Like Churchill before him, Boris Johnson is inspiring the entire nation, every man, woman, person, object, thing with multiple bits, undecideds, crossovers, gender fluids and any group I may have inadvertently missed, to fight, fight fight!! this horrible pandemic. We are all being encouraged to stand up, get battle ready, bare arms, join together (no more than 6, obvs) and… and… go back home, lock the doors and stay inside. Hmmmm. Harder job to motivate people to do as little as possible, rather than Churchill’s fighting them on the beaches.

Viruses aren’t like Germans. For a start you can’t see them. They don’t wear helmets. In fact they wear crowns, but only at microscopic levels. So Boris’s job is in fact much more difficult than Churchill’s. To get people to agree to limit their lives in every single respect and aspect. And even then, as has been shown over and over, Boris and his team of incredibly clever and professorial advisers, know approximately the square root of absolutely fuck-all about the spread of this virus. Which is why the rules change on a pretty much daily basis. Along with infection rates.

The main problem we have here, which probably accounts for why we ‘lead the world’ in infected people and deaths, per 1000/100,000/million of population is that we’re rubbish at testing. And without tests you have no chance. Most surprising comment of the last few weeks, and certainly the funniest, was from Dame Dido Harding. The gel wot is in charge of our nation’s testing. Da big boss lady. And she stated, live on tv, that ‘we possibly underestimated test requirements because no-one predicted that rates might rise when the kids went back to school’.

Well I knew. She only had to ask. The man in the butcher’s knew. The bus driver knew. The masked up Uber driver knew. People, whose lives have all been reduced and concentrated into the microcosm of Covid-world, now talk of nothing else. And everyone, from Nicola Sturgeon to possibly someone even more obnoxious, simply KNEW that when the schools reopened it would be a turning point, possibly a tipping point. But the ‘models’ used by the government advisors are waaaaaay more powerful than mere logic and common sense. So, ‘no, we never knew’. So we can’t test ailing teachers, or kids with symptoms, so have to take out whole year groups and force them into isolation.

I’m isolating. I’m in the City of London. The only place left where you’re truly safe from bumping into people. Where you’re at least 200 metres from the next soul.

Happy quietest Wednesday since May

A xxxx