Scientists, please give us a break

JI’M AFRAID all the Covid first anniversary commemorations this week left me cold. Of course we needed to remember those who have died in this awful plague, to respect the dreadful ordeals suffered by their families, but I would far rather the Prime Minister’s press conference had concentrated more on the immediate future.

For instance, as deaths, hospitalisations and infections fall more rapidly every day, when are we going to be released from lockdown?

I sighed with relief when Boris, right, outlined his roadmap to freedom. OK, it was hardly going to be a shortcut, but I thought the stages he outlined sounded sensible.

What annoys me now is the way every news bulletin mischievously suggests that everything will go horribly wrong.

I’m getting very tired of various scientific oddbods turning up on the news and telling us our future.This is invariably gloomy, speculating about how new variants will not allow us to have holidays abroad this summer.

The latest – unbelievably – is

Professor Neil Ferguson, who was so publicly caught flouting his own lockdown advice last year by inviting his mistress over for a spot of nooky.

Shamed for a bit, he’s now back on his high horse, saying summer holidays are not for the rest of us. I really don’t think he’s got the right to lecture us, and I want our holiday plans to be shaped by Boris, not scientists.

I think the news networks give these boffins so much airtime because they are desperate to stir up controversy, not tell us the truth.

The constant anxiety these reports cause makes all of us edgy and anxious. What’s the point of a brilliant vaccine rollout if we’re not allowed to make our own choices about where we go? And if Europe is going to remain out of bounds to us this summer, what’s going to happen to the G7 summit in Cornwall in June? Are hundreds of foreign leaders going to be allowed in Carbis Bay while the rest of us are told we can’t have a holiday in the sun?

I’ll be watching St Ives with interest.

What’s sauce for the goose…

JMY dad was a hatter and never went out without his Fred Thursday fedora.

To his annoyance, I was never into hats. Apart from a white bunny-bonnet thing, which all my friends wore at Christmas in the Sixties, I’ve never worn one – until now.

My son’s getting married in June and I’m knee-deep in the things. Fascinators, hatinators; I can’t decide which look least ridiculous. But I’m told everyone’s wearing one. In the wedding photos, I’ll be the one in gold feathers, looking stupid.