When the daylight has faded

Breaking News (#tune)

Breaking news: tune in for the latest developments in the Covid-19 crisis

The TV blares this familiar announcement into my living room, and I groan. I remember about two years ago when, every time I got home from work and turned the telly on, a similar tune would greet me.

Breaking news: tune in for the latest development on Brexit

I would groan and switch the TV off immediately. Always the same rubbish... The UK wants a hard Brexit, no, a soft Brexit, maybe no Brexit. Brexit is Brexit and we will get Brexit done! Then again, the EU will not accept the UK's cherry picking. Lorry drivers will die from queuing in Dover, supermarkets will run out of food, chemists out of medicine and we are all going to die. But Britain will take sovereignty back and prosper. The EU will prosper anyway. And we need an Irish backstop. Don't forget Scotland wants out of the UK into the EU. No, they don't. Or do they? Blah blah blah. For years. They should have called it "Yo-Yo news".

Now I'm staring at the TV with a wistful smile on my face. I turn to my husband and assume the expressionless face of a news speaker.

"Germany has no vaccine but is confident that everyone will be vaccinated by summer, now that AstraZeneca has come into play. Oh, the AstraZeneca vaccine makes people ill and is much less effective than the BioNTech one and it cannot be given to people over 65. Wait. It cannot be given to anyone. It's a killer and must be kept in fridges, pending further investigation. A thorough two-day evaluation has given the British vaccine the all-clear. But if you are a woman and younger than 55, you'll probably die of a cerebral venous thrombosis. But it should be safe for the over 65s now. Inexplicably, no one wants the AstraZeneca jab now. How did that happen?" I grin. "The news is giving me whiplash."

My husband laughs and carries on, "Germany's outrage at countries that ordered vaccines first being supplied with vaccines first. What an outrageous new business practice. If Amazon worked like this, they'd be out of business pretty fast."

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten how the government and the media had been spinning this epic national fail into a bad practice business scandal? And got lots of people to buy the yarn.

"Why did I ever whinge and whine about the relentless Brexit news? Oh, the moment when Theresa May revealed that the naughtiest thing she had ever done was running through fields of wheat without the farmers' permission! Bercow's 'order' shouts! Great times!"

Nostalgia nearly overwhelms me when the current news rudely interrupts our reminiscing.

"The federal government is calling for a tightening of lockdown as cases rise exponentially again. Some German states will shut down schools a third time, while others have announced to bring more pupils back into the classroom."

I close my eyes and sigh. Then I hear the speaker mention the name Joachim Löw. Sports news. Finally something that makes sense.