House party covidiots? A plague on them all!

THE other day one of my dearest friends popped round to see me. I say popped round. What actually happened was that I heard her yell my name from the street while I was working at the kitchen table, opened the window, and over the next 20 minutes we conducted a shouty chat over the sound of the pelting rain.

This is what passes for socialising in 2020. Certainly it’s about as good as it’s going to get in Glasgow right now, where we are back in semi-lockdown due to a rise in Covid cases and can no longer visit each other’s houses.

But what struck me when I first saw the news was, well, that won’t affect me. Not really. Where once I welcomed people into my home with open arms (my favourite sort of Saturday night is the kind which involves friends round the kitchen table and lashings of wine) I honestly can’t remember the last time we had anyone to visit. Everything before March seems hazy and indistinct. Something about Brexit maybe? I think we were planning a wedding?

In these past six months we have become trapped in our own little bubbles. We see few people, hug even fewer and stay patiently in our designated safe spaces, as though separated from the rest of the world by a sheet of glass. The well-worn phrase ‘if I don’t see you through the week I’ll see you through the window’ has never felt more ridiculously appropriate.

Some friends of ours are moving house shortly, and my fiancé sent a text saying he was looking forward to seeing them at the house warming. Oh, how we laughed. House warming! As if. See you in 2022, guys. Maybe.

But while many of us are discovering that the new local lockdown rules will do little to change our daily lives, it serves only to highlight the rotten few intent on spoiling it for everyone. You know, the ones who think it’s absolutely fine to host and attend house parties in the middle of a global pandemic.

I understand that people are frustrated. I get that it is a difficult cross to bear, particularly for the young, being denied the simple pleasures of meeting up with friends, dancing, or just sitting in each other’s houses until the wee hours putting the world to rights over cheap bottles of Chardonnay.

But still, were there really 300 house parties across Scotland last weekend? Are that many people really that callous, that irresponsible? One, in Midlothian, apparently hosted 300 people.

The sheer practicalities of this aside, the selfish ignorance is enough to have you screaming round the twist (in partial lockdown, no one can hear you scream).

Because while I, and I suspect many of us, are lucky enough not to be too affected by the latest lockdown rules, there are some for whom it will take a very heavy toll.

There are those who live alone, who’ve only recently been able to see friends and family again after months shuttered away. There are those whose loved ones are in hospitals and care homes, now denied the basic right of being with relatives at a time when they’ve probably never needed them more.

These are the people who need visits the most. And these are the ones who will really suffer when others decide to break the rules.

Why should they be penalised because of the actions of ignorant idiots? And how long will we be trapped in a cycle where the people struggling the most must pay for the actions of those who have done the very least?

I don’t know the answer, and I’m not sure anyone in charge does either. All I know is that it is desperately unfair.

Every single one of us has had a price to pay during this pandemic. But it would behove us all to remember that some have had to pay a much steeper price than others. And they will continue to do so, unless we all take some collective responsibility.