Talking Wollocks

15 March 2020

Has the outbreak and relentless progression of coronavirus changed your routine?

It has changed mine.

I sit here in Kaliningrad, Russia, and every morning first thing I flick through Google News to see what is happening COVID-19 wise in the UK.

So far, we have had two confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Kaliningrad region and, as far as I can tell, everyone appears to be going about their daily life much the same as usual. Of course, all that could change…

The London Pub, Kaliningrad

The one exception I noted was during a recent visit to the London Pub ~ a bar/restaurant/nightclub the theme of which as the name suggests is London pub oriented.

For the first time in Kaliningrad, I was witness to the peculiar spectacle of people wearing face masks. The London Pub is under new management  and all the waiters and waitresses, every one equipped with a face mask, are uniformly dressed in black trousers (short black skirt if you are female), white evening shirt with winged collar, black bow tie and a black bowler hat. Add the face mask and the effect is even more surreal. The more I drank the more convinced I became that I was on the set of the 1960s’ TV series The Avengers, or was it Clockwork Orange?

Panic buying empty shelves in the UK

The very next day I telephoned an old chum of mine, Lord Aristotle Wollocks, founder and Chairman of Wollocks & Co (Supermarket Consultants), former heir to a newspaper magnate’s empire, to see what his reaction was to the ongoing coronavirus situation in my native country. I was particularly interested in what he had to say about the sudden onset of panic buying and the alarming phenomenon of empty shelves in supermarkets.

Aristotle (as his name suggests) is a trifle eccentric. We first met during my time as an antique dealer; we were both bidding on the same item, a portfolio of letters by Ronnie Kray. Needless to say, Wealth won the day, as it always does.

Aristotle’s house is a cornucopia of antiques, vintage curios and relics. He is a man who has everything but cannot find anything, which is difficult whenever you telephone him because his 1920s’ candlestick phone is often not always to hand.

As usual, it took several attempts before he could find the phone to answer it, but eventually there he was.

“Wollocks here!”

We had not spoken for several months, so there were a few platitudes to attend to, such as how is Putin and have you sat down with him for a glass of vodka in the Kremlin yet, before we got down to business.

I wanted to know, primarily, if things were as bad in the UK as posts on social media made out, specifically whether there was any truth in the rumours that panic buying had decimate offerings in our supermarkets and that UK citizens as a result were having to go without sausages and were using The Guardian in place of bog rolls.

“The Guardian,” snorted Wollocks, “I wouldn’t use that on your a..e let alone mine!”

You must remember that Wollocks went to Eton.

I pushed him once again for a sensible answer on the alleged deprivation in the UK as a consequence of panic buying and empty supermarket shelves.

Said he, emphatically: “Now look here …” He invariable starts his sentences this way.

“Now look here. Whether it is true that supermarket shelves are empty or not is hardly relevant. Of course, in a climate of panic such as this you must expect a certain level of exploitation in every sphere of influence, be it political, economic, commercial …” He droned on. “Naturally, the less scrupulous but more entrepreneurial will make gains at others’ expense, and you have to make allowances for captains of commerce taking full advantage of any commercial opportunity that the wind of misfortune ~ that is, of course, the misfortune of others ~ blow their way.”

“You mean profiteering?” I ventured.

“Ahh, well,” Wollocks guffawed, “profiteering to you perhaps, but for the sake of argument ~ and please, Michael (he always calls me that; Mick is too working class for him) don’t argue with me ~ let’s say good business sense.”

“So, what you are saying is that the supermarkets are emptying the shelves themselves, in effect creating the illusion of shortage, and with the help of the media and the Twitterartie, catalysing panic buying?”

“What I am saying is that the bods that run the large supermarket chains are businessmen, Michael, monied people, people who are versed in the strategies to drive meaningful and profitable sales growth …”

He paused, waiting for me to comment, but when I refrained from doing so, carried on.

Panic buying in UK shelves empty

“If supermarket shelves are being emptied then the government must impose rationing, as it did in the Second World War. It won’t be easy, especially for the young generation to accept because they have not experienced the hardships that our fathers and grandfathers suffered, but it would certainly cure the pig-trough mentality.”

“But what about Rights?” I protested.

“Now look here, Michael, don’t try goading me. There are no such things as ‘rights’, you know that, and had there ever been they certainly have no place here and neither does entitlement.”

“Entitlement? No one is entitled to anything. Coronavirus doesn’t care who or what you are. You just are and it just is!”

“Unless you are one of the privileged wealthy and then you either head to your disaster bunker or use the antidote.”

“So, it’s true what they say about it being person-made!”

“Don’t get PC with me Michael! Man-made? Ha! Just checking to see if you are a conspiracy theorist as well as a defector!”

He paused whilst he lit a cigar. Aristotle never smoked in his life until, he said, the non-smoking zealots banned it. Now he smokes religiously, especially when he is fox hunting.

“By the way,” he continued, “I’m not saying that there is an antidote but you could do worse than eat a giant bowl of muesli soaked in apple juice with half a grape fruit ~ yellow grapefruit, mind ~ each and every morning.”

“Hmm, don’t you have substantial shares in the muesli, apple juice and grapefruit markets —”

He cut me short: “Yellow grapefruit, Michael, yellow.”

“But what of entitlement?” I asked impatiently.

“Ahh, yes. Well to understand that you must about turn to postwar Britain and the we’ve ‘never had it so good’ slogan. You could say, and I do, that we’ve had it too good, and certainly too easy. Take the present generation, for example, dubbed by the media the ‘Entitled Generation’. Not that I trust anything the UK media says. Dammit, I should know, my family owned most of it, but the fact remains that today’s generation knows as much about reality as a Liberal  ~ which most of them are, God help them!”

“Please go on.” He did not need encouraging.

“Computer games, mobile phones, obsessing with Twatter and Arsebook, this isn’t life. Life is red in tooth and claw.”

“Well, crises like these always bring out the bad in some —” I conciliated.

“And the good in others,” he concluded. “The ‘every man for himself siege mentality’ has to be discouraged and the ‘coming together to help each other’ sense of camaraderie encouraged.”

“A backs-to-the-wall philosophy.”

“Don’t be facetious, Michael. Hmmm. Backs to the wall, I remember when I was at Eton …”

“[cough] You were saying?”

“I am saying that this would be a great opportunity for people, especially young people, to stop worrying about how to disinfect their mobile phones and look to the spade and trowel …”

“The Spade & Trowel,” I interrupted, “is that a pub?”

“No, Michael it is not. I mean, of course, that they should take up gardening. The government should implement a drive towards self-sufficiency, reviving the posters of old, not only the much-exploited Keep Calm & Carry on, but Dig for Victory, Allotments for the Unemployed ~ especially Allotments for the Unemployed ~ and Make Do & Mend.”

“Make Do & Mend, so you think that Coronavirus may wear out our clothes?”

“Well, it’s certainly putting a lot of strain on underpants! Ha! Ha! Did I say stain? Ha! Ha! No, but a home course whilst self-isolating on how to repair your face mask or making do with two sides of toilet roll instead of one would be inspirational, not to mention useful for the masses whilst in lockdown.”

“Your last word on the topic is, then?”

Silly expression for me to use. Wollocks, after all, is a member of the House of Lords (which he fondly refers to as the House of Whores), perhaps one of the few True Blues remaining.

“Times of national crisis ~ we can forget about what is happening elsewhere ~ brings out both the good and bad in people in equal measure, and a little deprivation at supermarket level is just the thing that is needed to replace selfishness with selflessness. It can work to bring back a much-needed sense of propriety, to rebuild the national character morally demolished by seventy years or more of so-called liberal progressiveness. It is, in short, a wonderful opportunity for the current generation to earn the entitlement to which they feel so entitled.”

Panic buying shelves empty

More views on empty supermarket shelves and panic buying in the UK can be found in chapter 7 ‘Coping with Coronavirus’ in Sir Aristotle Wollocks’ book, We are fighting a war on human nature, available at all fire stations, police stations and post offices, which are now somewhere else, such as in chemists, book and pet shops.

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