All change for centenarians
GOOD news at last! A man and a woman reached the age of 112 at the weekend and the man was clearly still compos mentis. Many happy returns to both of them.
They have lived through some challenging times, including two world wars, but they have also seen huge changes
– from airflight to spaceflight, the horse to the car, the discovery of antibiotics, the arrival of the internet.
It causes me to wonder what life will be like in 112 years’ time for somebody born today.
SO, BORIS, where is your land of liberty now? Where is proportionality and reason? It would be very helpful and calming if you would kindly remind the nation and the growing army of petty bureaucrats what this lockdown is all about: preventing people from getting too close to each other. Providing that is achieved, the rest is immaterial.
In the last few days we have had a policeman telling off a woman for putting chalk lines outside her bakery, helpfully indicating the social distance her customers should preserve. He said it was graffiti.
Then we had a Boots assistant officiously taking a lipstick out of a customer’s basket because it was “not essential”. Would the idiot please explain why, if you are in Boots getting a prescription or toiletries or whatever, picking up a lipstick at the same time is spreading coronavirus?
Worst of all was the experience of a poor soul who was refused topping up her electricity card in a shop because she was over 70.What exactly did the shop assistant expect her to do for fuel?
THE police have set up a Stasi-style hotline for people to snitch on their neighbours and inevitably some busybodies are phoning in to report a second exercise session.
The rulebook reigns supreme and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the police stopping people from using their cars to get to beauty spots even if they don’t see another soul in the process, let alone come too close to one. My own direct experience demonstrates the nonsense of this.
I am blessed by having Dartmoor on my doorstep.
If I take the car up there, I see nobody but if I walk up the lane instead then I encounter dogwalkers, people cutting hedges, the postman etc. So it is plainly within the spirit of the lockdown to take the car. Therefore if people want to drive some distance to achieve what I can do in half a mile, why not?
The test must surely always be social distance. Please say so, Boris.
I DO not, as far as I know, have the dreaded virus. A clumsy piece of editing in another national newspaper suggested I had it and I have been receiving concerned enquiries. All is well and I hope the same applies to my readers and their families.
DOMINIC Raab is being touted as a stand-in for Boris. Well, perhaps he would like to get his own bailiwick in order first.
Take the plight of Brits in Nepal. I was contacted by a lady who, along with her husband, is among a few hundred Britons marooned there. French and German rescue flights have come and gone but no British ones.
Worse than that has been the appalling service from the Embassy, which fails to answer the phone and promises to respond to emails but doesn’t. Humiliatingly for the UK, this couple has sought and received information from the French embassy instead.
They were hopeful when everyone was put on a bus for Kathmandu but were then told that they would all have to wait “for the resumption of commercial flights”.
Your recent announcement of rescue flights is welcome, Dominic, but what took you so long?
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ALAS! No lady wot does for 12 weeks. And those of us isolating alone cannot even bribe the family teenagers to do the things we hate.
Some people loathe ironing while others find it relaxing; some hate cooking while for others it is a hobby. Me? I cannot change a duvet cover to save my life. It is as complicated as putting up a tent.