Boris’s advice? It’s all Greek to me, my son
First cut is deepest for hairdresser
There’s a rush to be back at the barber or hairdresser now they’ve reopened. But it might be best to wait. They’ll be so out of practice.
People going on the first day came out saying: “At last I can see again and I don’t look like a pirate. I’ve lost an ear and there’s an 8in gash in my head that spells something blasphemous in Mandarin, but it’s worth it.”
We shouldn’t be harsh on people who have defied the odd lockdown rule as some of the guidelines are confusing. For example, we’ve all popped out when our journey wasn’t totally “essential”.
Or, like Boris Johnson’s dad Stanley, we interpreted the FCO advice against “all but essential travel” to Greece as: “Wahey, I’m going to Greece, sod staying here for a lark.”
Clearly, sometimes it’s difficult to know what is and isn’t allowed.
He claims he’s at his villa for “essential business”, as he has to “Covid-proof the property and set up social distancing measures”.
So right now he’s crawling round the floor with a sponge and a bottle of Domestos, is he?
And he has to do that. Because there are no cleaners in Greece; they’re all too busy being philosophical and inventing triangles.
And “set up social distancing measures”? In a villa? Has he put those stickers on the floor, like the ones in the Co-op, saying, “Please stay two metres away”, and arranged a one-way system to the kitchen and back?
Anyway, you wouldn’t trust the Greeks to deal with the virus. We know far more about it than them because, taking into account their smaller population, we’ve had 11 times as many people as them who haven’t died after getting it.
They might point out that’s to do with us having, proportionally, 12 times as many infected, and 36 times as many die
We get the Marbles, they get Boris’s dad Stanley from it. But the Greeks can be picky like that.
Stanley has always been meticulous about keeping to lockdown guidelines.
When we were first advised not to go to the pub, he followed the guidance by saying: “Of course I’ll still go to a pub.”
To be fair, it may not be confusion but a condition the upper class have called Guideline Breaking Opposite Can’t Help It Syndrome.
It’s as if it’s their duty to set rules and then do the opposite.
If they told us new evidence showed the quickest way to spread the virus was from playing the saxophone, so that was now banned, you know by the weekend five of the Cabinet would be secretly filmed in a swing band playing in Cambridge city centre.
Then they spin an excuse that makes no sense, such as: “I had to play the saxophone as my trumpet was locked in the conservatory.” And because it’s said in a posh accent, we accept it.
Dominic Cummings could be driving at 95mph past a school as the kids were leaving, and he’d say: “I was on essential business. I had a pet penguin that is very important as he advises me on military matters and he was hungry and I had to get him a fish, otherwise he’d get dizzy and tell me to invade China. So I had to be quick.”
I suppose we shouldn’t mind. They shouldn’t have to stick to the rules because their superior genes are intelligent enough to shoo away the virus. They baffle the virus with Latin until it runs off screaming: “He said ipso facto, I’m frightened.”
But the story does prove why Greece has had such economic difficulties as it shows they are clearly no good at trade.
We’ve got their Elgin Marbles, and they have our Stanley Johnson.
That must be the worst deal in all of history.