Positive Songs For Negative Times #6: Be Safe

I keep trying to write about what's going on, but where do you start? And how do you say something that isn't being said ten times over by everyone else?

At the end of our first week of what my 6 year old son calls "doing the coronavirus", we're prisoners in our own home, trying to balance two full time jobs, childcare, homeschooling, and wondering when our food will run out or the internet will go down.

It's not been a good week, but at least the sun's been out and I've been able to spend time outside with my boy on a mostly deserted playing field near our house, tossing a ball to each other, trying to stay calm. (Hey, we're still allowed to go out once a day, for exercise.)

That picture above of a couple out together at night... it seems like another world.

I've been watching the latest series of The Trip with Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, but I can't get into it because I keep thinking: this isn't our world anymore. Sitting around chatting in crowded restaurants, strolling down a foreign harbour at dusk surrounded by others, being out in the world, laughing, free...

Is that all gone now? Did we take it too much for granted? 

Today's song isn't as positive as the ones that preceded it in this series, but it is The Cribs' finest moment...

One of those fucking, awful black days

When nothing is pleasing and everything that happens

Is an excuse for anger

An outlet for emotions stockpiled, an arsenal, an armor

These are the days when I hate the world

Hate the rich, hate the happy

Hate the complacent, the TV watchers

Beer drinkers, the satisfied ones

Because I know I can be all of those little hateful things

And then I hate myself for realizing that

There's no preventative, directive or safe approach for living

We each know our own fate 

And the title, at least, is apt.

Be safe.