Thankfully my wife is doing better, excluding the expected pregnancy pangs, and we’ve settled into life under lockdown.

I’m a little ashamed to say I am happier than I’ve ever been.

As our entire industry has been closed I’ve been furloughed by work. This unexpected boon, of a two month temporary retirement before my life of parenthood, has, at a stroke, removed all the things that irritate me from my life.  No commuting. No staring at a computer for eight hours (excluding video games). No thinking about the WENUS. Despite being, very literally trapped, these irritations have been replaced with a great sense of freedom. Freedom to not feel bad about putting off all the stupid little tasks, chores, and hobbies that have built up over the last decade.

I found a film on my laptop the other day which I’ve meant to watch since my last year of university!

I still haven’t watched it. But it’s nice to know I have the time.

I'm managing to tick some things off the list! Our babies room is finished (complete with curtain rail I drilled into the wall MYSELF), and we’re on top of washing for the first time since moving. I’m even reading a chapter of a book a day, occasionally lifting weights (and certainly eating enough for it to hopefully have an effect…) and, look at this, now I’m even back on track with Real Live Friends!

 “The One Where I Fiddle Whilst Rome Burns”

We may be gripped in the middle of baby fever, mercifully no longer an actual fever, but Monica really ISN’T. Despite Chandler’s assumptions.

He’s getting a bit scared of commitment now their relationship is all out in the open. Hey, Chandler, you may be committed but at least you still have other people you can talk to every now and then!

The secret being out gives us another glimpse of Red Ross after he catches them at it. Oh Ross, I feel the pain of someone you thought was a mate getting with your sister.

Incidentally, it’s a nice touch that Courteney Cox went to the effect of buttoning her shirt up incorrectly.

I think we’ve all done that. In the days when a shirt was something you’d bother to wear.

One of the two B-stories this week is a little hard to swallow, even this starved of entertainment. Joey’s got a new partner, who’s a little rough with her hands. And not in a good way.

It’s not so much this mildly abusive behaviour (if abusive behaviour can be mild…) being presented in a comic light I have a problem with, anything’s game for comedy if it’s done right.

It’s more how much of the humour arises from the other characters mocking Joey’s reaction to the situation. Maybe funny originally, but now it doesn’t really paint the characters in a good light. Their reaction is far removed from the usual high standard of friendship they exemplify.

Phoebe, too, isn’t being the best Friend this week, going to a party behind Ross’s back after he accidentally alienates the entire floor of his new flat.

Poor Ross, not making any new friends and sitting in his flat by himself. I wonder what that’s like?!

Even if some aspects of lockdown are hard, it’s brought some unexpected positives.

During my wife’s illness my dad began ringing every day to check in. I have no idea if this was off his own back, or at the behest of my mum, but once I got used to the strangeness it was quite nice. Really he’s a pretty great father, it’s a little cheesy but I know “he’ll be there for me” whenever I need him.

Even if our conversations were a little stilted, it’s a strange blessing that we spoke more in that week than we usually would in several months.

Another fun thing we’ve done is a live Friends™ Quiz on YouTube™.

Disappointingly, we didn’t do as well as I expected. But I think that’s understandable given I haven’t watched the second half the show since it first aired! And a lot of the early episodes are now several years in my past.

My wife consoled herself with another entry in her “Isolation Diary”.

 “Day 14:

My husband’s become completely obsessed with playing ‘Love Island: the Game’. Now imagine being quarantined in your house due to a global pandemic, which you currently have, and your husband is in the next room muttering about which boy to couple up with, and which girl is a complete bitch. I’m half expecting someone to jump out and say April Fools! But this really is life now. I thought it was just the virus & the baby I had to worry about, turns out my husband’s sexuality is also something of a concern.”

Don’t worry wife. It’s just a game. I’d never get fiction and reality mixed up!

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

We had a little chat with one of our neighbours on our walk the other day (at a distance). It can be summed up by the following.

Getting Coronavirus: concerning

Watching your pregnant wife go through it: deeply distressing

Having a lengthy discussion with your neighbour about the virus spreading on cats, where you find out he’s been secretly feeding your cat, and then telling him you’ve both had it:

Priceless.

That’ll teach the fucker.

I’m alive.

Within a few days it was clear my symptoms weren’t going to get worse and I started feeling better.

On the pain scale it was somewhere between a cold and a kidney stone..

Now, in the absence of any tests, we’re left unsure if I even had it. I think so, but can’t feel any relief at being one of the lucky ones as we see the stories sweep across the media. “A thousand UK dead in one day.” And the smaller stories on social media that hit harder, “my father died last night…”

It’s affecting us all on the macro and microscopic level.

I’ve learnt a lot about myself while isolating. I’m still taking a minimum three days to reply to messages. This whole time I thought I was super busy; turns out I’m just an asshole.

In fact, like Monica and Chandler, I’ve mostly been flexing my biceps and doing laundry.

OK, maybe not doing laundry the way THEY do it.

“The One Where She Comes Back Too Soon”

It’s been a pretty tumultuous month.

Shortly after my wife lost her job, it looked like I too may be joining her in “Ross-ing” up my life. But things seem secure, for now. The Government’s done a pretty good job of supporting people through the crisis, whilst ignoring those who need help most. Businesses are given help first, whilst pregnant self-employed people are hung out to dry.

It’s nice that some things are business as usual. At least they’re giving us a sense of continuity, if not a properly funded health service.

And now, just to really drive home the message that no-one is safe; our glorious leader has got the virus too. Honestly, he’s already stolen our thunder once by having a baby at the same time as us and now this! Selfish.

Given we’re all in isolation now, and all the sitting around in your pants that brings, it’s appropriate that Ugly Naked Guy is finally back. Providing Ross with a much needed chance to move house.

“Maybe we could do that thing with the cans on string!” enthuses Joey.

Honey, we’re all doing that now, Zooming™ and Houseparty™-ing to stay sane. And what a joy it is, talking to your friends whilst being Ugly Naked Guy from the waist down. I’m getting used to it, even learning how to look directly into the webcam rather than at my own image. Really, this is like having to learn to look people in the eye all over again!

With the “They Don’t Know That We Know That They Knows”, the game of Phoebe and Chandler pretending to be into each other, and Chandler’s declaration of love for Monica, this may be my favourite episode.

It’s a shame it’s coincided with one of the worst weeks of my life.

After a couple of days of my illness, my wife continued her Ross streak by moving too. Despite my insistence she stay at her mums until I was better, she decided to come home. After all I “didn’t sound too ill on the phone”. She thought I wanted her to stay away so I could enjoy playing videogames by myself!

Well, yes I was enjoying that, but I wouldn’t ban my pregnant wife from her house just for a few days of me time. I was trying to protect her and the baby.

Within a few days, I was proved right in the worst possible way. She had all the symptoms. My seven months pregnant wife. And pregnant women have just been moved to the high risk category. Et tu Boris?

And it turns out; dealing with a respiratory virus is a lot harder when all your abdominal organs have been pushed into your rib cage.

I think it was fifteen days in total. Fifteen days of staying up late just to be sure, being woken in the night by coughing fits. Two late night calls to 111. There wasn’t anything they could do. One night things seemed so bad we rang 999, they did a great job of assessing and calmly telling me they wouldn’t be able to send anyone. Essentially the message was “we can only help if they’re turning blue”. So excuse me if I didn’t have any sympathy when it was reported the PM still had symptoms after five days and was being taken in for some tests as a precaution.

Why should he get better treatment than my wife and unborn child? I thought we were “all in this together”?

By the second week I was lying awake listening to her shallow breathing. Is she getting worse or are we just panicking? Surely her cough should have stopped by now?

It really made me realise how unprepared I am for six months of listening to a newborns freaky night breathing.

Despite getting it much worse than me, she got through it, and is now on the mend. I know we’re lucky, and other people will have things much harder. Even Boris, taking a turn for the worse and spending a few nights in the ICU. I know there will be millions of people, experiencing similar things, or much, much worse.

But that didn’t make it any easier at the time.

OH MY GOD.

UGLY NAKED GUY IS ON THE SCREEN.

ON. THE. SCREEN.

I’ve been waiting 5 years for this!

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

As we’re housebound my wife has been looking for ways to occupy her time whilst I watch Friends™ and construct giant poking devices.

She hit upon the VERY ORIGINAL idea of writing a diary.

Her daily readings turned out to be a very effective way of her criticising (or sometimes praising!) my behaviour in a way that felt less like I was being attacked. Here’s an extract:
“My nephew rang me and asked if I had corona virus then started laughing. He then went on to tell me that he & his dad made a mud / worm house and put 24 worms inside. But dad forgot to put air holes in and they all died. I found this funnier than a vegetarian should. I can relate to those poor worms, struggling to breath. My sister is making nephew write a diary, he didn’t go into as much details as I did & simply wrote “today Dad killed 24 worms”.

One day my nephew’s kids will read that back & think their Granddad went on some random worm massacre.”

Needs more Friends™ if you ask me.

Well, I needn’t have worried about missing Dr Phalange’s wedding because of the birth, as now nobody can make it.

The Netflix™ generation has reached our final evolution, and must now stay indoors for the foreseeable future.

And I am cursed to chronicle this global pandemic, as it reaches Britain’s shores, through the lens of Friends™. Like Samuel Pepys if he liked Christopher Marlowe a bit too much.

 “The One With the Lockdown”

We’ve known it was coming for weeks, and yet we’ve stood (along with the government) doing very little. It’s hard to blame the government; successive waves of new viruses have failed to reach their potential. Threatening us from afar and fizzling out before anything comes of it. Like the prospect of a Friends™ reunion.

I too, thought it would never make its way over here in any substantial fashion. Even when it reached Europe it seemed it would remain a continental concern. Like clogs, French poetry, and the idea of establishing a broader union based on mutual respect and free trade.

I only started to get worried when Dr Phalange herself took me to task for a flippant Facebook™ status. Maybe this WAS gona be a big deal?

But we “kept calm and carried on”. I was told to work from home; it suited me fine. I’d save a bomb on travel, and had to help out with my wife’s company’s kids’ show this week. The show must go on.

And so, after a weekend setting up in the theatre, the kids arrived for their first dress rehearsal, and within ten minutes it was all over. They’d “got the science wrong” and needed to close everything immediately. The kids were sent home, my pregnant wife was devastated, losing her job, and all she’d worked at for ten months in one go. And she had to let down a room full of children at peak excitement.

The children took it surprisingly well, I marvelled at their resilience, laughing and joking in the face of the tears.

But all the while I was struggling; going up and down ladders had seemed a bit harder than usual. Was the theatre colder than normal? Why are these lights so hot?

By the time we got to the car, I knew I had to take action, after hours of denial I had to listen to the voices in my head; like Boris Johnson finally realising the British people were NOT sick of experts, but actually sick of something else.

I had to let my wife down, in her biggest hour of need, seven months pregnant, having the worst day of her life, losing her job AND becoming Ross Number 3.

And now I had to tell her: “I think you should stay at your mum’s for a few days, I can’t be with you right now, the risk to you and the baby is too great, I can’t go to my parents, they’re too old. The guidance is clear. Fever = Isolation.”

So, here we are. Just me, myself and I.

We’re all trapped with ourselves now. In my case, fatigued to shit, sweating in my sleep, aching all over.

OOOO, Joey’s got a manbag! Ha Ha Ha. Eh, it’s just a bag.

“We’re just not sure the world is ready for your bag…”

Well, hey 20 years later it’s all dandy! Usually I’d take comfort in that…

I want to be with my wife, not here watching Friends™. But I can’t live with her, even as I feel I can’t live without her. Hey… someone should write a song about that.

And now Phoebe’s reuniting with her long lost father, and, and this is all a bit much.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

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