When Corona hit the grandchildren were all still living in the pub. Darren was now twenty-three , Victoria twenty-two and his baby Spice Emma was eighteen. Victoria was doing a hairdressing course and Emma worked in a local clothes shop called 'Classy Rags'. Darren was more problematic. He had a mind of his own, that boy, and Andy couldn't quite work him out.
Darren spent a lot of time alone in his bedroom on the computer and although he had a few friends he didn't seem that interested in socialising. He had been an A student at school and had gone into accounting. He loved numbers and was actually quite a talent. He had started doing the pub books when he was about thirteen and still did them. He now worked for an accountancy firm in Uxbridge.
The girls, encouraged by their father, had got into the spice girls and had enjoyed getting dressed up while on holiday in Spain where much to Darren's horror the whole family would mime to Wannabe at the local karaoke bar. It became a family thing. He found his family embarrassing at the best of times but this whole thing with the Spice girls was just wrong. His Dad as ginger spice...like why? He just didn't get it.
Now during the early days of lockdown they all did a Spice Girls tik tok video and he was mortified knowing his few friends and work colleagues would see it. He had always felt different to his family, he didn't know why, but it all stemmed to when he was six years old and far too old to still believe in Santa Claus. They had indulged him and not wanted his younger sisters to find out that Santa Claus wasn't real. A boy at school called Stewart Atkins told him the truth about Santa and mocked him when he started to cry. The whole class joined in and after that he didn't trust his parents or any authority.
From then on he questioned everything and that was why he didn't believe in Covid or God for that matter. He had done his research and came to the conclusion that this was all a hoax. He looked at the figures the numbers and he could see clearly that nothing added up. This bothered him.
He watched videos by David Eyck and Alex Jones which confirmed his bias and tried to tell his family what was really going on. His father Andy became really angry shouting at him and calling him an idiot. He wouldn't hear of these tinfoil hat conspiracy theories in his house again.
'Jesus!' he shouted, 'My own son a fucking Covid idiot.'
'People are fucking dying,' he went on, 'Your Gran and Grandad might die so just fucking shut up with all that bollocks alright?'
Darren didn't mentioned it again and withdrew even more into his own reality. He knew all about the Illuminati and how they controlled the UN, the World Economic Forum and the population control agenda. He was fully up to speed on The Great Reset and the machinations of the Deep State and the controlled mainstream or 'Lamestream' media as he liked to call it.
He followed people all the conspiracy theorys online and found many other like-minded souls there in the comments section. These people spoke his truth. They were his new tribe. He saw that freedom of speech was being taken away, freedom of thought, freedom itself was under attack.
'Fucking hell' he sometimes wondered, 'What's the point in living anymore?'
This thought invaded his mind more often than he could handle and before he knew it he was suffering from depression without even knowing it. The world became a dark, hostile, unwelcoming place. He had planned on traveling abroad someday but that was all out the window now. His reality grew bleaker by the day.
His sister Victoria was seeing some boy that lived up the road and sneaked out every night to see him. Her parents turned a blind eye and let her get on with it. His other sister Emma was a deep thinker and had withdrawn completely disappearing each night to God knows where. His mother Jan even had someone over to give her a spray tan.
'Fucking hypocrites!' he thought, 'So what about social distancing then?'.
Jan had developed quite an alcohol habit over the years and as long as she had her wine she was okay. She now started drinking at four o' clock which she called wine o' clock.
'Didn't everybody have a drink then?' She thought, 'What fun!'
She had no problem embracing the new normal as it was called. By six in the evening she was well on the way laughing loudly as she FaceTimed with one of her friends. By nine she was often collapsed in tears about something or other and by eleven she was crashed out. She'd wake up with a hangover and bash around the house in her cat onesie, bad tempered untill she'd had her espresso then settle into some online shopping until four o'clock came around when she would start again.
In her bid to stay stick thin like her idol Posh Spice she had over time developed an eating disorder and was now hardly eating anything at all, existing on her restricted diet and a bottle or two of wine every day. She had become painfully thin and delighted in this.
Andy had taken to staying down in the bar drinking and playing music from his youth. He got his massive collection of CDs out and would go through them feeling nostalgic. Sometimes when he was well pissed he would play the Spice Girls and dance around on his own. In his drunken state he would feel like he was Ginger Spice strutting around the stage.
He looked through old photos and just felt sad. As the weeks went on he worried how they would get through it. Jan was still spending like crazy buying everyday on Amazon. She had always been high maintenances and he had indulged her. She even had a Victoria Beckham dress that had cost fifteen hundred fucking quid. Let alone her collection of expensive bags. Her beauty regimen, her nails, her hair extensions, her false tan and all the rest cost a fortune each month. But hey she was his posh spice , his princess. He just wished she would reign it in a bit given the circumstances .
He had tried to speak to her about it but she had got quite nasty. They both had a bit too much to drink and the argument got out off hand. She even brought up that he should have married a ginger spice and that she was sorry if she wasn't his type. Too sophisticated for him apparently. This had been a recurring theme when they argued and one that Andy found quite tiresome.
'For gods sake not that shit again!' he said.
God help him he had started to really dislike her. Now after months of lockdown he had started to wonder what he had ever seen in her.
'Stupid bitch!' he thought to himself.
He often found himself wishing she would get Covid and fucking die, the whining bitch.
Things were really falling apart.