Read it in Books:How Not To Be A Boy.

"One way of imagining life is that it's a competition between love and death. Death always wins, of course, but love is there to make its victory a hollow one. That's what love is for"

"If you want a vision of masculinity imagine Dr Frankenstein being bum-raped by his own monster while shouting , 'I'm fine, everyone! I'm absolutely fine!'

Rave reviews from Marina Hyde, Stephen Fry, and Sarah Millican are nice to have, J.K.Rowling and Dawn French too, but if I was Robert Webb (and, let's face it, he probably didn't have much say on this) I'd have left the one from The Daily Mail off. If I'd seen it it would have put me off buying How Not To Be A Boy.

My mum, I suspect, has no such qualms and as it was a gift from her I didn't need to worry about that. It was a generous and thoughtful gift too as I'm a big fan of Webb. I adored Peep Show (who didn't?), loved his and David Mitchell's Back from 2017, and when I've seen him interviewed he's always come across as thoughtful, articulate, intelligent, and, just as importantly, funny.

How Not To Be A Boy is divided into two 'Acts'. The first, split into eight chapters, is about how boys are supposed to be (sport loving, assertive, and brave) and what they're not supposed to be (tearful, gay, or virgins) and the second, six chapters, does the same for men. Who must be organised, good at directions, and confident but must not need therapy and must not take themselves too seriously.

There's been a lot of understandably earnest writing in recent years about how male toxic behaviour isn't just dangerous for women but for other men and, ultimately, for the body that is host to all that toxicity. Much of it, from women and men, has been excellent. My hope for, and expectations of, Webb's book was that it would, indeed, be compellingly excellent but also that it would be laugh out loud funny and even, as suggested in the blurb, surprisingly raw and emotional in places.

A big ask but one I felt he'd be up to. It was two pages in before I first laughed (as Webb imagines impressing a girl with the Van Gogh prints and politically correct posters in the bedroom she'll almost certainly never enter) and there were several more chuckles before, about ten pages in, Webb recounts sitting in his own garden late at night drinking two more bottles of red wine alone long after his wife, pregnant with their first child, had gone to bed.

The clarity of the recollection and the obvious personal reckoning it evoked in Webb nearly set the tears off (as did a revelation hinted at in an imaged dialogue between his 15 and 43 year old selves and, most of all, his memories of his mum's dying days and her eventual death) and it certainly became the launching point for Webb to discover what it was that had made him the man he was and why that wasn't making him happy. Which, of course, eventually led to this book.

A book that follows him through a childhood that, like so many, was both happy and sad. Happy times include singing along with his mum to Berni Flint on Opportunity Knocks and sliding down the stairs on the family's first Continental Quilt. Yet sadness hung in the air following the death of an elder sibling before Webb was even born. The shadow of that death haunts the young Webb's Lincolnshire home and lurks in the marriage of his parents like a silent ghost

Beside the happy things and the sad things there are demonstrably bad things too. His drunk aggressive father coming home from the pub in one of his tempers and beating the kids for sleights, either real or perceived. The same father's reputation for cheating on his wife and, of course, his poor mum's early death which, more or less, orphans Webb and his much younger step-sister before he's even left home for university.

This is life. This is everyone's life. A mix of beautiful, mundane, comforting, terrifying, and tragic events. Processing it and coming to terms with it is what makes us human but what if we can't? What if we've been conditioned not to? What if we've been told to 'man up' instead of dwelling on things that have happened to us?

Webb smartly underlines how by telling boys to stop expressing their feelings we're telling them to stop even feeling those feelings, to be ashamed of them even. Don't feel sadness, don't feel grief, don't feel fear, don't feel anxiety. That's not what boys should do. Certainly not men. Instead subsume all those feelings into one big all-encompassing feeling. That of anger.

But that anger has to come out somewhere and, of course, it comes out in drunken pub fights, in shouting at one's children, and in verbal, emotional, and physical violence of one's partner. Webb's four years younger than me so many of his references hit the bullseye and all of them seem accurate. Terry Wogan on Radio 2, Fuzzy-Felt, Lester Piggott's tax returns, BJ and the Bear, WH Smith 'Back to Skool' signs, shirts vs skins in PE at school, "dossing about", and the boy's playground chants of "Who wants to play (insert various game)? No girls allowed".

Elsewhere there are stories that should be relatable to bored British working class youth of all ages (drawing pictures in the condensation of window panes, your mum's fish fingers, etc;) but while anyone, Peter Kay, can reel off a list of things from days gone by and make funny observations about them, Webb manages to capture the feelings of fear that fill our teenage years, how it feels to be an uncertain boy in a man's body, the horror of having to share communal showers after 'games' when everyone's at a different stage of puberty, and the weird belief that the 'gayest' thing a boy can do is hang around with girls.

Webb's got a great turn of phrase. When his mum, Pat, meets his stepdad, Derek, it's "not so much a courtship as an Anschluss", when he slow dances with a girl to Do They Know It's Christmas (!) he notes that "even if you ignore the romantically underperforming topic of starving children" it still moves quickly into an "anthemic knees-up" quite unsuitable to an erection section, and, while imagining removing a splinter from a Dr Who assistant's vagina and having his first orgasm describes his younger self as the "Doogie Howser MD of space cunnilingus". He even drops in a self-aware reference to Super Hans, his character Jez's pal, and idol, in Peep Show.

I nearly spat my beer out when Webb, after listing all the faults (perceived or actual) of a former love rival, concludes by deciding "he's a cunt. A more open-and-shut case of a cunt" he could "barely imagine". But for all the Jimmy Hill chinny reckons, for all the Horace Goes Skiing, for all the casual homophobia and memories of calling girls 'dogs' and eveybody 'spastics', for all the wrapping your exercise books up in brown paper, the stories of teenage boys shagging their girlfriends while watching videos of Krull, and the kids breakdancing to No More Lonely Nights by Paul McCartney there's a general sense of nostalgia not just for times gone by but also for times that never quite happened and things that were never quite said.

It's a wonderful evocation of growing up, discovering your sexuality, discovering your political affiliations, and coming to terms with the body you've been born in and the thoughts and feelings you can't prevent coming. Of how, in Webb's words, girls and women pick up the bills when boys and men turn their fear and grief into anger. By the time I'd finished the book I'd cried many times. Tears both of joy and of sadness.

So thanks mum, not just for giving me a book full of actually quite filthy jokes about wanking, fingering, and licking out Dr Who's assistant but also for giving me a book about how growing up isn't something that stops when we reach puberty or leave home or get married, about what it is to be a good person in a world that doesn't always want you to be, and what it is to be able to both love and to be loved in return.

Isolation XXIV:We're All Going To The Zoo Tomorrow

It's Sunday 14th June 2020, the 92nd day of my (now partial) lockdown, and I should, if the world hadn't changed so dramatically three months back, be on the final day of my three day holiday in Abersoch on the Llyn Peninsula. I'd imagine the day would have been spent mostly on the beach (despite the fact it's raining up there), building sandcastles, paddling in the sea, having an ice cream, and then, this evening, having a nice meal and a few beers or glasses of wine.

But of course I'm not in Abersoch. I am, for the ninety-second night in a row, sat at home staring at a screen. I'm not even complaining. It's the right thing to be doing. It's what's required. I'd love to have gone to Abersoch, I'd still love to go to Abersoch, and I fully intend, eventually, to go to Abersoch but, for now, staying in staring at screens is just fine and dandy. Interestingly though, or perhaps insanely, I would be able to go to, of all places, the zoo tomorrow (zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow) or even Chessington World of Adventures.

So while I still can't see any of my family (I don't have a car and none of them live within fifty miles of me) I could, in theory, go on a rollercoaster or look at some elephants. Like most people I love elephants but I must admit during these thirteen weeks of lockdown they have not been one the things I've been most missing. I've been missing walks, friends, and family and I've been missing, even more, getting together with those friends, drinking and laughing, and, most of all, I've been missing the physical contact of other humans. Hugging. Touching. Being close.

All things I'm looking forward to doing again far more than I am visiting zoos (which, despite a lovely visit to London Zoo with Valia last year, are morally ambiguous for me at the best of times). I'm not complaining. I've had a great week. I've chatted with Mum, Dad, Adam, Shep, Vicki Michelle, and Evie (who drew pictures of fish, dogs, me, her, and 'teddy cobra' for me). I've walked in Peckham Rye, Peckham Rye Park, and, today, I've had a socially distanced meet up in the Horniman Gardens (where the outdoor market is tentatively reopening) with Dan, Misa, Pam, and Poppy the alpaca.

Both Gwen and Ian have set Kahoot quizzes that proved to be great fun. Owen won them both (accompanied, for Ian's film quiz, by Annasivia who I suspect did some of the heavy lifting) and, following the lovely, touching, letter (accompanied by two fridge magnets he'd made celebrating CND rallies in Tadley including a gig that featured Hawkwind, Roy Harper, and John Peel) I received from him in Los Angeles I couldn't even begrudge his victory.

The fridge magnets are now in pride of place on my Siemens alongside an earlier CND rally one he'd (made and) sent me, a Massey Ferguson one, and an Orchestra Baobab sticker. The outside of my fridge is now more impressive than the inside. It's quite a collection but, more importantly, every time I look at them (as well as Valia and Jackie's postcards and the photos Michelle sent me) I'm reminded of what a wonderful, creative, and supportive group of friends I have. It's probably a cliche to say 'best friends in the world' but sometimes it really feels like it.

Other little gestures, like Dan's daily music choice (texted personally to me) and Ian F's daily YouTube posting of a tune on mine (and many other's) Facebook wall just go to underline that when it comes to rolling deep we do it both in terms of quality and quantity. It's also this kindness that has contributed to me making this blog more of a personal one, more upbeat, and more hopeful.

I've written enough about the failing of our government, of Trump, and of Bolsonaro (Brazil have now overtaken the UK with the second highest coronavirus death toll in the world, Mexico is the next nation to join the big league with, now, over 16,000 deaths) and I've written enough about common or garden racists, Twitter and Facebook trolls, and the complicity in their rise by those who claim they seek to oppose them but, due to their own intractability, simply aid them. Useful idiots to borrow a phrase.

If Sesame Street can explain Black Lives Matter to kids in about five minutes flat than we have to assume that those adults that still don't, or choose not to, get it are doing so on purpose. Actively choosing not to. "Not all streets are like Sesame Street" Louie tells his son Elmo in a touching clip from the wonderfully warm, inclusive, and funny children's show before Big Bird comes on to learn why Black Lives Matter.

Elsewhere, far right protestors descend on London and other major cities to sing "we're racist", Sieg Heil and give Nazi salutes in front of the boarded up statue of their hero Winston Churchill (as many observers have pointed out, the most WTF/2020 thing ever) and the Cenotaph, to violently break up harmless picnics, and to urinate over the memorial to a policeman, Keith Palmer who died in 2017 protecting the Houses of Parliament from an Islamist terrorist attack. In one instance an injured racist was protected by an anti-racist Black Lives Matter campaigner. Can't help wondering how that may have played out if the roles had been reversed.

If Big Bird and Elmo can get their head round it then so can you. If you're still writing All Lives Matter, you're still defending Tommy Robinson, and you still think Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Boris Johnson are handling this pandemic well it's not so much that you're unfortunately stupid. It's that you're so full of hate, so consumed with impotent rage, that you choose to be stupid.

There's been a lot of nonsense written about people living in their own 'echo chambers' and their own 'bubbles' in recent years but the trouble is when you let these transgressive, racist, violent, and divisive voices in it's never a dialogue. They shout you down, they scream all over you, and, if that doesn't work, they soon, and this train's never late, resort to violence.

The latest initiative in easing lockdown (apart from opening up zoos) is for people to form 'bubbles'. Yes, the once derided bubbles we should be breaking out from are now the things we should be keeping ourselves safe in. I'm keeping my physical bubble small for now but I'm making my social bubble as large and inclusive as possible. Everyone's allowed in except for racists, Trump supporters, Johnson supporters, and those who seek both to divide and to use violence as a tool to frighten progressives into submission. The idea of the bubble to keep us safe in groups can work in more than one way and my friends and family are a curious and exotic enough mixture of creatures that I, for one, won't be feeling any need to go to the zoo tomorrow and anyway, I've got an alpaca just down the road.

Isolation XXIII:None Shall Escape The Judgement

"None shall escape the judgement of this time. These words I sing to all mankind" - None Shall Escape The Judgement, Johnny Clarke.

Since I dropped my most recent Isolation blog last Friday my own, personal, life has been quiet, inconsequential, and rather pleasant. I've chatted to Mum, Dad, Vicki, and Michelle, I had a great evening playing Owen's online Kahoot quiz with friends, I've binge watched the brilliant comedy series Dave, and I met Pam for a socially distanced walk around Brockwell Park where we checked in on the baby cygnets and looked at the beautiful flowers in JJ Sexby's walled garden.

In the real world and on the Internet (not exactly the same thing but now more entwined than ever), though, things have been anything but quiet, inconsequential, and pleasant. They've been loud, hugely consequential, and often very unpleasant. Most of all, for me, they've been confusing. Like most people I like to think I have an answer to things or at least a firm opinion but events of the last couple of weeks have made my head spin and not always in a good way.

While deaths in the UK due to Covid-19 are, finally, happily decreasing the fear of a second spike, or second wave, is very real and yet there are people, in their thousands, attending Black Lives Matter protests and that's got a lot of other people, a lot of white people, a lot of very Brexity people, very worked up. Both my cousin and my aunt, his mother, shared links to social media about how these protests will be not just a reason but the sole reason for a second spike in coronavirus deaths.

The people who'd initially posted these things had Facebook pages full of race hate and race baiting so it's safe to say they're not exactly impartial and it's also safe to say they're not allies in the Black Lives Matter movement. I defriended both cousin and aunt because even if they'd shared those articles in good, if misguided, faith they were still using social media to spread a message of hate. As the long stream of comments in the threads below them, mostly just the word "cunts" repeated over and over again, proved.

While I can't condone people gathering in large groups while the virus is still a threat it seems as disingenuous, intentionally so, to single out the Black Lives Matter protests while, at the same time, claiming to support a government that has been wilfully negligent and complacent in protecting its people from Covid-19.

John Boyega, Raheem Sterling, Anthony Joshua, and Lewis Hamilton, it seems, now have more responsibility for running the country than Boris Fucking Johnson and his boss Dominic Fucking Cummings. It's entirely possible that these protests may contribute to a second wave, that's undeniable, but protestors and even the people who have been pilloried for taking day trips to beaches are not responsible for the government's failing and it is those government failings that have been the number one factor in why the UK has the second largest coronavirus death toll on the planet. My cousin and my aunt, unsurprisingly, felt no need to comment upon that.

The Johnson administration and its supporters have been desperate for someone else to blame instead of their beloved Boris and ideally that someone would be young, liberal, living in London or some leftie city like Bristol, and (best of all), black. Sadly, the Black Lives Matter protests (and the small minority who have resorted to violence) have given the government and its supporters just the ammo they needed. They're gonna juice this for all it's worth.

Most of us can understand that structural and ingrained racism is so endemic to our society that those who suffer most from it would rather take their chances with a second wave of coronavirus than live in a world where the likelihood of being beaten up, or killed, by the police is a more real, more common, and more eternal threat. But Tories from the shires won't get that, they'll choose not to get that, they'll focus on the moron who lobbed a brick that hit a horse, they'll post All Lives Matter, and they'll share unsubstantiated stories on social media because it fits what they want to believe.

But these protests have provoked a debate and a change in society that has been long overdue in a way that all the thousands of entirely peaceful protests and all the thousands of people taking the knee have not done. Boris Johnson complains of thuggery but has ignored every peaceful request for change. Boris Johnson's got a bloody cheek complaining of thuggery when him and his Bullingdon Club chums made a point of smashing up restaurants just for fun. Boris Johnson's a fucking piece of shit for complaining about thuggery when him and his friend Darius Guppy have been recorded arranging to have the journalist Stuart Collier physically assaulted.

An assault that only didn't occur because they were unable to find his correct address. Boris Johnson's done more than anyone to turn the UK into a country where bullying and violence works and gives you prominence. Boris Johnson has described black people as 'picaninnies' with 'watermelon smiles', he's called Muslim women 'letterboxes', and he's described gay men as 'tank topped bum boys'. If there's division and discord in this country at a higher level than for generations right now it's not because Boris Johnson's been too liberal in his defence of multiculturalism but quite the opposite.

As Boris Johnson and his government await the news that Brazil has overtaken the UK for coronavirus deaths and somehow try to pass that off as good news (it won't be. Brazil's government is, along with Trump's, one of the only ones in the world worse than Johnson's and is now reported to be hiding the death toll from the Brazilian people) you'll see Johnson and his even more extreme outliers cheerleading for stricter measures to prevent the rioting while at the same time defending the reputation of a long dead slave trader who was responsible for the displacement of over 80,000 Africans and the deaths of 19,000 of them (thrown off slave boats into the Atlantic and eaten by sharks) because he also did some philanthropic work. Should they defend Jimmy Savile for his charity work? Should they erect a statue of him?

Nigel Farage is not far off from calling for a full on race war (intentionally pretending he thinks it's a black v white battle and not an anti-racist v racist one) and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's unfunny comedy creation Tommy Robinson has posted a video of himself picking a fight with Anthony Joshua. I'm neither a gambling man nor a boxing fan but I'd both tune in and have a wager on the result of that one.

The Black Lives Matter campaigners are, in the huge majority, protesting because they don't want to see people of one skin colour being treated differently, worse, than people of other skin colours. That shouldn't even be a debate. We can debate the rights or wrongs of going out and doing so without social distancing during a global pandemic but that debate will need to be a lot more nuanced than calling them 'cunts' or sharing links provided by known racists.

The taking down of statues of slave traders is a good thing. A fairer, more just, and less racist society is, of course, a good thing. A country built in the image of Nigel Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and Katie Hopkins would be a terrible terrible country. BBQing chlorinated chicken on the Isle of Wight with Richard Tice and Isabel Oakeshott while Michael Gove in a gimp mask hands out cans of warm lager which, when drained, people throw on the floor to take photos of to upload to Instagram complete with a rant about how the country's going to the dogs.

Prince Andrew could get the pizzas in and, hush hush, maybe procure a few underage girls if you keep it quiet. Homeless people could be brought in on buses with huge lies printed on their sides to watch Boris Johnson and his Eton chums burn £50 notes in front of their faces and the new statue of Jimmy Savile, nursing an erection of course, could oversee the whole horrific Hieronymous Bosch/Cold War Steve diorama.

Despite the fact Mark Francois would probably get a boner just thinking about all that, it's not a pretty image but it's pretty much where we're at now and some people think the main problem is that black people and their allies are protesting the right to not be murdered in public or in police cells and to not have statues in our major cities celebrating those murderers. We're seeing, and feeling, the fallout of these protests in the USA, the UK, and Brazil more than we are other countries. The countries with the three highest coronavirus death tolls.

It's not unconnected. The USA, the UK, and Brazil have elected known racists and negligent buffoons and bullies to run their countries and this, the racial tension AND the Covid-19 death toll, is the result of that. This awful dystopia we all appear to be living under isn't some kind of unfortunate accident. It was created the day you followed Donald Trump's Twitter page, it was created the day you ticked the box for Brexit, it was created the day you shared a Tweet by Katie Hopkins, and, painful though it might be, it was created the day you refused to vote for Hillary Clinton because she's not Bernie Sanders or Ed Miliband because he looked silly eating a bacon sandwich. You voted for chaos and now you're fucking getting it. Tax free, cheaper than the shops, but a bit later than you wanted it because that's how Amazon roll.

Trump, Johnson, and Bolsonaro have made bullying, bragging, and lying the way politics, and business, get done in their countries so it's hardly a surprise that those with nothing to lose are taking the law into their own hands. Certainly not in a country where breaking the laws has, as proven by Dominic Cummings, no consequence.

It's good that this direct action has worked in a way peaceful protest simply has not while at the same time it's highly problematic that it's happening when we need to still be social distancing. That's confusing (as I said earlier) but I will still celebrate the fact that a slave trader's statue is now sharing a watery grave with the many thousands of real live people whose deaths he was responsible for and I will celebrate the fact that Bristol's Colston Hall is finally being renamed. But I am also aware, as those not on either extreme of the political spectrum have pointed out, that these actions may have set a lethal precedent. Don't imagine it won't be long before the far right racists are pulling down statues of those they deem insufficiently British. As I wrote earlier, they'll juice it for all it's worth. I won't agree with it but I will be, along with other hopefully progressive thinkers, stymied by the fact we've supported direct action in the past.

The far right have used this against the people before, they'll use it again. The mistake was voting in these racists. Mistakes are very easy to mistake. They take seconds. Undoing them can take months, years, decades, and, as we're still seeing with slavery, generations upon generations upon generations. Power needs prudence but prudence also, we now know for certain, needs power. For the white majority population of Britain a can of worms has been opened. For the BAME population of Britain those worms were never in no fucking can in the first place.

Members Only:Dicking Around with Dave.

"Hold the fuck up! Ain't you the YouTube rapper with the small dick and all that?"

"You're a rapper? I thought you were, like, a meme"

Having a name as common as Dave (as I do) means, at least, that most people can both spell and pronounce it even if you occasionally have to be known by two names to distinguish you from other Daves that people know. Because it's such a normal name it's always being co-opted into comedy and often in quite annoying ways.

I had to put up with several years of people coming up to me repeating "hello Dave. You're my wife now" from The League of Gentlemen and when the Dave comedy channel launched I suddenly became, to a small group, "the home of witty banter". When, in truth, I'm anything but. I'm a really boring serious bastard.

But a rapper called Dave with a stage name of Lil Dicky - due to what he claims is an abnormally minuscule penis - sounded like a new low to me. Not least because I was being recommended the recent ten part series (available on BBC iPlayer), also called Dave, by a female friend. If enough people watch this Dave will soon become synonymous with 'small cock'. Why didn't they choose a more suitable name? Jerome or something like that.

It almost put me off watching the series but I'm glad it didn't because, awkward choice of name aside, it was brilliant. Laugh out loud funny in many places and even, as the life stories and motivations of not just Dave but the supporting cast were drilled down into, surprisingly touching.

The basic premise is that Dave (Dave Burd) is a white, Jewish, middle class, rapper who smells of tuna fish and neither partakes of the herb, screws around, or has any kind of gang or criminal affiliation whatsoever and he's trying to make it in the Los Angeles rap world. He raps, regularly and humorously, about the shortcomings of his wedding furniture and though he gains no little notoriety for doing so he's taken more as a comedian, comedy rapper, or even a meme than he is a serious rapper.

And then there's that whole business about his manhood. The first episode begins with Dave having his penis inspected by a doctor while Dave recounts how he was born with a tangled urethra and had to have the 'ribbed' skin of his testicles partly removed and placed on his shaft. Resulting in what he describes as "a dick made out of balls".

Dave is assisted on his mission by his black, yet very middle class, beats maker Elz (Travis 'Taco' Bennett) and his new hyperactive friend and hype man GaTa. GaTa's black too - and actually comes from a black neighbourhood which, along with GaTa's shameless self-promotion, helps open a few doors. Both Bennett and GaTa (who plays himself!) are brilliant throughout the series but props too must go to Taylor Misiak as Dave's long suffering school teacher girlfriend, Christine Ko as Ally's room-mate Emma, and Andrew Santino as Dave's roomie, and later manager, Mike.

While GaTa's backstory is the most moving, every character is given the courtesy of being fully drawn rather than sketched and the funniest lines and situations are generously shared out to all cast members. Ally reads Dave's tweet about getting head almost as soon as she's finished doing it, Dave's asked to rap at a dead child's funeral and wonders how bars about dry vaginas and micro phalli will go down, GaTa describes himself as "like a black Neil deGrasse Tyson" and washes his hair with a bar of soap "smaller than a Tic Tac", while Elz describes the rapper Trippie Redd who has the number eight tattooed between his eyes as looking "like a fucking calculator".

Other hilarious set pieces involve a soundcloud rapper called Kid Toilet, a man selling wooden shirts, the accidental running over of a bunny rabbit, the sexual kink known as 'milking', Dave being asked to sign a fan's dick, and Dave asking his manager "can I suck my own dick on stage? Legally?". Dave raps that his dick is like a salt shaker, says he pees like a supersoaker, and takes out his sexual frustration on a Fuck-me-Silly III sex doll that has no upper torso. Perhaps he should have invested in the Fuck-me-Silly IV?

We see Dave and his friends doing very uncool things in very amusing ways. They play crazy golf, Dave asks if Akhbar is Allah's last name "in Muslim", and Dave and Mike share bath nights together where they road test new beauty products. While much of the humour comes from Dave talking about his second pee-hole and the fact that every time he ejaculates he makes eye contact with his Drake poster there is, alongside all this brilliantly coarse vulgarity, a softer beating heart at play in this series.

The relationship between Dave and Ally, though often strained, is tender and loving, Dave and his friends may rip the piss out of each other at every possible opportunity but the love between members of this closely knit group becomes more tangible with each episode and, towards the end, culminates in Ally's hilarious yet touching double edged sword of a speech at her sister's wedding.

While we laugh at Dave's dad washing another man's car and there's an awkward moment when, at an art exhibition, Dave imagines a racially insensitive word when being asked "you don't like Koons?" the show doesn't shy away from tackling head on, well side on - very side on, mental health issues, cultural appropriation, and, quite obviously, sexual anxiety.

These characters are not just funny. They're likeable too. For all the references to Lil Wayne, Offset, Meek Mill, and Lonely Island and for all the impressive guest appearances by Macklemore, Young Thug, Gunna, Benny Blanco, YG, and even Justin Bieber and Kourtney Kardashian it is Dave himself and his friends and family (shout outs have to go to Allan Fisher and Joachim Powell as Young Dave and Young Elz, seen in flashbacks, and David Paymer and Gina Hecht as Dave's enthusiastic parents) that really make this series so warm, so brilliantly observed, and so bloody funny.

The whole series is a fictionalised account of Dave's, and Lil Dicky's, real life rise to fame and though that can't possibly have been as amusing as this programme makes it look it does suggest that there are plenty more adventures ahead for Dave and the gang. The fact that the series ended with at least two of the key relationships unresolved suggests a second series was always in mind. The fact that the show was such a success would suggest to me that it's now merely a matter of time.

No episode of Dave is longer than half an hour but in each of those episodes I laughed, loudly and soundly, several times. As Dave himself might say "never mind the length. Feel the quality".

Isolation XXII:Repetition Repetition Repetition

"Repetition, repetition, repetition. There is no hesitation. This is your situation" - Repetition, The Fall.

A couple of days ago, on my way out for my daily constitutional, I spotted my neighbour Nicki watering the flowers in our communal garden. "How's it going?" I asked. "Alright. Same as ever" she replied, before adding, with a smile "Groundhog Day".

This weekend I was supposed to be heading down to Rye to lead a TADS walk to Camber Sands and back. I've been thinking about the cobbled streets and pubs of Rye, the undoubted ice cream and pint on the beach in Camber, and, more than anything, about how much I'd enjoy the laughter and conversation of my friends.

I've been thinking about how none of that is going to happen now and, instead, as Nicki said, I'll be experiencing another Groundhog Day. I'll wake up, check my emails/Facebook/Twitter, listen to some music, chat on the phone (since I last wrote I've chatted to Adam, Michelle, Mum, and Dad), have something to eat, go for a walk (normally on Peckham Rye), pop in the shops, come home, watch some TV, drink some beers (though I've taken a few nights off from that recently), and endlessly check both the news and the grisly global coronavirus death league (Brazil have knocked Italy off the podium and will soon be breathing down the neck of the proudly 'world-beating' UK).

On good days (Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays) I get to see friends and family on Zoom as we do our regular, and massively enjoyable, Kahoot quizzes and on a bad day, earlier this week, I had a brief bout of gout (swerving the absolute worst of it with extra strength Nurofen and cranberry juice) but, to all intents and purposes, Groundhog Day is a fair assessment of what life in the time of coronavirus feels like and I'm not even complaining about that. At least I'm not working in a hospital or a care home or driving a bus or a tube. At least I'm not dying of the bastard thing.

As far too many people in the UK still are despite the jarringly upbeat message now coming from our government and being interpreted by many as "this thing's nearly over, you can start getting back to normal". About two months ago I'd have estimated the amount of people social distancing to be around 98%. Being generous I'd have to say it's now about half that. Being honest I'd have to say that worries me.

On Wednesday the UK (population:66,000,000) registered a higher daily death toll than all 27 EU nations combined (population 445,000,000) so you might reasonably think that relaxation of lockdown and a casual easing of social distancing etiquette looks a little premature. Or even downright dangerous. You might even ask yourself what's spurred it on and for that you can find the answers with our unloved, and unlovely, government.

Obviously, people want to get back to doing things they like. Visiting friends, riding on trains, going to pubs, shops, and football matches and, in some insane cases, returning to the office. People want to do the things they've always liked doing but most people, despite what you might constantly read elsewhere, aren't stupid and they aren't selfish either. They'll suspend those pleasures for the greater good and that's not just an opinion. We've seen over the last two to three months that it's a fact.

But people need to feel we're all in it together and if someone, say for example a special adviser to the government, was seen to be given a free hand to break the rules then a significant number of people would come to think that those rules don't really need following. At least not by them. Most people breaking the rules probably think, like Dominc Cummings, that the rules need to be followed. They just imagine themselves, like Dominic Cummings, to be exempt. To be special. To be exceptional.

For this misplaced sense of exceptionalism we can lay the blame, yet again, squarely at the door of Boris Fucking Johnson and his boss Dominic Fucking Cummings who have done as much as anyone in recent years to propagate the myth of British (always meaning English) exceptionalism. Much as Donald Trump has done in the USA and Jair Bolsonaro has done in Brazil. The fact that the US, the UK, and Brazil have the three highest Covid-19 death tolls in the world is not coincidental to that. It is both directly and indirectly due to that.

It's an exceptionalism that considers due diligence, preparation, and truth to be the habits of lesser nations and 'girlie swots'. It's an exceptionalism that brands critics, judges, remainers, and the media 'enemies of the people'. It's an exceptionalism that seeks division when unity is required, it's an exceptionalism that claps for carers instead of paying them properly, it's an exceptionalism that responds to 'black lives matter' with 'all lives matter' (the new "I'm not racist but"), it's an exceptionalism that deports people of colour, the Windrush generation, to countries they hardly know, and it's an exceptionalism that brands people who care about the economic future of the country they live in as "citizens of nowhere".

It's an exceptionalism, ultimately, that kills its own people and when it's done killing its own people it lies about how they died and plants the seeds for the next lethal disaster. Boris Johnson isn't easing lockdown because the threat of catching the disease is over, or even low. He's easing lockdown because he was getting bad press over his refusal to sack, or even reprimand, Cummings over his road trip and subsequent lying about road trip.

Boris Johnson is easing lockdown because he needs a boost in the popularity stakes. That's what populism is. Doing things people want in the short term with no regard for the long term. Boris Johnson is easing lockdown because Boris Johnson is, at heart, nothing more than a lying little boy who knows if he tells us what we want to hear there are a significant enough number of us who so badly want to believe him we will believe him.

Boris Johnson has worked out that if he can just give us something that at least looks like good news then enough of us will take it to actually be good news. He's back to full bullshit, bluster, and bully mode. Telling Keir Starmer he's proud of his record (on that very same day that more British citizens died of Covid-19 than did throughout the whole EU and a day before Alok Sharma, the Tory Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy announced he'd contracted the virus) and suggesting Starmer, instead of asking important and timely questions should just whoop and holler a bit. Like Johnson's backbench toadies. The ones Jacob Rees-Mogg is working to get back in the house to cover up the fact that, without them, Johnson looks as exposed as a schoolboy caught with his pants down wanking over the underwear section of the Grattan catalogue.

Easing of lockdown is only good news if the end result proves to be less people dying and all people not just feeling but being safer. By Johnson's own metrics, now - along with the science - conveniently sidelined, we're not there yet. The fact that the government are happy to lie about it and to blame others proves that, yes, we are in a kind of Groundhog Day where the same things keep happening over and over again.

I eat breakfast, listen to music, chat to my mum, go for walks, and write blogs. The government lie, scapegoat, and obfuscate. It is, indeed, very Groundhog Day. But here's the thing. In the film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character gets to live the same day over and over again, thousands upon thousands of time, until he gets that day right. Until he learns [SPOILER ALERT] to do the exact right thing that is required to win Andie MacDowell's heart.

We're after a bigger prize than the fictional heart of a fictional character played by Andie MacDowell. The prize we seek is the lives and safety of our families, friends, and assorted loved ones. There could be no bigger prize and the fact we've now come to realise that is one of the few positive things to come out of this whole coronavirus episode.

Groundhog Day teaches us that repetition doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be a bad thing but it can also be a very good thing. It depends on what's being repeated. Good acts, acts of kindness, and acts of love get better, not worse, the more they are repeated. A policeman killing an unarmed black man, a government minister lying about a deadly virus, or even some troll trying to debase an Internet debate. These things just get worse the more they're repeated.

We can change some things. Others we must accept. We must accept, for now, the existence of Covid-19 but we can change our response to it and we can, and most definitely should, change the government we have in place to deal with it as soon as we possibly can. Or the only thing we'll be repeating is the same deadly mistake we made by electing them in the first place.