I never thought I’d want Thatcher back

SO what have we learned this week? That half-a-dozen pals can soon meet up for barbecues and picnics; that, unbelievably, the UK is capable of having an extended period of Mediterranean weather; that if you are rich enough not even space is an unreachable frontier; that you can hear birdsong in the majority of Zoom and Skype conversations… Oh, and that you cannot criticise even the most insidious of blokes if he is a mate of the prime minister.

Some of those facts I find delightful, some worrying, and one is appalling.

I dipped my toe into the murky waters of social media this week with what could be described as a political post on Facebook. I never do that as a rule, there’s enough hatred and bile on there anyway – but I was so incensed by the “one rule for us at the top, another for you plebs” thinking of Number 10 Downing Street, I thought it would help vent some of my anger.

Blimey, didn’t the floodgates open. Many people shared the post or made comments and all were in agreement save for one woman who seemed to think it was all about Brexit.

I wish it was. Doesn’t that debacle seem tame and cosy now?

One chap said that although he agreed with what I said about elitist values failing to make the nation a safer place, he was confused by my stance as he thought I was a friend of the Johnson family. Well, I knew Alexander’s (to give Boris his real name) granny and grandad years ago and was very fond of them – but that wasn’t going to stop me having my say.

If one of my own brothers had acted in such an irresponsible way, I’d have called him out. Why wouldn’t you? Why didn’t any of those chinless cabinet ministers have the courage to say, “Look boss, this has gone too far”? More than 60 Tory MPs saw common sense and called for a sacking or a resignation.

The arrogance that can allow you to think… “I have said the matter is over, so it is…” is almost terrifying. Too weird even for Alice In Wonderland.

In that story The Duchess says:

“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

Which makes more Cummingsesque sense than someone who says: “I drove heavy machinery, in the form of a powerful four-wheel-drive, 66 miles on public roads to make sure my eyesight was safe to do so.”

Can’t Boris see why the vast majority of the British public do not want such a man anywhere near the driving seat of power?

I feel sorry for the police. How many coppers this warm and sunny weekend will be told: “You can shove off, mate – if Dominic Cummings can do it, so can I!”

I never thought I would ever, in all eternity, hear myself saying this: but I wish we had someone like Margaret Thatcher in charge right now. And certainly I’d feel a lot more comfortable if Tony Blair were in Downing Street. Because both of them at least appeared to know what they were doing. Or they did for the majority of their leadership.

With them, you had the feeling that somebody really did have all their fingers on all the buttons. You may have disagreed with their politics, but you had no doubt that they were doing their best for the entire nation rather than for some Machiavellian agenda of their own.

So one thing should be clear: if we come out of this with one of the worst Covid-19 records in the world (which is looking likely now), then heads will roll.

As for barbecues and picnics… Fine by me. But as I write, one poll shows that four out of five Britons believe the lockdown is ending too soon. Given that our infection rate is still more than 15 times higher than that of Germany or France, they may have a point.

I will continue self-isolating anyway, because I am one of the only people I know who has been on a ventilator while being kept conscious. The medics had to keep me awake after a 12-hour heart operation collapsed my lungs. Apparently the only way to reinflate lungs in such case is for the patient to start breathing for themselves.

It is an unpleasant process – painful and very, very, frightening. I thought the nurses were trying to murder me by suffocation. Three days on that ventilator were the worst 72 hours of my life by far.

And, ironically, all because of a bat-related disease. Regular readers of this column might recall the time I was almost killed by a bug injected into my body by leeches that had been languishing in warm bat poo in a cave in a jungle.

As my wife said at the time: “Only you could have come up with that one – you idiot.”

And arguably getting covered in bat poo was more idiotic than driving 60 miles to test one’s eyesight. But at least my adventure didn’t put anyone else at risk.

And arguably getting covered in bat poo was

more idiotic than driving 60 miles to test

one’s eyesight