In quarantine, I became my own police state
If it hadn’t been for the texts, I would have forgotten that I was under house arrest. I didn’t get my second jab in time to avoid quarantining after my holidays, so I was required to sit in the house for nearly a week doing a stream of overpriced Covid tests and waiting days for the results.
At the start of the week, it was hard to remember. Everything seemed normal. I was at home. The world outside was busy. “I’ll just pop out for a coffee,” I would think to myself, and start down the stairs, before remembering.
On the second or third day, a real-life, honest-togod quarantine inspector showed up. He was an unhurried fellow with a clipboard and a high-vis vest branded “Test and Trace”. But his arrival concentrated my thoughts. I started to make an extra effort to police what I was doing. Whenever I found my feet taking me absentmindedly towards the door, a new, police-state superego would kick in to remind me that it was risky. Soon, I had stopped trying to leave.
Freedom day arrived. I left the house triumphantly to go to the shops. But for a few days, although everything
Surveillance: Covid marshals on patrol in Soho talk to a member of the public
seemed normal, it wasn’t. Every time I opened the door to leave my own house, a little voice said: “Wait a minute. Is that a good idea?”
Just like that, my brain had internalised a miniature police state, installing an automatic second-guessing machine that made everything in my day just a little more questionable and difficult. Eventually, the feeling wore off. Scale this up to the size of a country and I fear true normality is still some years away.
Freedom is slowly returning. We no longer have to wear masks in shops and, according to recent Government announcements, those shops will soon be able to sell produce using imperial measurements.
I rather doubt most will take up that freedom, since a lot of us have gotten used to the metric system now. But it’s still astonishing how much it riles up a certain probrussels type just to hear that someone might get to buy their potatoes in pounds and not grammes. Nothing better encapsulates the petty need for control of the bureaucrat.