The breakfast wrap / rap

This is the story of a tin of beans
That got mixed up in a mean machine
Mixed with to-mater sauce that was rich and creamy
To produce a result that was oh so dreamy
Cook some vegan chicken bits
In a hot pan
Put them together and man oh man
A spiral of brown sauce on a Mexican wrap
Roll it all up and it’s gone in the snap
Of a finger. Know what what I mean?
It’s a plant based burrito
That’s the coolest on the scene.

Lockdown day ... whatever. Psychological disintegration continues. I am reduced to rapping about my breakfast which, at this stage, was scaring me because it was staring back like an eye of Horus. Tasted good ‘though. 

Finished reading The Unreality of Memory and other essays by Elisa Gabbert. A pre-Covid collection that is somehow very apt (she wrote about pandemics without knowing there was one just around the corner). The basic theme: we’re a bit screwed up and invent rather than recall reality, particularly when it comes to the really bad stuff. We’re nearly all very fallible and messed up and overwhelmed by the information revolution. Empathy gets drowned out by social media and we’re probably not fit to run the planet, but why worry, we’re all gonna die anyway and the universe will either collapse or end in an entropic, cold death. In the middle of all this she obsesses over her phone and worries about her gums shrinking. 

Glad I’m not the only one.

Spent an hour on the phone to the tax office today (45 minutes of "your call is very important to us" followed by fifteen minutes with what sounded like a slightly pissed Glaswegian who was trying to do the math of my finances on a very old and clicky calculator). The outcome was that I am paying about seven hundred pounds a month too much in tax, which I already knew, but it was nice to hear it confirmed officially. They say they’ll have it all sorted by next month but I don’t believe them and I don’t mind as long as I get it all back at some point. It’s not as if it’s going to earn me much interest ...

I also had an emotional online chat with my energy supplier, who is going to sort out my dysfunctional electricity meter. They haven’t done a reading for about five years so that will be interesting once it’s all sorted ... I told them it was giving me sleepless nights (in such anonymous chat rooms I act like an anxious 92 year old to get sympathy; it usually works).