer I had tucked under my tongue had thankfully not been ‘down south.’  So, I continue to take my temperature at times rambling on about minor variations that drive her round the flippin’ bend.  It is my job – and I do it well. My mind, however, is now completely at ease  knowing this little device may have traveled far across the ocean to rainy England when we moved here in November, it has though never traveled to a place where the sun don’t shine,

Next blog: Wine & other calculating matters 

Glad they missed this one

By Daniel McSweeney

Leamington Spa, England

As a baby boomer born in 1948, I missed the big life-changing global disasters of the 20th century; World War One, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression of the 1930’s and World War Two from 1939-45. Our parents lived through all this chaos, and when all was said and done, the world survived. Many individuals did not; but  mankind managed to move on leaving catastrophes of the past in its rear-view mirror. I admittedly didn’t fully  appreciate  the impact last century’s global disasters had  on people’s lives. My generation and the ones after me have never really experienced crises of this magnitude other than the mind-numbing threat of nuclear war from clashing ideologies between East and West following World War Two.  The Cold War tension  created a great deal angst; but in the end no missiles rained down; and we lived to see another day. Certainly we have had events like the Korean and Vietnam wars, the rise of global terrorism and the threat of climate change. But right now, today, this very hour, we are facing a threat that is not unlike what people experienced in the past. In some ways, the current crisis will probably have an even greater long-term impact on us collectively even more than world wars. In war and post-war times,  economies tend to prosper; in pandemics they might suffer longer-lasting  effects that ripple out into people’s everyday lives. The good news is that folks from yesteryear survived the unrelenting waves of hardships that came rushing at them in the first half of the 20th century. We will too in the first half of the the 21st century once COVID-19 has passed into history; and what  has been torn down is rebuilt. I am glad  my parents are not around for this global crisis. They already had more than their share of disasters.