I once told the following untruth.
During a rambling conversation about football, I informed my boys that Queens Park Rangers FC was founded in by a group of west London pig butchers by appointment to the royal court, and that their original name was Queen’s Pork Rangers.
Unbelievably, the tale passed muster.
Now this is not a crime. It falls, I hope, into the category of ‘cheeky fib’ rather than ‘destructive lie’ and I didn’t sustain the deception; mostly because it was too tempting to rejoice openly in the boys’ gullibility.
I am not a kind person.
The trouble is, the line between a cheeky fib and a destructive lie can be a touch blurry; especially when the cheeky fib isn’t about fooling the kids but about kidding ourselves.
I was at the shops last week, where, along with the rest of Southeast London, I kidded myself with the cheeky fib that I probably did need a little extra, although I was too late for loo paper.
On Friday night, I was at the pub with my friends Lloyd and Ross, kidding myself that a warm hug between old mates wasn’t unnecessary contact.
And on Saturday, I stood with my neighbours as Dulwich Hamlet defeated Hemel Hempstead Town, kidding myself myself that this wasn’t really a large crowd.
But every time, I knew with uneasy certainty that in kidding myself I was perpetuating a more ominous kind of untruth; and that the truth is that for now I have to change the way I live.
Now this is, if I may understate slightly, a colossal pain in the neck. But on the other, hand, as Jesus said, ‘The truth will set us free’; and it is, strangely, a tremendous relief to emerge from the weekend liberated from trying to convince myself to somehow carry on as normal.
There are some cheeky fibs I will cling to in this. I’m sure we all will. I will, in particular, kid myself that the occasional beer, if I can find one, is actually good for me.
But, for the time being, I reckon I have to be content with the uncomfortable truth, because, really, I don’t suddenly need ten kilos of cornflakes; I don’t need to hug anyone for them to know that I love them; and I need to help keep my neighbours healthy much more than I would ever have needed to see Dulwich Hamlet scramble belatedly away from the relegation zone.
This was the last time I went into the studio to deliver the Pause for Thought in person. The day before, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, had told the House of Commons that ‘all unnecessary social contact should cease’, and six days later, on March 23rd, Johnson announced the national lockdown. I don’t know what ‘unnecessary social contact’ is. It feels like I’ve spent the last five months discovering that any and all social contact is essential to my mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.
The picture is of the 1975-6 QPR squad, and is here as a gift to my friend Steve Pink.