All we can do is batter bravely on, looking to a future mask free

SO righteous is Nicola Sturgeon that it was hard not to feel a twinge of pleasure after she was snapped, momentarily unmasked, in an Edinburgh pub. There can hardly be one rule for the First Minister and another for the rest of us, and her swift response was one of sackcloth and ashes.

‘This was a stupid mistake and I’m really sorry. I talk every day about the importance of masks, so I’m not going to offer any excuses. I was in the wrong. I’m kicking myself and I’m sorry.’

I am not, these days, a great fan of the First Minister – she lost my vote the day Nationalist MPs insolently marched through the voting lobby to impose abortion on the people of Northern Ireland – but I have high respect for her.

on the rare occasions Miss Sturgeon has erred, her apologies have always been quick, unambiguous and sincere.

This time, her grovelling would have done credit to a Communist show trial.

It is hardly, as someone cracked, as if she had driven to Stirling Castle to test her eyesight – and in truth, I think, we have all now and then erred.

I myself last week blundered into a local gift shop before realising I had forgotten to don my face covering – though, fortunately, I wasn’t being stalked by some clype with a smartphone.

The other day, shopping at Aldi – that unnerving establishment where, at the checkout, you are expected to fling your purchases into the trolley as if you were stoning rats – I had to stagger back through the queue to retrieve a forgotten box of eggs, with profuse apologies to all bumped in the process.

AMID the pitiless daily statistics of those tested positive for Covid-19, those in hospital and those who have died, it is easy to forget the grinding, daily mental toll this emergency is taking on everyone.

Every public outing feels fraught with risk. Anyone edging, even momentarily, into our personal space is regarded as a potential bioweapon. Every overheard cough makes you cringe and the disgusting sight of someone spitting tempts you to full-on assault.

I even have a ‘ Covid key’ hanging from my belt for jabbing keypads, buttons at pedestrian crossings and so on – but I cannot use it to basket my messages, nor wash all the groceries the moment I reach home, nor deep-clean my dogs after each bout of walkies.

And then, of course, there are those awful moments when your lunch tastes dull or you feel unduly warm, or perhaps an ache i n your hip, and wonder if you have, after everything, caught it…

on top of all the other strains of the f estive season, and Brexit uncertainty, there are inevitable lapses in concentration, even when sobering news is laid before us.

An old friend was looking forward to his first Christmas in retirement but, this week, first his partner then his stepson tested positive for Covid-19.

He i s now self- i solating, caring for them both – not to mention his 89-year-old mother and their dog – and racked with worry as to whether, at 63, he might catch and succumb to the virus himself.

A Christmas to remember for all the wrong reasons; a Christmas of pure animal fear.

A great part of the strain is that the rules are labyrinthine and, it seems, in incessant flux.

Scots have been variously warned, this year, not to go out, not to travel more than five miles from home, not to leave the bounds of our local NHS board and, as of now, not to travel beyond the borders of our local authority.

Still more terrifying and stringent decrees may yet, this week, be issued.

Even the guidelines on face coverings are not as clear as they might be. You are not, in fact, obliged to wear a mask on the street or outdoors; only in such enclosed public spaces as a mall or a supermarket or on public transport.

If eating out, you are permitted to remove it when seated with your refreshment – though must don it anew when you get up to, say, visit the lavatory.

We might also choose to have a little more mercy on our politicians. As one wise man yesterday observed, the virus is in charge, not our rulers.

It has no opinion on the European Union, independence or Boris Johnson.

It does not know it is Christmas; and cares less.

Nor is it fair to lament Britain’s handling of Covid-19 as among the worst in the world.

It might momentarily have seemed that way, i n high summer, but the virus is tireless, implacable.

By late November i t was completely out of control in France. German hospitals are now buckling before it.

Sweden’s experiment with ‘herd immunity’ now looks like a sick joke and in America – for all her wealth, her resources, her ample forewarning – more people are dying every day than did on 9/11.

BRITAIN did not invent the new mutant viral strain, so to speak. It was detected in Brazil as early as March. It was all over Europe well before Emmanuel Macron threw his borders hissy-fit and, i n the general passion for trashing the Prime Minister, few care to be reminded that l ast week’s announcement attested to Britain’s superior capability in virology and analysis, or that we have already vaccinated 600,000 people.

As a proportion of the UK population, that is twice the roll- out in Israel, nearly four times more than the United States and ten times the rate in China. Not a soul in the EU has so far been vaccinated – but it is marvellous how many journals and commentators in our land simply love doing down Britain.

Nor has the Scottish Government handled coronavirus any better than Whitehall.

We made the same mistakes about care homes – in terms of deaths per 100,000, we are the third hardest-hit country in Europe – and the SNP administration’s wilful insistence on doing its own thing, whenever it can, simply irritates.

‘Hands-Face- Space’ – the Westminster mnemonic has an admirable clarity wholly lacking in Sturgeon’s FACTS.

Yet she is perceived to have had a much better Covid war than the Prime Minister, simply because she has been more coherent and, on other grounds, is much more appealing to Scots than the wildhaired Merrie England persona of Boris Johnson. (Though it is important not to overstate his averred, deep unpopularity north of the Border, the Scottish Conservative performance at the general election was their second-best since 1992.)

We batter on, grumbling, slathering on sanitiser and tugging at our masks because we have no choice and, at least, know that an end is in sight.

Next Christmas, God willing, Miss Sturgeon’s face – and all of our own – will be in a very different world.