Disenfranchised – Jenny 62

 

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[Old back story is here: Story so far at 30 Nov 2020 and read more recent Jenny episodes especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links.]

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“Berkhamsted is cancelled,” said Jenny, dully.

“Cancelled or postponed?” asked Peter, looking up from his Xbox controller.

“Postponed probably,” said Jenny, “But I doubt whether it’ll happen now. Or at least not for me.”

“Why not?” asked Peter. “Give you more time to get in shape.”

“In shape? The cheek of it.”

“Shaper, then. In more shape, whatever. Train more. If you have time outside your hectic personal life.”

“My hectic what?”

“I’m not knocking it,” grinned Peter. “Just noticing that your priorities are shifting a little shall we say. Oh, that’s an interesting colour you’ve gone, mum.”

Jenny tried to arrange her face in a way that didn’t look either guilty or embarrassed but unfortunately looked both. She and Anna were getting along well. Very well in fact and she knew she was spending more and more time with her. And it felt good. So right now she couldn’t think of anything to say to Peter either. Something else he noticed.

“Yes,” he said. “Precisely my point. you go on, squandering your time on your love life, letting everything else go by the by and…”

“Says the teenage Dad who wants to get married but doesn’t have a clue what else he wants to do.”

Peter conceded this. Slightly. “It’s complicated,” he said. “I’m part of the damaged generation, you know? Important part of our growing up just got pulverised by a plague we had no part in and which our elders had no control over.”

“That’s why you had a baby?” asked Jenny.

“Look,” said Peter, stopping his game for a moment. “We were under stress. That’s what I’m saying. And when you’re under stress you…”

He trailed off, unsurprisingly.

“Well,” said Jenny, “We’d better look out for a sudden increases in the birth rate - especially for underage parents. Probably going to be a phenomenon. Generation Covid.”

“Complete disenfranchised,” he said. “I can’t even see my own child.”

Jenny look sympathetically at him and almost regretted their banter. But it was only banter.

Peter was currently disallowed from seeing his daughter due to a rather convoluted chain of possible infection. Jude was fine but she’d been hanging out with one of her friends with Astra outside at a cafe. Two days later that friend’s tracking app flicked into life telling her to isolate and take a PCR test as she’d been somewhere prior to the cafe which it transpired had also played host to someone who had tested positive. On balance Jude thought she was probably OK, but probably wasn’t cutting it these days. Jude’s sense of responsibility kicked in and she had duly isolated herself and Astra. She had done a test and was now waiting for the results, but she also needed to wait for the results from all her other friends who had been there, just to be sure, as well as waiting to see if Astra developed anything.

Networking used to be such a fun thing and had been encouraged, thought Jenny, whether it was friends or work colleagues. Now it was just a blueprint for passing around a virus and sentencing yourself to days of solitude. 

“As a matter of interest,” said Jenny, deciding on a different tack, “When was the last time you did any exercise? I mean real genuine exercise rather than that stuff you’re doing with you fingers?”

“I’m active,” said Peter.

“In what way?”

“I get up every day,” he said. “That’s more than some people I know.”

“Wow,” said Jenny. “They must be…. really really disenfranchised.”

“You may be underestimating what’s going on,” said Pater. “Seriously.”

Jenny relented and admitted this wasn’t an easy. She didn’t for one minute want to detract from the hard times everyone was going through and certainly if the youth of today felt so bad they couldn’t connect with the world that was a problem and something they could need help with rather than a subject for a cheap dig.

“I’m still fit,” Peter reassured her. “Maybe not at my prime but I’m certainly not run down.”

“Bet you couldn’t out pace me,” smiled Jenny.

“Is this a challenge I see before me?” asked Peter.

“Yeah,” said Jenny, “Why not?”

And so the terms were set. If Berkhamsted wasn’t going to happen any time soon mother and son who create their own time trial/road race. In two week’s time they would chart out a route and a time and they’d go head to head and see who had the edge. Peter’s bike hadn’t been used for a while but it was nothing a bit of low level maintenance and oil wouldn’t fix. Jenny thought out loud that it would be more of an issue to get his muscles back up to optimum performance.

“You’d better be careful with this talk,” said Peter. “Getting beaten by your son could seriously damage your reputation at the cycling club. And I’m betting Anna won’t be impressed either.”