Appliance of science goes AWOL
JAFTER the brief euphoria of this week’s grudging permission to meet a few friends in our gardens, I now feel, for some reason, more melancholy than happy. Oh, it was lovely, seeing three of our children and our tiny grandson for the first time in three months; eating a socially-distanced picnic lunch (confession – I did smother our grandson with hugs) in a dreamily sunny garden was as near-perfect as anything gets these days.
But then afterwards? I felt impatient and cross. What next? I certainly can’t see my other son who lives in Manchester with our two small granddaughters because staying the night away from our lockdown house is still verboten.
Similarly, we still cannot get down to Cornwall and stay in our home there. I’ve tried sternly telling myself I should be grateful for small mercies, but I can’t quell the rebellion brewing in my soul. I’ve had enough. I’m sick of being told the Government’s “following the science” when as far as I can tell there’s precious little scientific consensus to be had.
As Richard writes here, every day more theories about the value of lockdown, or lack of it, appear in the newspapers. Every day I watch the No.10 press briefing, hoping in vain for an indication that our medical advisers are re-appraising their approach to this virus; that their minds are open to new ideas; that they’re learning things from other countries.
Instead what we get is an obstinate lockdown of their minds. Ministers and scientists lecture us from their lecterns as if we’re three-year-olds behaving badly. Not one of them admits they might have been wrong in the past. None of the ministers properly answer any of the questions put to them. Boris still looks peaky and I fear he’s losing it.
The good professorsVallance (inset) and Whitty tell us off: deaths and infections aren’t falling fast enough, they say, as if it’s somehow our fault and nothing to do with them. Meanwhile the sun has disappeared, the clouds are gathering and we’ve covered our new garden furniture with a huge tarpaulin. It looks like a metaphor for shattered hopes.
RTHE Markles had better start earning some cash soon. Since Meghan and Harry (left) were cut adrift by tax-funded British and Canadian police protection, they’re having to pay for it themselves – and through the nose, by the sound of it.
The couple, who moved to Los Angeles in March, have reportedly hired America’s best-known celebrity protection outfit, Gavin de Becker & Associates, which charges its super-rich clients up to £7,000 a DAY. Year-round protection at that rate would cost the Markles £2.5m.
And I don’t think there’s any tax relief available for employing someone with a suspicious bulge under one armpit to patrol your patio.