coronavirus – the good and the bad
Try limiting yourself to just three toilet tissues per cleansing application. The consequences can be serious if you have difficulties navigating your way around down there.
Having to use Sorbent Frangipani (with vitamin E) tissues to blow your nose. Even your grandmother wouldn’t wear that fragrance as a perfume. Mine anyway. If she was around. Which she isn’t. But I know a few guys who would.
You know those people you always try to avoid when you see them heading your way down the street? Well, now you can because it’s legal.
Now everyone’s exercising on a bike on the footpath and they’re coming at you from behind doing a silent 40 kph without a bell and you’re supposed to look out for them?
You’ve got a boss who loses it and yells at everyone, spittle flying. Walk away. Then report him.
Those folks who spend all day playing the pokies at the local RSL, how good must their bank accounts look lately?
Now that everyone can surf twelve hours a day every day of the week – guess what – the crowd’s are down. Seriously.
Backpackers. What else to do but grab a deckchair, sit in the sun by the highway and wave them goodbye.
The Chief Accountant who wants a chat about a few discrepancies in the last set of accounts you prepared for him? Cough once gently before entering his office. Then go home. No worries.
That bloke at Ballina north wall sucking back on a number prior to hitting the waves – which by the way are looking extremely good – nobody should be having that much pleasure these days, bastard.
How is it that Queenslanders have stopped us from going up there when they can still come down here?
Nobody’s checking fishing licences any more. So save six bucks on a three-day licence and score beaucoup de free dinners, if you’re good enough.
Passing around a joint is illegal in so many ways, better for everyone to smoke their own then stand around outside observing social distances.
That guy who just sneezed in the supermarket, don’t go anywhere near his aisle for the next 24 hours.
You want to make sure folks obey the social distance rule? Carry around a sharpened tomato stake. See the fear.
Never get in the way of a middle-aged woman and a shelf of toilet paper.
Buy a half kilo of fresh-caught prawns, take them down to the beach and don’t share any. This is the new world.
The bloke in the office who always chews on his pencils at meetings. Give him a smack on the back of the head, same for the guy who uses the same hanky all day.
The in-laws you owe dinner to, the one booked for next week? Forgeddaboudit. That’s illegal as well.
Whatever you do, don’t go into the bottle shop and ask for a case of Corona.
A man can only buy TWO bottles of rum at a time? This is draconian. And still nobody in this country stocks Myers Jamaican Punch. This is unacceptable.
Drop a cream cake by the local cop shop, those blokes are doing it hard .. plus they have good memories and that can’t be bad.
Smoking doesn’t cure coronavirus, it just gives the little bastard a bad habit.
Making debt-collecting an illegal enterprise makes me feel warm all over.
Remember the gambling and liquor lobbyists, the blokes who had the NSW government in their pocket? All they have left in there is some loose change right now. So give generously.
Thanks for getting this far, and if you’ve got the bug I hope you get well soon.
petebowes.com 
Read your story entitled “the end of Lancaster road” – tried to google up Lester Brown but couldn’t find him. True story or a composite of your past. Either way well written
Do you know that part of the world, Jim?
Have you heard about all the writers (it is on Radio National, Writers reeling from Cancellation Apocalypse) apparently they are having a Cancellation Apocalypse? Book tours getting cancelled. I did feel sorry for one Australian poet named Omar Sakr who had an International book tour in America cancelled. Apparently they are like Hens teeth to get for a poet, let alone an Australian poet.
It looks like I might end up actually reading a book again. Keep well Old Fella.
To my Aussie mates from the U.S., please take this virus seriously if you haven’t already. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better! It’s bad on the east coast and the west coast hasn’t felt the real effect yet. Be careful & all the best.
Mike, you have to ask yourself, when will we ever trust crowds again ?
Unfortunately right now we can’t. How sad that we have to ask our friends to keep their distance. We’ll get over this. It will take some time, but we will! Stay safe my friends.